Cultural Anthropology Quiz/Other Things to Know

Question 1

According to the anthropologist Kalaii Rubaii, ethno-sectarian identities were not always as important as they are today in Iraq. Rubaii argues that the repeated enforcement of these social categories has lead even the victims of discrimination to talk their own identity in terms of religious difference, a process she calls…

Answer 1

Internalization

Question 2

To study the vimbuzza healing rituals of northern Malawi, the anthropologist Stephen M. Friedson lived closely among the local Timbuka people and took notes on how Timbuka healers used music to diagnosis and cure illnesses. Going further, Friedson learned to play the ng’oma drum that healers use in their rituals and allowed the healers to practice their arts on him as a patient. Which term best describes Friedson’s approach to research?

Answer 2

Participant Observation

Question 3

In his scholarship on the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea, the anthropologist Joel Robbins describes how people who converted to Christianity have created new worship rituals that incorporate elements of their traditional social structure and beliefs. This combining of two distinct cultural patterns into a new one is best described as…

Answer 3

Syncretism

Question 4

In his study of chess players in Yonkers and New York City the anthropologist Robert Desjarlais describes how intense concentration on and investment in the same game creates intersubjective meanings among the players, suggesting that distinct cultures can form around hobbies and passions. What is the best way to define this term?

Answer 4

Meanings that are subjective, but shared between multiple people

Question 5

Susan Gal is a linguistic anthropologist who works with ethnic and linguistic minorities in Eastern Europe. According to Gal, people in Eastern Europe frequently spoke multiple languages up until the 19th century. However, with the rise of nationalism, speaking multiple languages came to be seen as primitive and backwards, while each nation having its own proper language came to be considered the “correct” and “natural” state of affairs. The belief that speaking one language was better or more correct than speaking many is an example of…

Answer 5

Language Ideology

Question 6

Thick description is a description of an event that…

Answer 6

Includes all the cultural interpretations of what that event meant to the people involved.

Question 7

Which of the following arguments did Ruth Benedict make against theories of racial purity that were widespread when she wrote Patterns of Culture?

Answer 7

Even Northern European populations are heterogeneous, showing a broad mixture of heredity and A child of one race adopted by a family of another race will still learn all the skills needed to thrive in its parent’s culture due to plasticity.

Question 8

What do we mean when we say that anthropological research values holism?

Answer 8

We consider how culture is shaped by many different and interconnected facets of human life

Question 9

This image is often used to represent the nature of culture among popular audiences. Why might an anthropologist disagree with this representation?

Answer 9

Culture is adaptive, but the iceberg image doesn’t show how culture could change and Culture is shared and symbolic, and therefore public, not hidden.

Question 10

The anthropologist Geoffrey Hughes writes about the use of social media among Bedouin tribes in Jordan. Hughes argues that these new technologies allowed younger people to promote their tribal identity and get into tribal feuds without the supervision of their elders. But tribal leaders soon adapted, creating their own social media presence and conducting an increasing amount of traditional affairs online. This holistic interaction of culture and technology could be referred to as…

Answer 10

Coevolution

Question 11

Which of the following is true of anthropological research as it is practiced nowadays?

Answer 11

Interpretive, field-based, and reflexive

Question 12

Unilinear Cultural Evolutionism was once the dominant theory used by academics to explain human diversity, until it was disproven in the 20th century. Which of the following was NOT one of the attributes of this theory?

Answer 12

Cultures develop in ways that are difficult to predict, and each culture follows its own path of adaptation

Question 13

Which of the following is the best example of a social fact?

Answer 13

Highway speed limits

Question 14

According to the conventions of writing style guides and publishing, the sign “&” is used to represent the English word “and”. When we interpret the “&” sign to represent the word “and” on the basis of this convention, we are treating “&” as a …

Answer 14

Symbol

Question 15

When we see smoke, we often take it as a sign there is fire nearby. If we interpret smoke as evidence of fire, we are treating the smoke as a…

Answer 15

Index

Question 16

Walk signs show a picture of a person walking to let us know that it is safe to cross the street. The resemblance between the picture of the person walking and the action of walking make these signs a…

Answer 16

Icon

Question 17

What is the definition of the term syntax?

Answer 17

Rules for combining signs, words, or actions in the correct order.

Question 18

What is the definition of the term paradigms?

Answer 18

The approved set of possible signs, symbols, or items from which to make a selection when formulating a statement

Question 19

The anthropologist Ivan Karp, who works with the Iteso people of Kenya, has observed that his research participants are often shocked and amazed by the marriage customs of Americans, just as his American students find the Iteso practices exotic and unusual. The tendency to view one’s own culture as “natural” and see others as “strange” can be described as…

Answer 19

Ethnocentrism

Question 20

Which of the following is NOT an aspect of Cultural Relativism?

