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Anthropology
Q:
Does the practice of paying a dowry necessarily imply gender inequality?
Q:
Discuss some of the social functions of levirate and sororate marriage, and identify the sociocultural context of these customs.
Q:
What are some of the differences between endogamy and exogamy, and how absolute is the distinction implied by these terms? Use examples to illustrate your argument.
Q:
"A person can have multiple spouses without ever getting divorced." Using the concepts you have learned in this chapter, explain this seemingly contradictory statement.
Q:
This chapter includes several examples linking marriage practices with issues about property and inheritance. Describe these examples. Based on what you have learned so far about marriage, kinship, adaptive strategies, and political systems, can you suggest ways in which anthropologists could help explain relationships involving property?
Q:
In almost all cases of marriage in nonindustrial societies, some kind of preexisting social relationship between any two individuals helps determine whether they may marry.
Q:
Although briefly popular after its introduction, online dating never became a significant part of the marriage market.
Q:
How would you explain the near universality of the incest taboo? You may draw on one or more explanations.
Q:
In the caste system of India, failure to adhere to class endogamy rules traditionally resulted in a ritually impure union.
Q:
Royal endogamy among Hawaiians functioned to limit the number of conflicts about royal successionan explanation that serves as an example of the latent function of a social custom.
Q:
Same-sex marriages are not culturally viable institutions.
Q:
Dowries are most common in societies in which women occupy an elevated status position.
Q:
In tribal societies, unlike industrial ones, marriage entails only an agreement between the people getting married; descent groups play only a minor role.
Q:
If Hannah marries her deceased husband's brother, the arrangement is considered a levirate marriage.
Q:
Cross-culturally, divorce is known only in industrialized societies where a high percentage of women are gainfully employed.
Q:
In a study among the Hopi of northeastern Arizona, more than a third of the women of the community had been divorced at least once, which correlates with the fact that these women were socially and economically insecure.
Q:
Serial polygamy is the practice of having more than one wife, but never more than one at the same time.
Q:
Polygynous marriages often serve important economic and political functions, with the number of wives a man has serving as an indicator of his wealth, prestige, and status.
Q:
With polyandry, a woman takes more than one husband at one time.
Q:
One theory regarding the universality of the incest taboo argues that by forcing people to marry outside their immediate kin group, peaceful alliances between people would extend to include a greater number of individuals.
Q:
Homogamy is the practice of marrying within a culturally prescribed group to which one does not belong.
Q:
Polyandry is common and practiced under a wide range of conditions.
Q:
Native American berdaches were permitted to marry men.
Q:
A new view of early human origins suggests that the emergence of a pair bond between male and female would have allowed humans to recognize their relatives.
Q:
Cultures have different definitions and expectations of relationships that are biologically or genetically equivalent. In other words, kinship is socially constructed.
Q:
Exogamy is the practice of seeking out a mate within one's own social group.
Q:
The children of your father's sister are called your cross cousins.
Q:
Incest is a cultural universal that is defined the same way by all cultures.
Q:
Early anthropologists explained incest taboos as a reflection of "instinctive horror" of mating with close relatives. However, this explanation for incest taboos has been rejected because formal incest restrictions would be unnecessary if humans really do have an instinctive aversion to incest.
Q:
The biological degeneration explanation for the incest taboo has won over supporters because of universal concerns about biology.
Q:
What is the name of the custom by which a widower marries the sister of his deceased wife?
A. sororate marriage
B. serial polyandry
C. filial marriage
D. levirate marriage
E. fraternal marriage
Q:
Polygyny, although formally outlawed, has survived in Turkey since the Ottoman period, when having several wives was viewed as a symbol of power, wealth, and sexual prowess. Unlike in the past, when the practice was customary and not illegal, polygyny can put contemporary women at risk. How?
A. Women in polygynous unions have less of a chance to marry several men themselves.
B. Because their marriages have no official status, secondary wives who are abused or mistreated have no legal recourse.
C. The increase in the number of wives a man takes on increases inter-wife feuds.
D. As cross-cultural studies have shown, violence against women is correlated with the presence of polygyny in society.
E. Unlike in the past, polygynous unions are no longer unions based on romantic love.
Q:
Which of the following best defines polygyny?
