Anthropology E20 Practice
Midterm 2001
Practice test --
the following is an example of the kind of questions you might expect. Answers are at the end.
1.
A
"culture-bound" theory is
a. a prediction that is bound to be
fulfilled in a particular culture.
b. a theory developed by a cultural
anthropologist rather than a physical anthropologist.
c. a theory developed by a sociologist
rather than a cultural anthropologist.
d. a theory based on assumptions common
to a particular culture rather than deriving from comparisons of many different
cultures.
e. a theory based on comparison of
cultures.
2.
The
concept culture as defined today has changed from the
meaning given to it during the 19th
century. Today,
a. culture is seen as values and beliefs that
lie behind behavior in addition to actual behavior.
b. culture is seen as real rather than as
ideal.
c. the term "culture" has been
replaced by the term "society."
d. culture is defined as objects rather than
ideas.
e.
the term culture is not used.
3.
The
sanitary habits of food foraging peoples
a. leave a lot to be desired.
b. are highly adaptive in the context of
foraging and also in the context of sedentism.
c. weren't very adaptive in the context of
foraging, but turn out to be adaptive in the context of sedentism.
d. were highly adaptive in the context of
foraging, but are maladaptive in the context of sedentism.
e. are unknown.
4.
Which
of the following characteristics distinguishes primates from other mammals?
a. a large complex brain in which the
area devoted to smell is quite large
b. the development of more teeth of a
highly specialized nature
c. increased visual acuity because of
stereoscopic and color vision
d. the development of a specific
breeding season and increased number of offspring
e. All of the above
5.
The
smallest class of sound that distinguishes a difference in meaning is a/an
a. allophone.
b. morpheme.
c. allomorph.
d. phoneme.
e. free morpheme.
6.
One
method used by linguists to find out the rules by which morphemes are combined
in larger chains is called __________. In this method, the linguist puts
together strings of morphemes, looking for categories within which certain
morphemes will fit (e.g., the category "adjective" applies to all
morphemes that fit in the phrase, "I am looking for a [***] house").
a. frame substitution
b. glottochronology
c. phonetics
d. phonology
e. morphology
7.
According
to the film we saw on the Trobriands , which of the
following best describes the Trobriand conception of the afterlife.
a.
It
is a place in the underworld
b.
It
is a place where humans are punished for misdeeds on earth
c.
It
is a place in the sky where the soul gradually is freed from earthly desires
d.
It
is a mythical
e.
It
is a place where the
onerous obligations of Kula exchange are not enforced.
8.
Many
food foraging groups have rituals celebrating the association of men with
hunting and warfare, and women with generation of life. They interpret this
difference to mean that
a. men and women are different, but one is
not ranked higher than the other.
b. women are superior because of their gift
of fertility.
c. men are superior because of their
physical dominance.
d. men are responsible for taking care of
women because women are weaker.
e. women are more assertive because they have
the power of life and death.
9.
Among
the Ju/'hoansi (“Bushmen”),
a. children are expected to contribute to
subsistence from the time they are 7 or 8.
b. elderly people past the age of 60 are
expected to contribute hunted or gathered food to the group.
c. elderly people are a valuable source of
knowledge and wisdom about hunting and gathering.
d. elderly people are taken care of grudgingly
because after the age of 60 they contribute nothing to the group.
e.
children
are expected to set up their own separate households by the time
they are 12.
10.
The Yanomamo Indians of Venezuela in the film “Magical Death”,
are:
a.
confirmed opiate addicts
b.
users of LSD like drugs to achieve shamanistic
visions
c.
use cocaine for religious rather than
recreational purposes
d.
use mild altering drugs in secret
e.
behave in ways under the influence of drugs
which can only be understood by the pharmacology of the drugs used
True false
1.
The
“garbage project”, in which detailed analysis was made of what Americans
typically throw out,
illustrates the anthropological principal that what people say
they do is usually a good indication of what they actually do.
2.
Though
one's sex is culturally determined, one's sexual identity or gender is
biologically constructed.
3. Chantek, the orangutan, although extremely
intelligent, showed no evidence of the ability to take the perspective of
others, nor was there evidence of intentionality, premeditation, or
displacement in his behavior. Moreover, evidence was lacking for the symbolic
use of language.
4.
Anthropologists
believe that all mental illness is learned rather than biologically based.
5.
The
average work week of the Ju/'hoansi (“Bushmen”) is
about 60 hours.
6.
The
function of the Kula Ring
in the Trobriands is to trade food and clothing for profit.
7.
Although
children acquire linguistic performance skills by age two, linguistic
competence does not begin until five.
8.
The
meaning of a symbol rarely implies its culturally
defined opposite.
9.
Simplicity
and complexity are usually more easily defined in technology than in religion.
10.
The former practice of the Russian elite to
speak French among themselves and Russian to the peasants is an example of code
switching.
In one or
two sentences identify the following terms or concepts:
1.
informant
(as distinguished from respondent)
2.
metalanguage
3.
peasant
4.
cultural
diffusion
In two or
three short paragraphs answer the following:
1.
Discuss
the various possible meanings of the term “society”.
2.
What
is the difference between a dialect and a language?
Answers: MC
1
D
2
a
3
d
4
c
5
d
6
a
7
d
8
a
9
c
10
b
TF
1
f
2
f
3
f
4
f
5
f
6
f
7
t
8
f
9
t
10
t
Note: the following are by no
means the only way any of these could be answered correctly
1.
An informant is a
source of social science or anthropological knowledge who provides information
in a free form manner, usually by answering relatively open ended questions and
volunteering information which the anthropological requires in the course of
fieldwork, as distinguished from a biological or psychological subject or respondent
to a structured questionnaire.
2.
Metalanguage is a kind of “communication about
communication” in which the speaker indicates the context in which his
utterances are to be understood, e.g. playful literal, serious, ironic.
3.
A peasant is a
rural cultivator (agriculture or horticulture), usually a villager, who is tied by various political and social
arrangements to an urban center and who produces a surplus product which can be
expropriated or extracted in order to support the non-food producing elite and
craftsmen who typically live in the urban centers.
4.
Cultural
diffusion refers to the process whereby cultural items are “borrowed” or spread from one
culture to another. Most of the sum total of any given culture, when viewed
historically, consists of such borrowed items.
1.
Society as a
process is most broadly defined as the ongoing modifications we constantly make
to our own conduct as a result of our need to mesh our conduct with the conduct
of others. Society as a thing rather
than a process is most broadly defined as a group of people who more likely to
be aware of others within it rather than outside of it, by reason of sharing
some more or less bounded system of communication. In this sense the term is necessarily rather
vague.
In
a more specific sense, anthropologists sometimes use the term society to refer
to any group in which one can live one’s entire life – from cradle to grave as
it were. In this sense, a peasant village would be a society, but not a nunnery
or bunch of cowboys. Another usage
(derived from the German gemeinshaft-gesellshaft
contrast) distinguishes a community ( a smallish
group in which people all know one another in some intimate way) from a society ( a larger more specialized
group which has some limited function,
like a corporation, or a special club).
Society (people living in-groups) is usually contrasted with culture
(shared symbols, values and ideas) although the two often are used
interchangeably in casual talk.
2.
Language and dialect are two terms which cannot
be distinguished, except in very general terms.
A dialect is a specific form of a language which has unique features (in
phonology, morphology, grammar, and semantics, among others) which is shared by
a specific speech community, and which is more or less intelligible to other
speakers of other dialects of the same language. But this is a slippery slope, as it were,
because dialects shade into each other within many language areas and it is
sometimes very difficult to draw lines.
Thus the Dutch/Flemish spoken in