Answer 20

We should accept that anything a cultural does is automatically ethically or morally correct and cannot be criticized or disagreed with

Question 21

The written work that anthropologists produce about a particular community or culture is called…

Answer 21

Ethnography

Question 22

Which of the following is NOT implied by the idea that cultural anthropology is an “interpretive science”?

Answer 22

The conclusions of cultural anthropologists are just opinions of individuals

Question 23

The dialectic of fieldwork is a method that could be described as…

Answer 23

How did studying the diffusion of cultural traits help disprove the idea that culture is biologically or racially inherited?

Question 24

When linguistic and cultural anthropologists say they are interested in the pragmatic use of signs, they mean they want to study…

Answer 24

The way that people use signs in the course of their daily tasks, activities, and lives and The way that signs can be used to create practical effects in the social world

Question 25

During my own fieldwork, I had a lot of difficult adjusting my sleep schedule to local standards. The people with whom I worked often took naps following their afternoon meal, then stayed up very late into the night hanging out and talking. As one of my friends put it when he saw me yawning, “We have to teach you to stay up late.” And, with practice and change of habits, it became possible to keep up with the local routine. This is an example of…

Answer 25

Socialization/Enculturation

Question 26

Hazal is a graduate student in anthropology who wants to study the global scrap metal recycling industry. To understand this complex, large-scale phenomenon, her research plan involves both conducting participant observation at recycling factories in Turkey, which is the world’s largest importer of scrap metal, and commodities markets in London, England, which is the financial hub for the global trade and investment in scrap metal. This research design is an example of …

Answer 26

Multisited Fieldwork

Question 27

Julie Chu is a American anthropologist of Taiwanese descent who conducts fieldwork with people attempting to migrate out of the city of Fuzhou, China. In her book on the topic, she addresses how her Asian identity, American nationality, and the antagonistic relationship between mainland China and the island of Taiwan all influenced the way local people welcomed her as a researcher and may have limited her ability to conduct interviews with Chinese government officials. Chu’s consideration of how her presentation and identity shaped her research is an example of…

Answer 27

Reflexivity

Question 28

In my own field site of Amman, Jordan, there are many popular beliefs about which nationalities are good at which kind of job. For example, because many Egyptians come to Jordan to work in construction and agriculture, there is a popular belief that Egyptians are naturally good at hard physical labor. This stereotype, which combines categories of nationality with professional aptitude and immigration status, is a result of what we would call…

Answer 28

Slippage

Question 29

The discipline of anthropology emerged during a time when different sorts of people were coming into connect with one another through the combined processes of urbanization in industrial centers and the colonization of other parts of the world. We refer to this economic and political arrangement as….

Answer 29

The 19th Century World System

Question 30

For working class Egyptians in Cairo, the bakery is a site where people return everyday as part of a persistent habit. Together, people waiting in line at the bakery think back on better times, when bread was cheaper and more natural and the Egyptian economy was stronger. Nefissa Naguib uses this observation to argue that the bakery is an important site for understanding how people create a shared picture of their collective past, calling the bakery a…

Answer 30

Place of Memory

Question 31

The anthropologist Victor Turner argued that all initiation rituals involve a stage in which regular rules are suspended or inverted and participants act in ways that would normally be considered inappropriate. He called this stage of ritual…

Answer 31

Liminal

Question 32

The Haya people of Tanzania assign men and women different tasks when farming bananas. The tasks assigned to women are to clear and prepare the soil for planting, while the men plant and harvest the banana trees. Dividing labor on the basis of gender is a common feature of which mode of production?

Answer 32

Kin-Oriented

Question 33

In the United States, Thanksgiving marks the arrival of foreign settlers to the North American continent. Many Thanksgiving pageants and plays depict a story in which America’s indigenous people welcome and offer gifts of food to the new settlers, symbolizing the idea that the new arrivals are welcome and entitled to enjoy all the things their new home has to offer. Whether or not we believe the story of the Thanksgiving pilgrims is true, it is a story that justifies and explains how our current way of life came about based on events in the distant past, making it a…

Answer 33

Myth

Question 34

Conducting fieldwork in Nicaragua, the anthropologist Roger Lancaster observed men donning women’s clothing and applying make-up during that country’s carnival celebrations. These men continued to identify as men in their daily lives. Anthropologists use which term to describe the practice of donning another gender’s clothes and style, independent of gender identity.

