Deck 3: Understanding and Explaining Culture

Question 1

What was one of the ways that Franz Boas brought about the end of the evolutionism period in early anthropology?

A) He was strongly opposed to "race" theory, and emphasized the importance of cultural context.
B) He disagreed with the dependence on fieldwork and encouraged more theoretical research.
C) Boas was the first to consider adaptation to environmental conditions as a major factor for cultural traits.
D) Boas was the only anthropologist to work with subjects from developing nations.

Answer 1

He was strongly opposed to "race" theory, and emphasized the importance of cultural context.

Question 2

From where do we derive most anthropological data?

A) participant-observation
B) accounts of early explorers
C) government censuses and reports
D) controlled studies

Answer 2

participant-observation

Question 3

What do scientists use as predictions of what might be found in a study?

A) hypotheses
B) theories
C) statistics
D) associations

Answer 3

hypotheses

Question 4

Which biological scientists informed the early evolutionary approaches in anthropological theory?

A) Darwin and Wallace
B) Tylor and Morgan
C) White and Steward
D) Vayda and Rappaport

Question 5

Today, evolutionary anthropologists or behavioral ecologists look at how a behavioral characteristic may be __________.

A) adaptive for an individual in a given environment
B) adaptive for a group in a given environment
C) maladaptive for an individual in any environment
D) maladaptive for a group in any environment

Question 6

Whiting predicted that societies with a __________ would have long postpartum sex taboos.

A) low-protein diet
B) high-protein diet
C) means of birth control
D) history of overcrowding

Question 7

What is a statistical association?

A) It is a relationship between two variables that is unlikely to be due to chance.
B) It is a relationship between two variables that may be meaningful, but that may equally well be due to chance.
C) It is a chance association between two variables.
D) It is an organization devoted to the documentation of numerical information from different societies.

Question 8

The method of __________ shows that a theory seems to be wrong.

A) falsification
B) proving
C) guessing
D) testing

Question 9

How a researcher describes the procedure that will be followed to measure a variable is __________.

A) the operational definition
B) the theory
C) the hypothesis
D) only a guess

Question 10

How is a law defined in the physical sciences?

A) It is a relationship between variables whose existence is suggested by repeated observation.
B) It is a narrative statement.
C) It is a statement about how things ought to be if we are right in our theories.
D) It is a detailed explanation about why things occur the way they do.

Question 11

To measure something is to say how it compares with other things on some scale of __________.

A) variation
B) classification
C) society
D) quality

Question 12

Dual-inheritance theory relates to the roles of __________ and __________ in transmitting traits to future generations.

A) genes; culture
B) culture; lineage
C) genes; diet
D) diet; lineage

Question 13

Which of these fields focuses on the relationship between a culture and its environment?

A) cultural ecology
B) cultural biology
C) social ecology
D) social biology

Question 14

Which theorist was pivotal in the theoretical approach of evolutionism?

A) Lewis Henry Morgan
B) Franz Boas
C) Clifford Geertz
D) Julian Steward

Question 15

Which of the following is true of the archive known as the Human Relations Area Files?

A) Its annually growing collections have been indexed to make them easier to consult.
B) It specializes in providing information on social problems in societies around the world.
C) It is available only to qualified researchers.
D) It is available only in a select few universities, and only on paper and microfiche.

Question 16

Theories are __________.

A) explanations of laws and statistical associations
B) ideas that explain untested hypotheses
C) guesses as to how things are related
D) precise answers to a question that had been unanswerable

Question 17

A __________ cannot be observed or verified directly.

A) theoretical construct
B) statistical association
C) sampling universe
D) testable hypothesis

Question 18

An explanation is an answer to a __________ question.

A) "why"
B) "what"
C) "who"
D) "where"

Question 19

Participant-observation always involves fieldwork, but fieldwork might involve other methods such as __________.

A) conducting a census
B) digging an archaeological test pit
C) reading the historical record
D) writing new legislation

Question 20

Participant-observation refers to the __________.

