Question 1

Franz Boas called for an end to "armchair anthropology," insisting that scholars must do rigorous, scientifically based fieldwork to collect basic ethnographic data.

Accepted Answer

Franz Boas is known for his emphasis on fieldwork and rejection of armchair anthropology, which he believed relied too heavily on preconceived notions and speculation rather than empirical observation and data collection.

Question 2

An important premise of current Marxist anthropology is a rejection of the unilineal model of evolution.

Accepted Answer

Current Marxist anthropology rejects the unilineal model of evolution, which posits that all societies progress through a series of defined stages towards a single end point. Instead, Marxist anthropology emphasizes the diversity of social formations across time and space and the role of historical and material conditions in shaping social relations.

Question 3

Edward B. Tylor, who published a major book entitled Primitive Culture in 1871, is recognized as the first:

Accepted Answer

Edward B. Tylor is recognized as the first scholar appointed to an academic position in anthropology. He was appointed the first Oxford University professor of anthropology in 1896. Although the field of anthropology existed before Tylor, he is considered one of the pioneers who made significant contributions to the development of anthropological theories and methodology.

Question 4

Cultural relativism is the notion that each society should be viewed in terms of its own unique cultural practices and values.

Accepted Answer

Cultural relativism is the belief that a person's values and behaviors should be understood based on their own culture, rather than attempting to judge it based on the values of another culture.

Question 5

Malinowski's psychological functionalism focused on how society functions to serve the interests or needs of the individual.

Accepted Answer

Malinowski argued that various cultural practices and institutions help to satisfy people's basic biological and psychological needs, such as food, shelter, sex, and security. He emphasized the importance of studying the concrete ways in which people use culture to cope with the challenges of everyday life, rather than abstract concepts or universal laws. Malinowski's functionalism was therefore more interested in the ways in which culture serves individual needs, rather than maintaining social stability or transmitting values.

Question 6

Unilineal evolution is the view that all societies evolve in a single direction called "progress" toward complexity and civilization.

Accepted Answer

Unilineal evolutionism was a popular theory in the late 19th and early 20th century, which stated that all societies evolve in a single direction from primitive to complex and "civilized" states. It has since been discredited as ethnocentric and deterministic.

Question 7

Symbolic anthropologists argue that culture can be reduced to genetically-inherited linguistic traits that determine the way people classify and view the natural environment.

Accepted Answer

Symbolic anthropologists believe that culture is more than just genetically-inherited traits and cannot be reduced to language alone. Culture is a complex system of meanings, symbols, and practices that shape human behavior and perception.

Question 8

Marx suggested that all of the major societal and cultural transformations (that is, cultural evolution) seen since the Industrial Revolution are the result of warfare between communist and capitalist nations vying for power and control over land.

Accepted Answer

Marx did not suggest that all major societal and cultural transformations were the result of warfare between communist and capitalist nations. While he did see the struggle between capitalists and communists as a major driving force for societal change, he also recognized the importance of other factors such as technological advances and class conflict within societies.

Question 9

Lewis Henry Morgan believed in a hierarchical evolution of society from "savagery" to "civilization," but, unlike E.B. Tylor, Morgan emphasized the evolution of the family and kinship terms.

Accepted Answer

Lewis Henry Morgan is known for his theory of social evolution that traces the development of society from savagery to civilization. However, unlike his contemporary E.B. Tylor, Morgan emphasized the importance of the family and kinship systems in this evolution. He identified three major stages of social evolution: savagery, barbarism, and civilization, and argued that each was marked by changes in family structure and kinship terms. Therefore, the statement is true.

Question 10

The idea that societal and cultural change (or evolution) occurs when societies borrow cultural traits from one another is known as the "Cultural Spread Theory."

Accepted Answer

The answer of The idea that societal and cultural change...

Question 11

It has been said that cultural ecology reduces human behavior to simple adaptations to the external environment, and that it does not take into consideration such things as history, political structure, and religious ideologies.