A. the type of marriage in which there is more than one husband
B. the custom whereby a wife marries the brother of her dead husband
C. the type of marriage involving only two spouses
D. the custom whereby a widower marries the sister of his dead wife
E. the type of marriage in which there is more than one wife
Q:
All of the following are a form of polygamy EXCEPT
A. a man who marries, then divorces, then marries again, then divorces again, then marries again, each time to a different woman.
B. a man who has four wives simultaneously.
C. a woman who has three husbands, all of whom are brothers.
D. a man who has three wives, all of whom are sisters.
E. a woman who has two unrelated husbands.
Q:
Which of the following statements about polygynous marriages is true?
A. They are characteristic of high social instability, as with serial monogamy in southern California and Washington, D.C.
B. They frequently involve a hierarchical arrangement among the wives.
C. They are associated with male infanticide.
D. They are characterized by there being more than one husband in a single household.
E. They tend to occur in societies that have more men than women.
Q:
Which of the following statements about polyandry is most likely true?
A. It is found only among fishing communities in Madagascar.
B. It is a cultural adaptation to the high labor demands of rice cultivation.
C. It is a cultural adaptation to mobility associated with male travel for trade, commerce, and warfare.
D. It is almost always sororate.
E. It is legal in the United States.
Q:
Which of the following is NOT true of the role of the Internet in marriage in contemporary societies?
A. Like the workplace, bars, parties, and churches, the Internet is part of what has been labeled the "marriage market."
B. The Internet has largely supplanted traditional "offline" partner shopping, which has dramatically faded in significance.
C. Use of the Internet for partner shopping first began to soar when dynamic websites based on databases were introduced.
D. By 2009, over 30 percent of Internet-enabled couples were meeting through online dating.
E. While the Internet can enhance opportunities to form new personal relationships, it can be disruptive to existing relationships, sometimes spurring jealousy in a spouse or partner.
Q:
Anthropologist Edmund Leach (1955) observed that, depending on the society, several different kinds of rights are allocated by marriage. According to Leach, marriage can but doesn't always accomplish each of the following EXCEPT
A. give either or both spouses a monopoly in the sexuality of the other.
B. give either or both spouses rights to the labor of the other.
C. give either or both spouses rights over the latent and manifest functions of the other.
D. give either or both spouses rights over the other's property.
E. establish a socially significant "relationship of affinity" between spouses and their relatives.
Q:
A cross-cultural study that systematically compared romantic love in many cultures found
A. that while people everywhere know what love is, they experience it differently.
B. evolutionary evidence for romantic love in all societies surveyed.
C. a rise in love matches over arranged marriages in industrialized societies, but the opposite trend in nonindustrialized societies.
D. a scholarly bias throughout the social sciences that views romantic love as a luxury in human life, especially in academia.
E. evidence that romantic love may be a universal, although romantic love and marriage do not necessarily go together.
Q:
A Nuer woman married to a woman can be the pater of a child she did not father. Native American berdaches, biological men who represent a third gender, sometimes assume the role of a wife when married to a man with whom they share the products of their labor. Cross-cultural examples such as these illustrate
A. that the concepts of gender and marriage are more socially constructed in some societies than in others.
B. how, if they were to be made legal, same-sex marriages could easily benefit from the same legal rights different-sex marriages already enjoy.
C. the rare social phenomenon of polyandry.
D. how same-sex marriages make good economic sense.
E. how Edmund Leach was wrong to suggest that all societies define marriage similarly.
Q:
A lobola, a substantial marital gift from the husband and his kin to the wife and her kin among the BaThonga of Mozambique, is
A. a form of bride theft.
B. only given for elopements.
C. the same as a dowry.
D. widespread in patrilineal societies.
E. widespread in matrilineal societies.
Q:
What is the term for the marital exchange in which the bride's family or kin group provides substantial gifts when their daughter marries?