A) practice of immersing oneself in the language and customs of a society
B) use of a laboratory to standardize measurements
C) observation of how people interact in carefully contrived situations
D) employment of natives to gather information from their peers

Question 21

In a study of the effects of different types of soil on plant growth, which of these would be the variable?

A) soil type
B) plant type
C) amount of sunlight
D) amount of water

Question 22

How are cases chosen for a random sample?

A) so that each case has an equal chance of being selected
B) by preconceived ideas of which cases will support the hypothesis
C) on the basis of some standard criterion, such as size of population
D) from among materials the researcher happens to have at home or in the office

Question 23

Anthropological research can be classified by its __________ and __________ scope.

A) spatial; temporal
B) temporal; ecological
C) ecological; economic
D) economic; spatial

Question 24

An anthropologist comparing kinship terms between the Turkana and the Maasai-both pastoral peoples from East Africa-is doing __________.

A) regional controlled comparison
B) within-culture comparison
C) cross-cultural research
D) historical research

Question 25

In any field of investigation, __________ are generally the most plentiful commodity.

A) theories
B) data
C) tests
D) hypotheses

Question 26

What does the p-value tell a researcher?

A) the likelihood that the observed result could have occurred by chance
B) the accuracy of the study's findings
C) the chance that the observation will be accepted by other scientists
D) the level of importance of the finding

Question 27

Anthropologists have realized that __________ on their experiences and personal interactions is an important part of understanding.

A) reflecting
B) documenting
C) reporting
D) theorizing

Question 28

In __________, the anthropologist compares ethnographic information obtained from societies found in a particular region.

A) regional controlled comparison
B) within-culture comparison
C) cross-cultural research
D) historical research

Question 29

Which of the following is an example of a hypothesis?

A) Kinship terminology is associated with marital patterns.
B) Democracy is the best form of government.
C) We will interview 400 people for this study.
D) Our data support the idea that English and German are in the same language family.

Question 30

Which of these gives an accurate example of a researcher's sampling universe?

A) An investigator wants to understand high school drop-out rates, so she draws her sample from all the high school students in her city.
B) An investigator wishes to understand parents' vaccination decisions, so he reads a selection of papers already published on the anti-vaccination movement.
C) A researcher hopes to explain the relationship between divorce rates and religious belief, so she interviews one divorced couple about their faith.
D) A researcher plans to teach safe sex to teens, so he provides leaflets and workshops to local clinics.

Question 31

Whose anthropological research was most closely derived from the biological work of Charles Darwin?

A) Edward Tylor
B) Franz Boas
C) Elman Service
D) Marshall Sahlins

Question 32

To whom do anthropologists have the most important ethical obligation?

A) the people they study
B) their colleagues
C) the public
D) their students

Question 33

What should be taken into account when using ethnographic information from multiple cultures?

A) You should make sure that all of the information was gathered in the same time period.
B) It is important that all information was collected by the same anthropologist.
C) It is necessary for all of the cultures to live in the same type of environment.
D) You must ensure that all of the ethnographies are written from the same theoretical perspective.

Question 34

When do you use a statistical test of significance?

A) when you need to measure the differences among variables
B) so you can definitively prove a theory
C) when you are unsure what level of importance should be attached to a theoretical construct
D) so you can determine whether your conclusion was right or wrong

Question 35

Which of these is an example of cultural lag?

A) A society has recently changed its diet but still maintains a food-related taboo.
B) A sedentary society relies on more grains than a nomadic society in the same environment.
C) Women in one society learn new trends later than men, because they are less likely to be literate.
D) A community adopts English words for pop culture, but not in other aspects of language.

Question 36

Why can theories not be proved?

A) Many of the concepts and ideas in theories are not directly observable.
B) They are too complex to be tested.
C) Theories are too vague to be tested.
D) Human behavior is basically unpredictable.

Question 37

How do theoretical approaches influence a researcher's investigation?

A) The theoretical orientation usually determines which set of factors the researcher thinks is most important.
B) The theoretical orientation limits the researcher to studies within a small range of topics.
C) The investigation determines the researcher's theoretical orientation.
D) The theory tested in the study is the same thing as a researcher's theoretical orientation.

