Q&A Hero

Q: Ethnographic study of the workplace A. provides evidence that economic factors are fundamental to understanding differential productivity. B. is routinely performed by employees of the U.S. federal government. C. is not very useful, because all workplaces are becoming increasingly homogeneous, compared to 20 years ago. D. provides close observation of workers and managers in their natural setting. E. is required of all organizations that want to become not-for-profit, according to the American Anthropological Association.

Q: This chapter's "Appreciating Diversity" account describes how McDonald's was able to succeed in the Brazilian market once it adapted to preexisting Brazilian cultural patterns. This example illustrates A. how the axiom of applied anthropology that innovation succeeds best when it is culturally appropriate applies only in Western cultures. B. the danger of applied anthropology turning itself into a tool of capitalist interests, which always disregard the culture and well-being of the consumer. C. how the axiom of applied anthropology that innovation succeeds best when it is culturally appropriate applies not just to development projects but also to businesses, such as fast food. D. applied anthropology's capacity to help foreign markets adapt to a marketing strategy that must, above all costs, maintain the integrity of its brand. E. Brazilians' intolerance of foreign goods, because the companies that produce them disregard Brazilian tastes.

Q: Anthropology has three dimensions: academic, applied, and a mix of the two.

Q: Ethnography is one of applied anthropology's most valuable research tools, because it provides a firsthand account of the lives of ordinary people.

Q: Although its roots extend further back in time, the real boom for applied anthropology in the United States began in the 1970s.

Q: Academic and applied anthropology have a symbiotic relationship, as theory aids practice and application fuels theory.

Q: Development anthropology is the branch of applied anthropology that focuses on social issues in, and the cultural dimension of, moral development.

Q: A commonly stated goal of recent development policy is to promote equity; that is, to reduce poverty and promote a more even distribution of wealth.

Q: The Bahia, Brazil, development project in which loans were given to fishing-boat owners is an example of how some development projects can actually widen wealth disparities instead of increasing equity.

Q: Shamans and other magico-religious specialists are effective curers with regard to what kind of disease theory? A. exotic B. ritualistic C. naturalistic D. personalistic E. scientific

Q: Anthropology may aid in the progress of education by helping educators avoid all of the following EXCEPT A. indiscriminate assignment of nonnative English speakers to the same classrooms as children with "behavior problems." B. tolerance of ethnic diversity. C. incorrect application of labels such as "learning impaired." D. sociolinguistic discrimination. E. ethnic stereotyping.

Q: More than 70 percent of immigrants to Canada settle in what city? A. Vancouver B. Montreal C. Toronto D. Quebec E. Alberta

Q: One of the stated goals of public anthropology is to A. oppose policies that promote injustice. B. refrain from discussion of social issues in the media. C. promote anthropology as a career, especially to minorities. D. encourage academic anthropologists to become applied anthropologists. E. restrict the publication of research papers to professional journals.

Q: Which of the following is NOT a feature of urban life? A. dispersed settlements B. high population density C. social heterogeneity D. economic differentiation E. geographic mobility

Q: Which of the following best illustrates urban applied anthropologists' ability to help social groups deal with urban institutions? A. "culture at a distance" studies among Japanese and Germans in an attempt to predict the behavior of the enemies of the United States B. Kottak's comparative study of development projects from around the world C. Vigil's study of gang violence in the context of large-scale immigrant adaptation to U.S. cities D. anthropological analysis of the relation between Malagasy descent groups and the state E. analysis of differences between personalistic and naturalistic disease theories among rural poor of the U.S.

Q: Which of the following is true about medical anthropology? A. It is the field that proved that people from rural areas suffer only from illnesses and not diseases. B. It applies non-Western health knowledge to a troubled industrialized medical system. C. Typically in cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, this field does market research on the use of health products around the world. D. This field applies Western medicine to solving health problems around the world. E. This growing field considers the biocultural context and implications of disease and illness.

Q: What is a disease? A. a health problem as it is experienced by the one affected B. an artificial product of biomedicine C. a consequence of a foraging lifestyle D. an unnatural state of health E. a scientifically identified health threat

Q: What is an illness? A. a nonexistent ailment (only diseases are real) B. an artificial product of biomedicine C. a scientifically described health threat D. a purely linguistic problem E. a condition of poor health perceived by an individual

Q: What is the commonly stated goal for most development projects? A. greater socioeconomic stratification B. ethnocide C. cultural assimilation D. decreased local autonomy E. increased equity

Q: Which of the following was observed in the Bahia, Brazil, development project in which sailboat owners got loans to buy motors, as described in this chapter? A. Ambitious young men increasingly sought wage labor. B. The fishing community became more egalitarian. C. There was an increase in commercial sailboat ownership. D. The price of power fishing vessels decreased. E. Individual initiative was rewarded, and the fishing industry grew.

