Q&A Hero

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. Kottaks comparative study of development projects from around the world C. Vigils 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 has 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 solve 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: 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: What is microenculturation? A. a condition that exists in large, industrialized states, wherein most of the population has only a small amount of real culture B. the process whereby particular roles are learned within a limited social system (for example, a business) C. the process whereby enculturation is accomplished through advanced media technology D. the result of the meeting between foraging and tribal communities in less developed countries E. enculturation based on a focused interest; for example, reruns of a TV show like Star Trek

Q: An 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 a 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 chapters Appreciating Diversity account describes how McDonalds 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. applied anthropologys danger of turning itself into a tool of capitalist interest, 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 businesses, such as fast food. D. applied anthropologys 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 they disregard their tastes.

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

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

Q: Robert Redfields research recognized that a city is a social context that is very different from a tribal or peasant village. What did he study? A. differences between more and less developed countries in their urban life B. differences between health care systems among foragers and agriculturalists C. differences between urban and rural communities D. differences between the consequences of overinnovation and underdifferentiation E. differences between illnesses and diseases

Q: What did Robert Redfield argue about the relations between urban and rural communities? A. Peasants are culturally isolated from cities. B. Cities are centers from which cultural innovations are spread to rural and tribal areas. C. Innovation tends to move from rural to urban areas. D. There are so many connections between rural and urban areas that it is not useful to distinguish between the two within one cultural context. E. Urban centers have more in common with each other, even across national boundaries, than they do with rural areas in the same country.

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: 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: In a comparative study of 68 development projects, Kottak determined that A. overinnovation was the most productive development model. B. culturally compatible development projects were twice as successful as incompatible ones. C. the Soviet socialist bloc model was the most successful. D. the capitalist bloc model was the most financially successful. E. the underdifferentiated model led to the most equity.

Q: Which of the following is NOT a valid criticism of many economic development projects? A. They often pay more attention to the physical features than to the social features of the projects setting. B. Project planners have no real interest in helping communities. C. Project personnel too rarely visit and talk with the people affected by the project. D. The planners tend to overlook cultural diversity, especially in less developed countries. E. People who know little about the area affected by the project often have done most or all of its planning, execution, and evaluation.

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 peasantry 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 ofA. the local governments 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: 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: 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 Redfields 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: 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: As an aid to applied anthropology, anthropological theory A. is now read widely throughout the commercial sector of Western economies. B. is generally considered a drawback to practice, because it is mainly based on work among indigenous societies. C. promotes a systemic perspective that aids the successful implementation of development projects. D. is derivative and lacking in original ideas. E. formally forbids anthropologists from doing applied work.

Q: All of the following are proper roles for applied anthropologists EXCEPT A. identifying 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 the local people above everybody elses 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: This chapters Appreciating Anthropology section describes how forensic anthropologists work to identify victims of violence and genocide around the world. Which of the following identifying characteristics can NOT be determined from human skeletal remains? A. age B. sex C. right- or left-handedness D. intelligence E. dentition

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. is 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 insiders 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 response 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 anthropologists office.

Q: Among the classic works of processual approaches to culture is Edmund Leachs 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: 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 on?

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: In todays 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 peoples 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: Recalling Chapter 2, on culture, and after reading this brief historical account of anthropological theory, what do you think is the relationship between individuals and 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: Beyond Morgans and Tylors 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: 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: Ethnography is increasingly multi-timed and multi-sited, 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: 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 chapters overview of the history of anthropological theory suggests that the discipline has made no important contributions to social theory in general.

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

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

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

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 states 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 dont belong? This question illustrates A. anthropologys 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 anthropologys overspecialization.

Q: Pentagon programs, including Project Minerva, draw on social science research to learn about national security threats. Why do social scientists object to the military determining which research projects are worth funding? A. because the military budget is already overextended B. because the military has higher ethical standards than anthropologists C. because scholars favor a peer review system of choosing funded projects D. because the military might surpass anthropologists in cultural knowledge E. because government spending has no business overlapping with science

Q: The Human Terrain System seeks to embed anthropologists and other social scientists within military teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. Which of the following is NOT a reason that 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 to 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, this inevitably limits the researchers capacity to ask and answer truly relevant questions.

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: Despite the differences among theoretical paradigms of practitioners as varied as Harris (cultural materialism), White (neoevolutionism), Julian Steward (cultural ecology), and Margaret Mead (configurationalism), all of them have what in common? A. a strong sense of determinism, leaving very little (if any) room for the exercise of individual human agency B. a well-founded suspicion in the claims of science C. an embrace of reflexive anthropology D. a sense of moral duty to help the people they studied to accelerate their path to civilization E. a strong concern for the future of anthropological education

Q: mile Durkheims focus on social facts illustrates what assumption shared by many anthropologists? A. Social fact, just like any other fact, can be studied objectively. B. Culture is more of an idea in peoples heads than a social reality. C. Culture is primarily a psychological and individual phenomenon. D. Social phenomena studied by anthropologists require study methods that are different from those used by other social scientists. E. Psychologists study individuals, but anthropologists study individuals as representative of something more: a collective phenomenon that is more than the sum of its parts.

Q: Interpretive anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz approach the study of culture as A. a diachronic phenomenon. B. functional puzzles. C. a system of meaning. D. underlying sets of rules that must be deciphered through the analysis of cultural patterns. E. distinct from human psychology.

Q: Which is the key assumption in Claude Lvi-Strausss structuralism? A. All myths can be classified as either good or evil. B. The human propensity to classify phenomena in certain ways is acquired through enculturation. C. There is a very specific role for human agency in culture, and the structure of cultural patterns determines that role. D. Cultural patterns determine the human propensity to classify things in certain ways. E. Human minds have certain universal characteristics that originate in common features of the Homo sapiens brain and lead people everywhere to think similarly regardless of their society or cultural background.

Q: The actions that individuals take, both alone and in groups, in forming and transforming cultural identities are referred to as A. psychological individualism. B. dynamic structuralism. C. free will. D. agency. E. volition.

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: Franz Boas is the undisputed father of four-field U.S. anthropology. One of his most important and enduring contributions to anthropology was A. the fields earliest example of multi-timed and multi-sited ethnography. B. providing evidence that both biology and culture are susceptible to evolutionary forces, thus providing a framework for the comparative method. C. stressing the relevance of independent invention in human cultural history. D. showing that human biology was plastic, and that biology (including race) did not determine culture. E. expanding the local ethnographic focus to include a regional perspective.

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 Malinowskis and Radcliffe-Browns ethnographic research focused on A. myth and ritual and the ways that 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 that social anthropology be a synchronic rather than a diachronic science; that 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.