A. polygamy
B. bridewealth
C. dowry
D. progeny price
E. brideservice
Q:
Divorce tends to be more common
A. when the dowry is very small.
B. when marriages are political alliances between groups.
C. in matrilineal than in patrilineal societies.
D. in societies in which marriage residence is patrilocal.
E. in all societies when romance fails.
Q:
A recent cross-cultural study of 87 societies, all of which had incest taboos, investigated the rate at which such taboos were broken. The results of this study add to the evidence that
A. cultural universals, like the human ability to make fire, always have a genetic basis.
B. Freud was right: Children everywhere have sexual feelings toward their parents.
C. although tabooed, incest does happen.
D. many societies need better educational systems.
E. many societies need better techniques of social control.
Q:
The incest taboo is almost culturally universal, but
A. not all cultures have one.
B. not all cultures define incest the same way.
C. not all cultures know about the consequences of incest.
D. some cultures have replaced it with the levirate.
E. some cultures practice gerontology anyway.
Q:
There is no simple or universally accepted explanation for the fact that nearly all cultures ban incest. However, the most accepted explanation for the incest taboo is
A. a genetically programmed instinctive horror.
B. a widespread and well-founded fear of biological degeneration.
C. that following rules of exogamy is adaptively advantageous.
D. that isolated social groups are better at survival.
E. a genetically determined attraction for those most different from us.
Q:
What term refers to the culturally sanctioned practice of marrying someone within a group to which one belongs?
A. incest
B. exogamy
C. hypogamy
D. endogamy
E. endosperm
Q:
Which of the following marital customs functions to maintain distinctions between groups?
A. progeny price
B. levirate
C. sororate
D. sororal polygyny
E. endogamy
Q:
The rise in female employment in the United States, especially in professional careers, when coupled with ________, has dramatically increased household incomes in the upper classes. This pattern has been one factor sharpening the contrast in household income between the richest and poorest populations of Americans.
A. homogamy
B. serial monogamy
C. endogamy
D. sororal polygyny
E. exogamy
Q:
Which of the following is an example of a rule of endogamy?
A. a taboo on marrying members of the same totemic group
B. the Nazi law forbidding Aryans from marrying anyone but other Aryans
C. a taboo against marrying within the same village
D. a taboo on mating with members of one's extended family
E. the incest taboo
Q:
How do the rules of endogamy function in society?
A. They prove that the incest taboo is not the cultural universal it was once thought to be.
B. They encourage the extension of affinal bonds to an ever-widening circle of people.
C. They tend to maintain social distinctions between groups.
D. They expand the gene pool.
E. They extend kin ties across classes.
Q:
To understand royal endogamy, it is useful to distinguish between the manifest and latent functions of customs and behavior. The manifest function of a custom refers to the reasons people in a society give for it. Its latent function is
A. the genetically motivated reason for the custom.
B. a subconscious effect the custom has on the society members' identification with that belief.
C. the socially constructed perspective of why the custom exists.
D. an effect the custom has that the society's members don't mention or recognize.
E. the emic effect the custom has on the society, recognized only by anthropologists.
Q:
With unilineal descent, sex with cross cousins is proper, but sex with parallel cousins is considered incestuous. Why?
A. Cross cousins are actually parallel cousins.
B. Societies with unilineal descent share a gene that impedes them from developing sexual urges for parallel cousins.
C. This behavior is a human universal explained by Freud's theory of attempt and contempt.
D. Cross cousins are considered closer relatives than all other kin.
E. Parallel cousins are considered closer relatives than cross cousins.
Q:
What is the difference between kin terms and genealogical kin types? Why would an anthropologist want to make such a distinction? Can you see any problems with this distinction? In your everyday experience, do you distinguish between kin terms and genealogical kin types?
Q:
This chapter offers a brief overview of kinship-related demographic changes in the United States and Canada. How have kinship arrangements changed? How do these changes relate to other cultural changes? Do you find any of the current trends surprising? If so, why?
Q:
In South Sudan, a Nuer woman can marry a woman if her father has only daughters but no male heirs. This is done to maintain the patrilineage. The "wife" has sex with one or more men until she gets pregnant. The children born are then accepted as the offspring of both the female husband and the wife. What is important in this example is
A. the fact that only same-sex marriages are recognized in patrilineal societies.
B. social rather than biological paternity, again illustrating how kinship is socially constructed.
C. how biology overrides culture regardless of human intentions.
D. how often marriage is simply about property.
E. that it illustrates how romantic love is both universal and complicated.
Q:
What is the term that anthropologists use to refer to the biological father of a child?
A. pater
B. creator
C. moiety
D. genitor
E. provider
Q:
What is the term that anthropologists use to identify ego's socially recognized father?