Q: People are usually willing to change just enough to maintain, or slightly improve on, what they already have. For this reason, development projects are most likely to succeed when they avoid the fallacy of A. cultural relativism. B. ethno-bias. C. overinnovation. D. underdifferentiation. E. intervention philosophy.

Q: What term refers to the tendency to view less developed countries as more alike than they are? A. cultural relativism B. ethnobias C. overinnovation D. underdifferentiation E. intervention philosophy

Q: Development projects should aim to accomplish all of the following EXCEPT A. promoting change, but not overinnovation. B. preserving local systems while working to make them better. C. respecting local traditions. D. drawing models of development from indigenous practices. E. developing strategies with little input from the local communities.

Q: Which of the following is a reason that the Madagascar project to increase rice production was successful? A. Malagasy leaders were of "the people" and were therefore prepared to follow the descent-group ethic of pooling resources for the good of the group as a whole. B. The elites and the lower class were of different origins and thus had no strong connections through kinship, descent, or marriage. C. There is a clear fit between capitalist development schemes and corporate descent-group social organization. D. The project took into account the inevitability of native forms of social organization breaking down into nuclear family organization, impersonality, and alienation. E. The educated members of Malagasy society are those who have struggled to fend for themselves and therefore brought an innovative kind of independence to the project.

Q: The Malagasy development program described in this chapter illustrates the importance of A. the local government's ability to improve the lives of its citizens, when committed to doing so. B. replacing subsistence farming with a viable cash crop. C. replacing outdated traditional techniques of irrigation with more modern ones. D. breaking down corporate descent groups, which are too independent and interfere with development. E. the top-down strategies developed by the UN.

Q: In an example of applied anthropology's contribution to improving education, this chapter describes a study of Puerto Rican seventh graders in a Midwestern U.S. urban school (Hill- Burnett, 1978). What did anthropologists discover in this study? A. Puerto Rican students came from a background that placed less value on education than did that of white students. B. The parents of Puerto Rican students did not value achievement. C. The Puerto Rican subjects benefited from the English-as-a-foreign-language program. D. Puerto Ricans do not benefit from bilingual education. E. The Puerto Rican students' education was being affected by their teachers' misconceptions.

Q: Who was studied at a distance during the 1940s in an attempt to predict the behavior of the political enemies of the United States? A. the Koreans and English B. the Yanomami and Betsileo C. the Malagasy D. the Germans and Japanese E. the Brazilians and Indonesians

Q: What is the postwar baby boom of the late 1940s and 1950s responsible for? A. It fueled the general expansion of the U.S. educational system, including academic anthropology. B. It promoted renewed interest in applied anthropology during the 1950s and 1960s. C. It brought anthropology into most high school curricula. D. It produced a new interest in ethnic diversity. E. It worked to shrink the world system.

Q: According to Karen Tice, what issue has become paramount in the teaching of applied anthropology? A. ethics B. theory C. application D. economics E. scholarship

Q: All of the following are proper roles for applied anthropologists EXCEPT A. identifying the needs for change that local people perceive. B. working with people to design culturally appropriate and socially sensitive change. C. placing the cultural values of local people above all others' cultural values. D. protecting local people from harmful policies and projects that might threaten them. E. working as participant observers, taking part in the events they study in order to understand local thought and behavior.

Q: Development anthropology is the branch of applied anthropology that focuses on social issues in, and the cultural dimension of, what type of development? A. ethical B. theoretical C. political D. economic E. scholastic

Q: In today's world in which people, images, and information move as never before, people simultaneously experience the local and the global. Explain what this means and consider its implications for methods in cultural anthropology.

Q: Anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn (1944) saw a key public service role for anthropology. In his words, it could provide a "scientific basis for dealing with the crucial dilemma of the world today: how can peoples of different appearance, mutually unintelligible languages, and dissimilar ways of life get along peaceably together." Anthropologists also have made and continue to make a dramatic impact on people's welfare as they cope with crises such as the January 2010 Haiti earthquake. What are some examples of this?

Q: What is Project Minerva? What about the Human Terrain System? What concerns have these Pentagon programs raised among anthropologists? In your view, what role (if any) should academics play in national security?

Q: Provide a brief account of the history of theory in the discipline. Does this account support the view that much of the history of anthropology has been about the roles and relative prominence of culture?

Q: How have anthropologists tried to bring evolution into the study of human culture? Have these approaches succeeded, or failed? Why? Do you see any way in which evolution and culture could be united into a broad and effective explanatory paradigm?

