Deck 2: Culture 

Question 1

Why does this chapter on culture include a section that describes similarities and differences between humans and apes, our closest relatives?

A) to illustrate how evolution is just a theory
B) to better define culture as a capacity that distinguishes members of the zoological family Hominidae from anatomically modern humans
C) to emphasize culture's evolutionary basis
D) to stress that there is no such thing as human nature
E) to promote the study of primatology, which has nothing to do with human culture

Answer 1

to emphasize culture's evolutionary basis

Question 2

Which of the following statements about culture is true?

A) It developed among nonhuman primates around 10,000 years ago.
B) It is being destroyed by electronic media.
C) It is more developed in industrial nations than among hunters and gatherers.
D) It is acquired by humans as members of society through the process of enculturation.
E) It is the exclusive domain of the elite.

Answer 2

It is acquired by humans as members of society through the process of enculturation.

Question 3

Which of the following statements about enculturation is FALSE?

A) It is the process by which culture is learned and transmitted across generations.
B) It results in internalization of a cultural tradition.
C) It occurs through a process of conscious and unconscious learning.
D) It is the exchange of cultural features that results when two or more groups come into consistent firsthand contact.
E) It may involve direct teaching.

Answer 3

It is the exchange of cultural features that results when two or more groups come into consistent firsthand contact.

Question 4

Culture can be adaptive or maladaptive. It is maladaptive when

A) it threatens the core values of a culture that guarantee its integration.
B) it exhibits cultural traits that are not shared with the majority of the group.
C) cultural traits, patterns, and inventions disrupt the world economy, causing international discontent.
D) cultural traits, patterns, and inventions threaten the group's continued survival and reproduction and thus its very existence.
E) cultural traits diminish the survival of particular individuals but not others.

Question 5

What process is most responsible for the existence of international culture?

A) cultural relativism
B) ethnocentrism
C) dendritic acculturation
D) gene flow
E) cultural diffusion

Question 6

Which of the following statements about culture is FALSE?

A) It has an evolutionary basis.
B) It is acquired by all humans, as members of society, through enculturation.
C) It encompasses rule-governed, shared, symbol-based, learned behavior, as well as beliefs transmitted across the generations.
D) It is transmitted genetically.
E) Everyone is cultured.

Question 7

People must eat, but culture teaches us what, when, and how to do so. This is an example of how

A) biology dominates culture.
B) individuals are powerless to alter the strong relationship between nature and culture.
C) "human nature" is a cultural construction, an idea we have in our minds that has nothing to do with true nature.
D) we are all just uncultured animals.
E) culture takes the natural biological urges we share with other animals and teaches us how to express them in particular ways.

Question 8

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined culture as ideas based on cultural learning and symbols. What is a symbol?

A) something verbal or nonverbal within a particular language or culture that comes to stand for something else, with no necessary or natural connection to the thing for which it stands
B) something verbal or nonverbal with a nonarbitrary association with what it symbolizes
C) a linguistic sign within a particular language that comes to stand for something else in another language
D) a distinctive or unique cultural trait, pattern, or integration that can be translated into other cultures
E) any element within a culture that distinguishes it from other cultures, precisely because it is difficult to translate

Question 9

What does it mean to say that humans use culture instrumentally?

A) Culture is instrumental in the creation of societies.
B) People use culture to advance civilization.
C) People use culture to fulfill their basic biological needs for food, drink, shelter, comfort, and reproduction.
D) Culture is a human construct.
E) People use culture to develop artistic endeavors, including musical instruments and visual arts.

Question 10

Which of the following is a mechanism of cultural change?

A) diffusion
B) generational enculturation
C) particularity
D) cultural relativism
E) ethnocentrism

Question 11

People in the United States sometimes have trouble understanding the power of culture because of the value that American culture places on the idea of the individual. Yet in American culture,

A) individualism is something people talk about but don't practice, because it is not really part of their culture.
B) individualism is a distinctive shared value, a result of genetic enculturation.
C) individualism is a distinctive shared value, a feature of culture.
D) individualism is a distinctive commercial value, a feature of capitalist culture shared only by the business elite.
E) the cult of individualism is truly shared only by the country's atheist minority.