Accepted Answer

Cultural ecology emphasizes the relationship between humans and the environment, often reducing human behavior to adaptive strategies. While important, it has been criticized for not taking into account other factors such as history, politics, and ideology.

Question 12

Anthropologist Franz Boas was a powerful advocate for unilineal diffusion.

Accepted Answer

Franz Boas was actually a strong critic of unilineal diffusion, which was the idea that cultural traits and beliefs spread from one society to another in a straight line or hierarchy of civilizations. Boas believed in cultural relativism and the importance of studying cultures on their own terms, rather than trying to fit them into a predefined scheme of cultural evolution.

Question 13

In the 19th century, E. B. Tylor suggested that all societies progressed through three evolutionary stages: savagery, barbarism, and civilization.

Accepted Answer

E.B. Tylor did indeed suggest that all societies progressed through three evolutionary stages: savagery, barbarism, and civilization.

Question 14

According to general evolutionists such as Leslie A. White, since the degree of societal development is measured by the amount of energy harnessed by the sociocultural system, the greater the energy, the more highly evolved the system.

Accepted Answer

Leslie A. White's theory of cultural evolution is based on the premise that societal development is directly correlated with the amount of energy harnessed by the sociocultural system, so the higher the energy, the more advanced the society. This idea is reflected in White's concept of cultural evolution, which he defined as the increase in the amount of energy harnessed by humans to meet their needs over time.

Question 15

As anthropology emerged from the intellectual atmosphere of the Enlightenment, early anthropologists were interested in explaining the similarities and differences among the diverse cultures of the world. E. B. Tylor attempted to answer the question of why societies were at different or similar levels of evolution and development by the explanation of:

Accepted Answer

Tylor attempted to answer this question through the theory of unilineal evolution, which proposed that all societies progress through a series of stages of development from savage to barbaric to civilized, with Western societies being the most advanced.

Question 16

According to Karl Marx, society has been divided into classes by the industrial mode of production; those who own the means of production - the capitalists - exploit those who sell their labor to the owners of factories - the proletariat, and this exploitation leads to harsh working conditions and extremely low wages.

Accepted Answer

This is a key tenet of Marxist theory. Marx argued that the capitalist mode of production creates a fundamental division between the capitalist class, who own the means of production, and the working class, or proletariat, who must sell their labor power to survive. This relationship is characterized by exploitation, as capitalists seek to extract surplus value from workers by paying them wages lower than the value they create through their labor. This leads to harsh working conditions and low wages for workers, while capitalists accumulate wealth and power.

Question 17

The cultural ecological perspective of cultural evolution focuses on how specific sociocultural systems adapt to environmental conditions.

Accepted Answer

The cultural ecological perspective of cultural evolution examines how sociocultural systems adapt to environmental conditions, and is therefore concerned with the relationship between culture and the environment.

Question 18

The principal theoretical objective of modern anthropology is:

Accepted Answer

The principal theoretical objective of modern anthropology is to provide useful explanations of human society and behavior. While documenting differences between ethnic groups and studying the relationship between genetics and culture can be components of anthropology, the overall goal is to understand human behavior and society in a broader sense. Formulating laws for predicting human behavior and thought is not a primary objective of anthropology, as the field acknowledges the complexity and diversity of human experience.

Question 19

The British and German schools of cultural diffusion are considered to be obsolete as a means of understanding societal development because of their ethnocentric perspectives.

Accepted Answer

The British and German schools of cultural diffusion were based on ethnocentric perspectives that viewed European culture as superior and others as inferior. This perspective is considered obsolete in modern times because it does not take into account the complex interrelationships and influences between cultures.

Question 20

Franz Boas criticized attempts to propose stages of cultural evolution while maintaining that each society must be understood as a product of its own unique history.

Accepted Answer

Franz Boas was a cultural anthropologist who rejected the idea of unilineal cultural evolution and instead stressed the importance of understanding each society in its own historical and cultural context. He believed that attempts to propose stages of cultural evolution were oversimplified and did not accurately reflect the complexity of human societies. Therefore, option A is correct.

Quiz 6: Anthropological Explanations