Q: What do you think is the relation between theory and methods in anthropology, if they relate at all?

Q: Applied anthropology is A. the purely academic dimension of anthropology. B. the term used for all anthropological research programs. C. the use of anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and methods to identify, assess, and solve contemporary problems. D. rarely possible, as anthropological studies are not practical in the "real world." E. not guided by anthropological theory.

Q: Which of the following does NOT illustrate the kinds of work that applied anthropologists do? A. working for or with international development agencies, such as the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development B. helping the Environmental Protection Agency address environmental problems C. borrowing from fields such as history and sociology to broaden the scope of theoretical anthropology D. using the tools of medical anthropology to work as cultural interpreters in public health programs E. applying the tools of forensic anthropology to work with police, medical examiners, the courts, and international organizations to identify victims of crimes, accidents, wars, and terrorism

Q: Why is ethnography one of the most valuable and distinctive tools of the applied anthropologist? A. It is valuable insider's data that can be routinely sold to multinational corporations and state agencies without the consent of the people studied. B. It provides a firsthand account of the day-to-day issues and challenges that the members of a given community face, as well as a sense of how those people think about and react to these issues. C. It produces a statistically unbiased summary of human responses to set stimuli. D. It is among the most economical and time-efficient tools that exist in the social sciences. E. It can be produced without leaving the comfort of the anthropologist's office.

Q: Which of the following is a distinguishing characteristic of the work that applied anthropologists do? A. They enter the affected communities and talk with people. B. They gather government statistics. C. They consult project managers. D. They consult government officials and other experts. E. They promote development.

Q: Which of the following illustrates some of the dangers of the old applied anthropology? A. anthropologists promoting the study of their field among university undergraduates B. anthropologists practicing participant observation and taking photographs of ritualistic behavior C. Robert Redfield's work on the contrasts between urban and rural communities D. anthropologists collaborating with nongovernmental organizations in the 1980s E. anthropologists aiding colonial expansion by providing ethnographic information to colonists

Q: Briefly describe the nine characteristic field techniques of the ethnographer. How do they compare with the research techniques you have learned about in courses or readings in other academic disciplines?

Q: What is the genealogical method, and why did it develop in anthropology?

Q: What advantages do you see in ethnographic research techniques? What are the advantages for survey techniques? Which one would you choose, and what would that choice depend upon?

Q: What advantages might a project that combines both quantitative and qualitative techniques have over one that utilizes only one or the other? What research situation might be best suited to such a combined strategy?

Q: The American Anthropological Association Code of Ethics prohibits anthropologists from working with governments on matters of national security.

Q: Survey research studies a small sample of a larger population.

Q: Survey research is usually conducted through intensive personal contact with the study subjects.

Q: This chapter's overview of the history of anthropological theory suggests that the discipline has made no important contributions to social theory in general.

Q: Morgan and Tylor, both considered among the fathers of anthropology, worked within the paradigm of unilinear evolution.

Q: Franz Boas's famous biological studies of European immigrants to the United States revealed and measured phenotypical plasticity, showing that the environment and cultural forces could change human biology.

Q: Boas and his students were strong proponents of cross-cultural comparisons, without which they could not validate their findings.

Q: Manchester anthropologists Max Gluckman and Victor Turner made conflict an important part of their analysis, distancing themselves somewhat from Panglossian functionalism, the tendency to see things as functioning not just to maintain the system but to do so in the most optimal way possible.

Q: Beyond Morgan's and Tylor's early anthropological work, no major theoretical paradigm in anthropology has embraced the role of evolution in cultural change.

Q: Much of the history of anthropology has been about the roles and relative prominence of culture and the individual.

Q: Among the classic works of processual approaches to culture is Edmund Leach's Political Systems of Highland Burma. This study made a tremendously important point by taking a regional rather than a local perspective.

Q: The overall trend in anthropological theory has been from theories that put human agency at the center of cultural dynamics to paradigms that see evolution as the main force behind cultural change.

Q: Ethnography is increasingly multitimed and multisited, the result of a shift toward a recognition of the ongoing and inescapable flows of people, technology, images, and information that characterizes much of the world today.

Q: Given the realities of the contemporary world, anthropologists need to apply methods that protect their analyses from biases caused by external forces.

Q: More recent approaches in historical anthropology, while sharing an interest in power with world-system theorists, have focused more on A. the structural causes of colonialism. B. how anthropological theory can aid NGOs in writing an alternate history of oppressed peoples. C. the role of colonial bureaucracies in shaping international culture. D. local agency, the transformative actions of individuals and groups within colonized societies. E. the state's role in denying some of its citizens a place in history.