Question 38

__________ is the study of descriptive materials about a single society at more than one point in time.

A) Ethnohistory
B) Within-culture comparison
C) Nonhistorical controlled comparison
D) Cross-cultural research

Question 39

What type of research allows anthropologists to generate interpretations on the basis of worldwide comparisons of particular characteristics?

A) cross-cultural research
B) within-culture comparison
C) nonhistorical controlled comparisons
D) historical research

Question 40

What is one major impediment to historical research?

A) Collecting and analyzing historical data is very time consuming.
B) There is no historical data for most of the world.
C) Historical data is less respected than ethnographic data.
D) There is no way to statistically analyze historical data.

Question 41

Richard Scaglion's study into the ceremonial yams used by the Abelam of New Guinea was influenced by similar studies in other populations. Which of these procedures was Scaglion using?

A) comparative study
B) single-case analysis
C) metaphorical analysis
D) double-case study

Question 42

What earlier theoretical approach did Leslie White's neoevolution counter?

A) historical particularism
B) diffusionism
C) cultural evolution
D) participant-observation

Question 43

What influence did Darwin's theory of evolution have on 19th-century anthropology?

A) Early anthropologists believed that cultures develop in a uniform manner, as Darwin suggested species do.
B) It was assumed that only European societies were humans, and that other peoples constituted different species.
C) Their acceptance of Darwinian evolution placed early anthropologists in a position of conflict with the church.
D) Cultural anthropology was approached from the perspectives of biologists.

Question 44

Choose either ecological anthropology or Boasian anthropology. Describe what sorts of questions an anthropologist following this theoretical perspective would be interested in if he or she were to study the social life of American university students.

Question 45

Why is it incorrect to explain a cultural feature by saying it is "traditional"?

A) It is an unsatisfactory answer because it is a tautology.
B) It is incorrect because, by definition, traditions are not cultural features.
C) Cultural features are too variable to be considered traditional.
D) Tradition always precedes the adoption of cultural features.

Question 46

When making sampling decisions in human research, what factor becomes very important?

A) choosing which population to study
B) who makes the sampling decision
C) how the files will be taken care of
D) how convenient the sampling population is

Question 47

What can be concluded about a theory if its related hypothesis is supported after rigorous testing?

A) The theory is consistent with the available evidence, and can be accepted for the time being.
B) The theory has been proved, and can now be accepted as a law.
C) Nothing much can be concluded from a single test, so the status of the theory does not change.
D) The theory is to be thrown out once a reliable hypothesis has been supported.

Question 48

Why is making an operational definition so important in anthropological research?

A) It provides a way to measure variables and to compare results across studies.
B) It is a required part of a research proposal.
C) Anthropologists tend to study phenomena that have not yet been defined in Western cultures.
D) Anthropologists must work collaboratively, and this allows others to take up the study in the future.

Question 49

Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of theoretical orientations in anthropology. Does adherence to a particular theoretical orientation aid or hinder anthropological research? Explain your answer.

Question 50

How does the sampling universe vary based on the types of research in anthropology? Explain what a typical sampling universe would look like for within-culture comparisons, cross-cultural research, and historical research.

Question 51

What method should be used to test a theory within one society?

A) within-culture comparison
B) regional controlled comparison
C) cross-cultural research
D) historical research

Question 52

What are anthropological theoretical orientations? Explain this term using your newly developed understanding of the scientific definitions of theories, hypotheses, and laws. Give specific examples to support your essay.

Question 53

What is the relationship between associations and theories?

A) Theories are more complicated explanations for observed associations.
B) Associations are required before theories can be made.
C) Theories are required before associations can be made.
D) Associations are more complicated explanations for observed theories.

Question 54

While anthropologists often use pseudonyms to protect their study populations, what problem might arise from this practice?

A) It is difficult to conduct follow-up research if the community has been disguised.
B) Using a fake name for the community reduces the credibility of the study's findings.
C) Most anthropologists find the practice disrespectful to study populations.
D) It is unethical to conceal the locations of illegal or otherwise improper behaviors.

Question 55

Discuss the pros and cons of anthropologists using pseudonyms and fake community names in their publications.