A. pater
B. genitor
C. creator
D. father
E. mater
Q:
All cultures have taboos against ________, sexual relations with someone considered to be a close relative, although precisely what constitutes a close relative varies across cultures.
A. levirate
B. sororate
C. fraternal
D. incest
E. exogamy
Q:
Why does exogamy, the practice of seeking a husband or wife outside one's own kin group, have adaptive value outside of biological concerns?
A. It increases the likelihood that disadvantageous alleles will find phenotypic expression and thus be eliminated from the population.
B. It creates new social ties and alliances, providing access to more resources and social networks.
C. It impedes peaceful relations among social groups and therefore promotes population expansion.
D. It was an important causal factor in the origin of social stratification.
E. Exogamy is not adaptive; it is just a cultural construction.
Q:
Although the incest taboo is a cultural universal, cultures define incest differently. For example, in many cultures it is incestuous to marry parallel cousins but not cross cousins. What is the difference?
A. The children of two brothers or two sisters are parallel cousins. The children of a brother and a sister are cross cousins.
B. Parallel cousins are socially recognized relatives, but cross cousins are true biological cousins.
C. The children of a brother and a sister are parallel cousins. The children of two brothers or two sisters are cross cousins.
D. Parallel cousins are true biological cousins, whereas cross cousins are simply socially recognized relatives.
E. There is no symbolic difference between the two, only a biological difference.
Q:
Which of the following is ego's cross cousin?
A. MBS (mother's brother's son)
B. FBS (father's brother's son)
C. MZD (mother's sister's daughter)
D. FBD (father's brother's daughter)
E. MZS (mother's sister's son)
Q:
In a society with two exogamous lineages or moieties, who is the preferred cross-cousin bride for a male ego?
A. MBD (mother's brother's daughter)
B. MZD (mother's sister's daughter)
C. FBD (father's brother's daughter)
D. FZS (father's sister's son)
E. FZB (father's sister's brother)
Q:
Among the Yanomami of Venezuela and Brazil, as in many societies with unilineal descent, which of the following is true?
A. Marriage between parallel cousins is preferred, whereas marriage between cross cousins is considered incest.
B. Marriage between cross cousins is preferred; marriage between parallel cousins is considered incest.
C. Marriage between first cousins is preferred, but marriage between second cousins is considered incest.
D. Marriage between sororate cousins is preferred, although marriage between levirate cousins is considered incest.
E. Marriage between Crow cousins is preferred; marriage between Omaha cousins is considered incest.
Q:
What term refers to one of two descent groups in a given population?
A. levirate
B. sororate
C. moiety
D. patriline
E. matriline
Q:
"Anthropologists spend much of their time studying trivia like kinship." Do you agree with this statement? If so, why? If not, why not?
Q:
In some systems of kinship terminology, lineal and collateral relatives are grouped together under the same kinship terms, and in others they are not. In terms of the sociocultural setting in which these terminologies exist, discuss reasons for the differences.
Q:
In what kinds of situations would you expect to find ambilineal descent? Unilineal descent? Why?
Q:
There are rights, duties, and obligations associated with kinship and descent. Many societies have both families and descent groups. Give an illustration of how obligations to one may conflict with obligations to the other. How does your example relate to your experience managing rights, duties, and obligations in your own family?
Q:
The most common postmarital residence rule is matrilocality, in which the married couple moves in with the husband's family.
Q:
With unilineal descent, one's lineage affiliation is ascribed at birth, but with ambilineal descent, lineage affiliation is more fluid, because each member chooses his or her own descent group.
Q:
A functional explanation attempts to correlate particular customs (in this case kinship terms) to other features of society.
Q:
A bifurcate merging kinship terminology distinguishes between collateral and lineal relatives.
Q:
Between 1970 and 2012 the number of divorced Americans increased sixfold.
Q:
Cite evidence confirming or denying the universality of the nuclear family. Give examples from different cultures. What other social units might assume the functions associated with nuclear families?
Q:
Discuss ways in which kinship and descent help human populations adapt to their environments.
Q:
Comparing notions of family between the United States and Brazil, the extended family still plays a central role for most Brazilians.
Q:
A descent group consists only of a married couple and their children.
Q:
With patrilineal descent, someone takes his or her father's last name but recognizes descent through both parents.
Q:
In unilineal descent, one's ancestry is traced through only one line of descent.