Answer 34

Transvestism

Question 35

The anthropologist Kath Weston conducted oral history interviews with gay men and lesbians living in San Francisco to explore how people developed new forms of family. Which term do anthropologists use to describe the many different socially-recognized ways in which human beings form meaningful connections?

Answer 35

Relatedness

Question 36

The Sinhalese Buddhist exorcism ritual described by the anthropologist Bruce Kapferer begins with actors playing the role of masked demons to create a terrifying atmosphere. However, as the ritual continues, the demonic characters make their behavior more comedic and sillier. According to Kapferer, there is a shift in the mood or feeling the ritual aims to create in each phase. The term he and other anthropologists use to describe the impression a ritual tries to create is its

Answer 36

Aesthetic

Question 37

Many of the readings we have encountered in this section of the course remind us that culture has to be made real through ritual practices and meaningful performances. Which of the following should anthropologists keep in mind when studying cultural as practice and performance?

Answer 37

All of the above

Question 38

Anthropologists use the terms affect or affective to describe…

Answer 38

The emotional and sensual side of cultural activities

Question 39

The high school graduation ritual initiates young people into adult life. Many of you who wrote about this topic for the ritual analysis paper noted that graduation was accompanied by a strong feeling of together-ness which, at least temporarily, dissolved the distinct cliques and social groups that define the high school experience. Anthropologist recognize how rituals can temporary suspend social distinctions and create a sense of shared identity, and we term this phenomenon

Answer 39

Communitas

Question 40

The anthropologist Dorinne Kondo studied the lives of Japanese women working in a candy factory. Kondo observed that factory managers had the women working all day long with no time for breaks. However, women began to sneak in small items of food and drink, which they shared among themselves so that they could rest on the job. A system in which people take turns giving and receiving goods could be classified according to which mode of exchange?

Answer 40

Reciprocal

Question 41

The anthropologist Ensign Ho studied centuries of migration from Yemen across the Indian Ocean to Indonesia. Ho observes how intermarriage between traveling Muslim scholars or merchants and local dynasties was facilitated by the fact that the Yemenis identified themselves with their patrilineage, while their local counterparts practiced matrilineage, allowing Indonesia to incorporate new prestige and trade networks into its matrilineal dynasties. A preference for foreign spouses, as opposed to marrying within in the group, is described as

Answer 41

Exogamy

Question 42

Which of the following American English kinship terms describes an affinal relative?

Answer 42

Mother-in-Law

Question 43

The Nuer people of South Sudan practice an institution called “ghost marriage”, whereby the spirit of a dead man can be said to adopt a child so that his lineage will continue into future generations. Passing the lineage only along the father’s side is described as

Answer 43

Both Patrilineage and Unilineal Descent

Question 44

Talal Asad, an anthropologist of Islam, argues that controversies over wearing the hijab, or Muslim women’s headscarf, in France reflect a set of cultural assumptions which say that religion should be a private matter kept to specific places and times, but that it should not influence public, political, or economic life. Asad and other anthropologists of religion term this worldview

Answer 44

Secularism

Question 45

“Bread is a promise”, says Moody, one of the Egyptian men interviewed by Nefissa Naguib for her book. Moody is arguing that providing subsidized bread is an important obligation of the Egyptian state to its citizens. Many people connect the distribution and exchange of material goods with issues of justice, ethics, and proper governance through what Naguib refers to as a.

Answer 45

Moral Economy

Question 46

Anthropologists use the term framing to describe

Answer 46

The words and actions that signal the beginning and the end of a ritual

Question 47

Brett Williams is an anthropologist who studied the family and working lives of Mexican migrants. Williams found that both husbands and wives in working-class migrant couples work hard in exchange for wages from employers. The household labor of feeding the family, however, falls to women entirely. Which relations of production are evident in this case?

Answer 47

Both Kin-Oriented and Capitalist

Question 48

Kath Weston argues that gay and lesbian families in San Francisco innovatively adapt the basic principles of kinship. She identifies distinct social and historical changes, like urbanization, that helped make it possible for gay men and lesbians to develop these “families we choose.” Weston uses which term to describe the ways that individual take control of their own destiny within the range of historical possibilities available to them at the time?

Answer 48

Agency

Question 49

In the religious worldview of Gbagba people, masks are highly important objects. These masks can only be displayed under very special conditions, following a full day of ritual performance and appearing only alongside the dancer that the mask depicts. In anthropological terms, the prohibition on viewing or displaying these masks outside of the proper ritual context means the masks are

Answer 49

Sacred

Question 50

Each year on September 11th, many Americans observe a moment of silence on which to reflect and mark the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. This ritual orients a group of people to a specific event in the past, creating a shared impression of the event’s meaning and mood that carries important political and cultural significance. We could call this shared picture of the past a.

