Final Exam Short Answer Flashcards
What were the two main questions Franz Boas asked which that guided the development of anthropology as a discipline?
- Why are the tribes and nations of the world different?
- How have the present differences developed?
Describe how anthropology is a “comparative” and “holistic” discipline?
- Holistic because it is the study of the past, present, languages, customs, and gathers all aspects of culture.
- Comparative: uses a unique cross-culture technique to compare cultures of different areas and further study them
Provide an example of how biological development influenced cultural change.
According to Malinowski, biological development is the main reason for certain practices. He claims that a behavior or ritual within a culture developed because of the biological need for such practice.
Bigger brains → art and complex communication
Death/birth rituals?
*Could you argue rite of passage for this? I.e. once a child is old enough and reaches puberty, there is a ceremony in honor of that
Drinking milk. We aren’t supposed to be able to process milk after a few years and yet we developed a way to process it (biologically). Now we have milk products all the time (culture).
Provide an example of how a cultural development led involved biological consequences for humans.
The switch from foraging to farming led to poorer diets and malnutrition.
Provide three examples of the kinds of work that applied anthropologists might engage in outside of a university setting.
- ). Business: for customer analysis purposes, such as the reason why a certain product is so popular or the problems with a certain product
- ) Community development: compare and analyze the development of multiple societies
- ) Medicine: compare and analyze the health of regional populations and of ethnic and cultural enclaves
- ) Forensic: Identification of deceased individuals. Also work with legal teams on homicides and war crimes.
How is the archaeological record transformed into, first, an archaeological resource and, ultimately, to the archaeological heritage?
Recorded (identified, like dug up), resource (analyzed to understand what we’re looking at), and then heritage (interpreted and deemed fit for public consumption)
First it is dug up, then it is analyzed, and then it is decided to be fit for public consumption
Explain the difference between exploitation colonialism and settler colonialism.
Exploitation colonialism is finding areas to exploit resources and native people, while settler colonialism is for the purpose of forming a new community.
How is the modern world-system a product of historical relations between core and peripheral nations?
The modern world is a product of an economic system where peripheral nations are exploited for the benefit of core nations.
Describe three ways in which Mississippian society was different from societies in the earlier Woodland Period.
- ) Pottery: going hand in hand with sedentary lifestyle, ceramics introduced during Woodland period, but became popularized and increased in production during Mississippian period
- ) Sedentary lifestyles: goes hand in hand with pottery due to increased reliance on horticulture and focus in things other than food security
- ) Horticulture: corn, beans, and squash domestication permitted rue agricultural systems during the Mississippian time period
- ) Maize Agriculture-50% of their diet
- ) Organized into chiefdoms with relative power and elites
- ) They were not living on the coast- characterized by mounds and plazas with a permanent village settlement.
- ) Systematic warfare with warriors
Describe the process of natural selection and provide an example of natural selection operating upon phenotypic change in a species according to this process.
The process whereby organisms who better adapted to their environments tend to survive and produce more; Finches of the Galapagos Islands: their beak shapes changed over time due to competition in food supply leading to variance in food sources
Briefly explain the difference between the theoretical paradigms of Evolutionism, Historical Particularism, Neoevolutionary perspectives, and Practice and Agency.
Evolutionism is the process of societies going from simple to more complex; historical particularism is the notion that each culture is unique and intelligible only in its own terms; neoevolutionary perspectives is the new way of looking at evolution by asking why things have changed; agency is the idea that the actions of individuals create and transform culture; practice is the idea that cultures are generated and transformed by the practices of individuals—informed by both society and agency
Why are exogamous marriages both biologically and socially adaptive?
These types of marriages encourage reproduction outside of the biological family. Thus, this improves the variety in the genetic pool of a population. Also, marrying outside of the family leads to widened social circles and better alliances with other groups.
Does this answer the question tho? ^^
What are some of the problems with the concept of ‘race’ as it was conceived in the 18th and 19th century?
The concept of race creates a falsified division among people as it has no standard means of categorization. The idea of race forces people to become categorized by different aspects, such as nationality, religion, skin color, region of origin, etc. This causes overlap; thus, it causes bias and confusion.
Discuss how an anthropological perspective is beneficial in understanding and contributing to global issues related to human interaction with the natural environment (e.g. climate change, ecology).
An anthropological perspective allows things to be seen holistically and comparatively rather than with bias.
Areas such as global implications part in climate change, how globalization promotes intercultural communication, and how contact influences cultures can be understood better with anthropological approaches such as comparison.
This is right!
What is the difference between a hominid and a hominin? Provide two examples of hominins and two examples of non-hominin hominids.
Hominids are the group consisting of all modern and extinct Great Apes. (ex. Modern humans, chimpanzee, gorilla).
Hominins are the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all our immediate ancestors (ex. Australopithecus, Ardipithecus). Why are modern humans in both ??
