Chapter Five

Question 1

Potlatch

Answer 1

A feast in which the host lavishes the guests with abundant quantities of the best food and many gifts

Question 2

Leveling Mechanism

Answer 2

Unwritten, culturally embedded rules that prevent an individual from becoming wealthier or more powerful than anyone else. They are maintained through social pressure and gossip

Question 2

2 Modes of Consumption

Answer 2

1. Minimalism: Few and finite consumer demands and an adequate and sustainable means to achieve them.
2. Consumerism: People’s demands are many and infinite; thus driving colonialism, globalization, and other forms of expansionism.

Question 3

Entitlement Theory

Answer 3

Entitlement is the right to provide for one’s self. The theory highlights the difference between countries that have access to life-supporting resources and those that do not. Countries that produce food, for example, have a more reliable entitlement to food than countries that depend on their exports.

Question 4

Costs of Consumerism

Answer 4

• Natural features such as rivers and lakes, forests, mountains, beaches, nonhuman primates, and hundreds of other species are at risk of survival.
• People who currently occupy tropical rainforests, deserts, and mountain areas with pristine tourist destination sites, minerals, and energy sources are at risk of survival.
• People whose real and relative incomes place them in poverty and who experience an ever-widening gap between themselves and the well-off and the super-rich.

Question 5

Disaster Studies in Anthropology

Answer 5

Disaster is a social process. Depending on our culture, we are going to have a different outlook on how we think about, prepare for, react to, and repair after natural disasters.

Question 6

Kuru

Answer 6

A mysterious disease from Papua New Guinea from 1957-1977 which killed roughly 2,500 people. American Medical Researchers claim it was a neurological disease. Australian Cultural Anthropologists claim the cultural cause is cannibalism. Kuru victims had eaten the flesh of people killed by Kuru.

Question 7

Food Taboos

Answer 7

Many religions have certain foods that are considered unholy. Dietary rules among cultures may also be particular to the human life cycle and can be associated with menstrual cycle, pregnancy, childbirth, lacation, etc.

Question 8

Modes of Exchange (Balanced vs Unbalanced)

Answer 8

• Balanced Exchange: Two people who have a social relationship exchange items of roughly equal value repeatedly
• Unbalanced Exchange: Two people who lack a social relationship exchange items of inequal value

Question 9

Symbolic Goods

Answer 9

Objects or items that hold cultural meaning and are used to communicate identities, social positions, and group affiliations, rather than solely for their practical function.