Question 12

What do anthropologists mean when they say culture is shared?

A) Passive enculturation is accomplished by more than one person.
B) Culture is universally regarded as more important than the concept of the individual.
C) Culture is what ensures that all people raised in the same society have the same opinions.
D) Culture is an attribute of individuals as members of groups.
E) Culture is an attribute of particular individuals.

Question 13

Which of the following LEAST explains the existence of cultural generalities?

A) trade
B) cultural borrowing
C) colonialism
D) globalization
E) isolationism

Question 14

All of the following are evidence of the tendency to view culture as a process EXCEPT

A) interest in how acts of resistance can make and remake culture.
B) practice theory.
C) attention to agency in anthropological analysis.
D) analyses that attempt to establish boundaries between cultures.
E) interest in public, collective, and individual dimensions of day-to-day life.

Question 15

What are cultural particularities?

A) traits isolated from other traits in the same culture
B) cultural traits of individuals rather than of groups
C) different levels of culture
D) the most general aspect of culture patterns
E) traits unique to a given culture, not shared with others

Question 16

The human capacity for culture has an evolutionary basis that extends back perhaps 3 million years. This date corresponds to

A) early toolmakers, whose products survive in the archaeological record.
B) a genetic mutation that caused an increase in brain size and complexity.
C) the earliest production of cave art found in South Africa.
D) the advent of anatomically modern primates.
E) evidence of hunting and the use of fire to cook tough meats.

Question 17

Something verbal or nonverbal that stands for something else is known as a

A) transmitter.
B) symbol.
C) substitute.
D) talisman.
E) taboo.

Question 18

Regarding human capacity for culture, anthropologists agree that

A) although an individual's genetic endowment does not affect that person's ability to learn cultural traditions, it does affect his or her capacity to change culture creatively.
B) both mental abilities and mental disabilities are evenly distributed among individuals of all cultures.
C) because human populations differ in their emotional and intellectual capacities, the ability to learn culture differs among societies.
D) although individuals differ in their emotional and intellectual capacities, all human populations have equivalent capacities for culture.
E) although women and men both share the emotional and intellectual capacities for culture, at the population level there is less variability in these capacities among men than among women.

Question 19

Which of the following is a cultural generality?

A) exogamy
B) the use of fire
C) the nuclear family
D) the incest taboo
E) the use of symbols

Question 20

Many human traits reflect the fact that our primate ancestors lived in trees. These traits include all of the following EXCEPT

A) grasping ability.
B) depth and color vision.
C) echolocation, made possible by overlapping visual fields.
D) learning ability based on a large brain.
E) substantial parental investment in a limited number of offspring.

Question 21

The tendency to view one's own culture as superior and to use one's own standards and values in judging others is called

A) moral relativism.
B) patriotism.
C) ethnocentrism.
D) cultural relativism.
E) illiteracy.

Question 22

Culture helps us define the world in which we live, to express feelings and ideas, and to guide our behavior and perceptions.

Question 23

Which of the following statements about subcultures is FALSE?

A) They may originate in ethnicity, class, region, or religion.
B) They are mutually exclusive; individuals may not participate in more than one subculture.
C) They exemplify "levels of culture."
D) They have different learning experiences.
E) They have shared learning experiences.

Question 24

Although rap music originated in the United States, it is now popular all over the world. Which of the following mechanisms of cultural change is responsible for this?

A) enculturation
B) acculturation
C) diffusion
D) colonization
E) independent invention

Question 25

Although humans do employ tools much more than any other animal does, tool use also turns up among several nonhuman species, including birds, beavers, sea otters, and apes.

