- In the textbook, anthropology is defined as the study of
* a. Human nature, human society, and the human past.
b. The remains of earlier societies and peoples.
c. The ways of life of contemporary peoples.
d. The physical and mental capacities of human beings.
- Holism in anthropology is defined in the text as
a. Trying to study everything possible about a people during the course of a research trip.
* b. Integrating what is known about human beings and their activities at an inclusive level.
c. Studying human biology and culture at the same time.
d. Fitting together economics, political science, religious studies, and biology.
- To say that anthropology is comparative means that
a. Each anthropologist studies many different societies and cultures during his or her career.
* b. Anthropological generalizations must draw on evidence from many different societies and cultures.
c. Anthropologists use data from many different academic fields of study when they do their research.
d. There is no one way for an anthropologist to do research.
- Which of the following is NOT an element of the anthropological perspective?
a. Holism.
b. Comparison.
c. An evolutionary approach.
* d. Learning dependent.
- A study that examines how economics, politics, religion, and kinship shape one another in a specific society would be
a. Detailed.
b. Cultural.
* c. Holistic.
d. Comparative.
- An anthropologist studying a social group observes that people shake hands when greeting one another and concludes that handshaking is universal among human beings. This study is faulty because the anthropologist has not been
a. Holistic.
b. Evolutionary.
c. Ethnocentric.
* d. Comparative.
- According to the text, evolution may be understood broadly as
a. Attributes and behaviors that are passed on by the genes.
b. Beliefs and behaviors that are passed on by teaching and learning.
* c. Change over time.
d. Transformations of species over time.
- According to the text, culture consists of
* a. Sets of learned behaviors and ideas that human beings acquire as members of society.
b. Those elements of the human experience that require education and good taste, such as art, music, and dance.
c. Sets of innate instincts that enable human beings to function in a complex world.
d. Those sets of behaviors and ideas that enable human beings to appreciate differences between one society and another.
- To claim that members of a particular social group do not typically eat insects because they have learned to label insects as inedible is to use an explanation based on
* a. Culture.
b. Biology.
c. Ethnocentrism.
d. Genetic programming.
- To emphasize that human beings are biocultural organisms means that
a. Human biology and culture both contribute to human behavior.
b. Human biology makes culture possible and human culture makes human biological survival possible.
c. Instinct must be recognized as an important part of any explanation of human behavior.
* d. Both a and b.
- When anthropologists say that human beings are biocultural organisms, they mean that
a. The goal of their research is to identify the genes that cause human cultural behavior.
* b. Human biology and culture both contribute to human behavior.
c. Culture has replaced biology in human evolution.
d. Human biology precedes culture in understanding human behavior.
- An emphasis on the way that people deal with artifacts in their everyday lives as biocultural human organisms focuses our attention on
a. Primatology.
b. Paleoanthropology.
* c. Material culture.
d. Applied culture.
- To say that anthropology is a field-based discipline means that
a. Information about particular social groups comes through direct contact with them.
b. Anthropology is based on experience with other ways of life.
c. The experience of being in the field is central to modern anthropology.
* d. All of the above are true.
- The branch of anthropology that is concerned with discovering what makes human beings different from other living organisms and what human beings share with other members of the animal kingdom is called
a. Applied anthropology.
b. Archaeology.
* c. Biological anthropology.
d. Cultural anthropology.
- Biological anthropologists are interested in
a. The material remains of the human past.
* b. Human beings as biological organisms.
c. Present-day social arrangements in human groups.
d. Human symbolic communication.
- Which of the following is NOT a major subfield of North American anthropology?
a. Archaeology.
b. Cultural anthropology.
c. Biological anthropology.
* d. Physiological anthropology.
- By the early twentieth century, some anthropologists and biologists concluded that the concept of “race” was
a. Justified by the increasingly scientific biological research on human beings.
* b. A cultural label invented by human beings to sort people into groups.
c. A political liability, although the evidence was increasingly strong in its favor.
d. A label that recognized important intellectual and biological differences among groups.
- The people of society X believe that the people of society Y are inherently inferior to them biologically and prevent them from gaining access to a high level of education and other resources. According to the text, this is an example of
* a. Racism.
b. Ethnocentrism.
c. Labeling.
d. Holism.
- A contemporary biological anthropologist is likely to study
a. The relationship of nutrition and physical development.
b. Nonhuman primates.
c. Human origins.
* d. Any of the above.