Q: "What right do ethnographers have to represent a people or culture to which they don't belong?" This question illustrates A. anthropology's crisis in representationquestions about the role of the ethnographer and the nature of ethnographic authority. B. the threat that the World Wide Web poses to anthropologists who are less and less needed to write about and publish accounts of cultural diversity. C. the fact that anthropologists are, after all, colonial agents of the industrialized West. D. a lack of leadership in the American Anthropological Association. E. the problem inherent in anthropology's overspecialization.

Q: An agreement to take part in research after having the nature, procedures, and possible impacts of the research explained is known as A. a research protocol briefing. B. the do no harm directive. C. informed consent. D. etic and emic protocols. E. implied consent.

Q: The Human Terrain System has sought to embed anthropologists and other social scientists within military teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. Which of the following is NOT a reason anthropologists and the AAA Executive Board object to the use of anthropologists in the military? A. Anthropologists in war zones have an ethical dilemma where their responsibilities to their military units may conflict with their obligations to the local people they study. B. It is difficult to give informed consent in an active war zone without feeling coerced, thereby compromising "voluntary informed consent" in the AAA Code of Ethics. C. Anthropologists may not be able to identify themselves as anthropologists, distinct from military personnel. D. Anthropologists, by the nature of their discipline, are not permitted to interact with any military personnel. E. The Human Terrain System conflicts with the ethical responsibility of anthropologists to disclose who they are.

Q: The characteristic field techniques of the ethnographer are participant observation, the genealogical method, and in-depth interviewing.

Q: Traditionally, ethnographers have tried to understand the whole of a particular culture.

Q: When an ethnographer uses an interview schedule to gather information from the field, the researcher's capacity to ask and answer truly relevant questions is inevitably limited.

Q: Really good key cultural consultants will actually end up recording most of the data needed to write an ethnography.

Q: The emic perspective focuses on local explanations of criteria and significance.

Q: The etic perspective refers to a non-scientific perspective.

Q: Because there are so many anthropologists in the United States, the distinction between emic and etic does not apply to American culture.

Q: Longitudinal research is the long-term study of a community, region, society, culture, or other unit, usually based on repeated visits.

Q: Despite the increasing popularity of team research among anthropologists, the best ethnographies are always the product of individual work.

Q: Practice theory A. focuses on how individuals, through their actions and practices, influence and transform the world they live in. B. was popularized by Margaret Mead in the 1940s. C. is the only theoretical paradigm to effectively solve the "culture-individual" problem. D. actually shares the same deterministic assumptions of earlier theoretical paradigms. E. explains social phenomena only in nonindustrial societies.

Q: This chapter mentions the work of Wolf and Mintz, both students of Julian Steward, as illustrations of approaches that A. put human agency at the center of cultural analysis. B. focus on the study of cultures as closed systems, untouched by regional and even global dynamics. C. ignore the role of history in shaping culture as we know it. D. consider the relevance of world-system theory and political economy to anthropology. E. are just as deterministic as the old evolutionary models, but for different reasons.

Q: The view that each element of culture, such as the culture trait or trait complex, has its own distinctive history, and that social forms (such as totemism in different societies) that might look similar are not comparable because of their different histories, is known as A. historical particularism. B. cultural generalism. C. the Boasian approach. D. structural functionalism. E. comparative functionalism.

Q: As investigators who illustrated the functionalist approach in anthropology, both Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown performed ethnographic research focused on A. myth and ritual and the ways these aspects of culture created social cohesion. B. the evolutionary history of present-day cultural patterns. C. the role of cultural traits and practices in contemporary society. D. the symbolic value that cultural traits and practices held with members of contemporary society. E. the role of cultural traits and practices aimed at conflict resolution.

Q: Radcliffe-Brown advocated social anthropology as a synchronic rather than a diachronic sciencethat is, a study A. of culture in motion (synchronic) rather than as a static entity (diachronic). B. that compares cultural traits within the same society and not across societies. C. of societies across time (synchronic) rather than across space (diachronic). D. of societies as they exist today (synchronic, one at a time) rather than across time (diachronic). E. of societies as made up of individuals, not as a sum greater than its parts.

Q: Which of the following terms refers to the theoretical paradigm that holds that customs (social practices) function to preserve the social structure? A. the Manchester school B. synchronic functionalism C. configurationalism, as illustrated in the works of Benedict and Mead D. Panglossian structuralism E. structural functionalism, as illustrated in the work of Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard

Q: The work of which of the following anthropologists illustrated a renewed interest in cultural change and even evolution (although of a very different sort than Tylor and Morgan had in mind)? A. Ruth Benedict B. Max Gluckman C. Victor Turner D. Julian Steward E. Margaret Mead