Question 26

There are two meanings of globalization: globalization as fact and process, and globalization as ideology and contested policy. What is the primary and neutral meaning of globalization as it is applicable to anthropology?

A) the efforts by international financial powers to create a global free market for goods and services
B) opposition to global free trade
C) promotion of the interests of multinational corporations at the expense of farmers and workers
D) the impact of the world on the rest of the universe
E) the spread and connectedness of production, communication, and technologies across the world

Question 27

Language is one of the distinctive possessions of Homo sapiens.

Question 28

While cultural abilities have a biological basis, they do not have an evolutionary basis.

Question 29

How are cultural rights different from human rights?

A) The United Nations protects human rights but not cultural rights.
B) The term cultural rights is a politically correct synonym for human rights.
C) Cultural rights are more clear-cut than human rights.
D) Human rights are real, whereas cultural rights are just perceived.
E) Cultural rights are vested in groups, not in individuals.

Question 30

In anthropology, cultural relativism is not a moral position but a methodological one. It states that

A) to understand another culture fully, we must try to understand how the people in that culture see things.
B) because cultural values vary between cultures, they cannot be analyzed and compared.
C) to bring about desired cultural change, anthropologists should act as emissaries of the most evolved cultural values.
D) to understand another culture, we must use tactics to try to jar people so that their true views are revealed.
E) some cultures are relatively better than others.

Question 31

Cultures are integrated, patterned systems in which, if one part of the system is changed, other parts may also change.

Question 32

Which of the following is an example of independent invention, the process by which people in different societies have innovated and changed in similar but independent ways?

A) language
B) culture
C) agriculture
D) globalization
E) acculturation

Question 33

Although culture is one of the principal means humans use to adapt to their environment, some cultural traits can be harmful to a group's survival.

Question 34

Once an individual has been enculturated, that person must adhere to the cultural rules that govern that culture.

Question 35

What is the term for the kind of cultural change that results when two or more cultures have consistent firsthand contact?

A) colonization
B) imperialism
C) enculturation
D) independent invention
E) acculturation

Question 36

Human rights are seen as inalienable. This means that

A) no one can abuse them.
B) they are universally accepted by all individuals.
C) anthropologists have no moral grounds to question them.
D) nations cannot abridge or terminate them.
E) they are vested in groups and not individuals.

Question 37

Hunting is a distinctive human activity not shared with the apes.

Question 38

Culture is transmitted in society.

Question 39

Culture is transmitted by both formal and informal instruction, but not by observation.

Question 40

Cultural particularities are unique to certain cultures, while cultural generalities are common to several (but not all) cultures.

Question 41

Anthropology is characterized by a methodological rather than moral relativism; in order to understand another culture fully, anthropologists try to understand its members' beliefs and motivations.

Question 42

Methodological relativism does not preclude making moral judgments or taking action.

Question 43

Although there are many different levels of culture, an individual can participate in only one level at a time.

Question 44

The idea of universal and inalienable human rights that are superior to the laws and ethics of any one culture can conflict with some of the ideas central to cultural relativism.

Question 45

Cultural relativists believe that a culture should be judged only according to the standards and traditions of that culture and not according to the standards of other cultural traditions.

Question 46

Only people living in the industrialized, capitalist countries of Europe and the United States are ethnocentric.

Question 47

Practice theory recognizes that the study of anthropology takes a lot of practice before resulting in accurate descriptions of a culture.

Question 48

Independent invention occurs when two or more cultures independently come up with similar solutions to a common problem.

Question 49

Diffusion plays an important role in spreading cultural traits around the world.

Question 50

Indigenous cultures are at the mercy of the forces of globalization, as they can do nothing to stop threats to their cultural identity, autonomy, and livelihood.

Question 51

Globalization has led to new forms of cultural expression.

Question 52

In many countries, use of the English language reflects a colonial history and is thus a consequence of forced diffusion.

Question 53

Acculturation is the process by which people lose the culture they learned as children.