Answer 50

Collective Memory

Question 51

Religious movements often differentiate themselves from one another by performing key rituals in different ways. For example, both baptism (emergence in water) and taking communion (eating and drinking sacred bread and wine) are Christian rituals. But Protestant Baptist Christians downplay the communion ritual and emphasize baptism for adults, while Catholics are baptized as infants and greater emphasize is placed on taking communion (And the Anabaptists do not practice baptism at all). Details matter, and the term anthropologists use for a group’s beliefs about which actions are correct in ritual is..

Answer 51

Orthopraxy

Question 52

Many religious worldviews include belief about a spiritual energy or force that can enter into people and things, giving them blessings and power. In Christianity, the idea of “grace” or “the spirit” could fill this role. In Islam, the term would be “baraka.” The Ghost Dance religion used the Sioux word “wakan” to describe spiritual power. Anthropologists generally designate this common idea of a spiritual or mystical force that can inhere in people and objects using a word taken from the Maori language, which is…

Answer 52

Mana

Question 53

The anthropologist Marilyn Strathern studied relations between men and women in the Hagen mountains of Papua New Guinea. She found that individual people in Hagen conceive of themselves as possessing both male and female attributes, and that both parents play a variety of roles in nurturing and raising children, rather than strict divide between the mother’s role and the father’s role. Anthropologists describe the condition of individual people possessing both male and female characteristics

Answer 53

Adrogyny

Question 54

For my Master’s degree, I conducted research on employment programs for refugees in the United States. These programs aimed to teach new arrivals how to act and behave in American professional settings by introducing them to cultural norms about body language, communication style, and general attitude.

Another name for the collection of personal styles, emotional attitudes, and general approach to life valued by a given culture is…

Answer 54

Ethos

Question 55

The Haya people of northern Tanzania practice a kin-oriented mode of production, where women weed the ground and prepare the soil for men who grow and harvest bananas. The Haya also believe that a child’s bottom teeth must sprout before their top teeth. For the Haya, these two ideas complement one another: just as bottom teeth must come before top teeth, so must women clear and prepare the ground on which to grow bananas. Another name for a cultural comparison that connects two different images or domains of experience based on their similarities would be an

Answer 55

Analogy

Question 56

Which of the following relations of production could we expect to find in the tributary mode of production?

Answer 56

Serfs & Nobles

Question 57

Economic anthropologists study social structures and cultural values that relate to processes of production, exchange, and

Answer 57

Consumption

Question 58

Anthropologists might want to understand the sound, smells, and other physical sensations associated with cultural experiences and social events because

Answer 58

The senses are closely related to memory

Question 59

True or false … Bridewealth is the term anthropologists use for the goods given by the groom’s family to the bride’s family on the occasion of the marriage

Answer 59

True

Question 60

Many societies practice some form of adoption. For example, a tradition in which child is temporarily adopted by an older single relative is found in Ecuador and Peru. To describe the many ways in which cultures recognize non-biological forms of relatedness between generations, anthropologist use the term

Answer 60

Social Parentage

Question 61

When I go to the bakery, I cannot acquire bread by offering gifts, favors, or promises of loyalty. The only thing I can exchange for bread is currency, which could be exchanged for anything with a price. This observation would suggest that my society practices which form of exchange?

Answer 61

Market-Based

Question 62

Which of the following would NOT be considered an aspect of a kinship system?

Answer 62

Pragmatics

Question 63

Among the Navajo, social organization is traditionally based on a residential unit composed of a head mother, her husband, and some of their children and children’s spouses. The head mother is entitled to stay in the house in the event of divorce, and the lineage system is organized around her. This makes the Navajo kinship system

Answer 63

Matrilineal

Question 64

The anthropologist Kira Hall has conducted research with a population in South Asian who do not identify as either men or as women, and are described using the term hijra, a culturally and politically recognized third gender in and of itself. The case of the hijra suggests that which of the following anthropological concepts is not universal or shared by all cultures?

Answer 64

The gender binary

Question 65

In Hawaii, the term “plate lunch” refers to a popular midday meal consisting of a main meat entree plus two sides, a scoop of white rice and macaroni salad. Hawaiin cuisine reflects influences from the U.S., from East Asian, and from Polynesia, and the plate lunch might contain anything from fried chicken to teriyaki beef to fish wrapped in taro leaf. What makes it a plate lunch is its underlying structure: a single main entree accompanied by two sides.

Thinking back to Mary Douglas’s analysis of British cuisine, which formula could describe the structure of the Hawaiin plate lunch?

Answer 65

A + 2b