- Biological anthropologists who study chimpanzees are likely to be
a. Cultural anthropologists.
b. Medical anthropologists.
c. Paleoanthropologists.
* d. Primatologists.
- Paleoanthropologists study
a. Modern apes.
b. Biological variation in living human populations.
* c. Fossilized bones and teeth.
d. Nutrition and physical development.
- A contemporary cultural anthropologist is likely to study
a. Political institutions in a village in another country.
b. Kinship systems in an urban setting.
c. Patterns of material life in his or her own society.
* d. Any of the above.
- The system of arbitrary vocal symbols we use to encode our experience of the world and of one another is called
a. Culture.
* b. Language.
c. Linguistics.
d. Symbolism.
- The subfield of anthropology that is concerned with proposing solutions to practical problems is called
* a. Applied anthropology.
b. Biological anthropology.
c. Cultural anthropology.
d. Linguistic anthropology.
- Linking questions of human health and illness in local settings to social, economic, and political processes operating on a global level is characteristic of
- The “new” biological anthropology.
- Applied ethnology.
* c. Critical medical anthropology.
d. World system medical anthropology.
- An extended period of close involvement by anthropologists with the people whose life is of interest to them is called
* a. Fieldwork.
b. Surveying.
c. Interviewing.
d. Information gathering.
- To cultural anthropologists, informants are people who
a. Are willing to share secrets about the lives of others in their community.
b. Read the books and articles that cultural anthropologists write.
* c. Share information about their culture and language with anthropologists.
d. Serve as research subjects.
- An anthropologist is sitting in the town square in a Bolivian village watching a group of women who are chatting. One wanders over and asks the anthropologist whether she would like to join them in shopping for thread for their looms and then help to string the looms. She agrees, and they go off together. This form of research is called
* a. Participant-observation.
b. Working with informants.
c. Cultural sharing.
d. Reciprocal research.
- The anthropological research methodology called participant-observation is characterized by
a. Long-term intensive interviewing of informants.
b. Spending extended periods of time both watching and recording behavior, especially in public places.
* c. Both getting involved in social activities and watching those activities.
d. Becoming a member of the society being studied.
- A description of a particular culture is called an
a. Ethnohistory.
* b. Ethnography.
c. Ethnology.
d. Ethnographer.
- A comparative study of many cultures is called
a. Ethnohistory.
b. Ethnography.
* c. Ethnology.
d. Ethnographer.
- The major specialty within anthropology that involves the analysis of the material remains of the human past is
a. Applied anthropology.
* b. Archaeology.
c. Biological anthropology.
d. Cultural anthropology.
- The major specialty within anthropology that uses information gathered from the other subfields in an effort to solve practical cross-cultural problems is
* a. Applied anthropology.
b. Archaeology.
c. Biological anthropology.
d. Cultural anthropology.
- An anthropologist who studies the environmental features that affect human well-being would probably be called a(n)
a. Archaeologist.
b. Linguistic anthropologist.
* c. Medical anthropologist.
d. Primatologist.
- In a world in which people from different cultural backgrounds come into contact with one another for extended periods, anthropology offers a
a. Solution to cultural misunderstandings.
* b. Means of learning to cope with cultural differences.
c. Way of determining which cultural background is better under the circumstances.
d. Set of techniques for removing cultural barriers.
36.Anthropologists place their observations about human culture and society in a temporal framework. This consideration of change over time relies on theories of
a. Holism.
b. Ethnology.
* c. Evolution.
d. Developmental anthropology.
37. Most anthropologists reject singular explanations of human behavior. Instead, they employ a _________ perspective.
a. Humanistic.
b. Ethnological.
c. Evolutionary.
* d. Biocultural.
38. Which of the following is true about the rapidly growing field of medical anthropology?
* a. The work of medical anthropologists necessarily supports the proposition that humans are biocultural organisms.
b. Medical anthropologists are often employed to provide market research for pharmaceutical companies.
c. Medical anthropologists avoid taking a critical stand on issues of social inequality in health care.
d. It focuses exclusively on non-Western medical practices.
Essay Questions
- Choose one of the five subdisciplines in anthropology and explain what is distinctive about its approach to the human condition.
- How might a college undergraduate benefit from taking a course in cultural anthropology?
- Write a short definition of anthropology and describe its connection to the social sciences, the natural sciences, and the humanities.
- What does it mean when anthropologists claim that their discipline is holistic, comparative, and evolutionary?
- What does it mean to say that anthropologists approach the study of humanity from a biocultural perspective?
