Deck 12: What Can Anthropology Tell Us About Social Inequality

Question 1

Societies in which there is a permanent hierarchy that gives some members privileged access to wealth, power, and prestige are called

A) Egalitarian.
B) Rank.
C) Stratified.
D) Aristocratic.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Hierarchically arranged social groups defined on economic grounds are called

A) Classes.
B) Castes.
C) Clientage.
D) Ethnic groups.

Answer 2

A

Question 3

In the traditional view, what is the difference between classes and castes?

A) Classes are open; castes are closed.
B) Classes are achieved; castes are ascribed.
C) Classes are independent; castes are interdependent.
D) Classes are contemporary; castes are historic.

Answer 3

A

Question 4

According to Oliver Cromwell Cox, as discussed in the text, race relations in the United States could not be equated with caste relations because

A) The caste system in found in India, not the United States.
B) Races are ascribed, whereas castes are achieved.
C) Racial inequality was imposed, whereas castes were harmoniously integrated.
D) Racial injustice was more severe than caste inequality.

Question 5

When individuals belonging to upper and lower levels in a stratified society are linked socially, anthropologists call their relationship

A) False consciousness.
B) Clientage.
C) Patronage.
D) Caste.

Question 6

The residents of Gopalpur believe that members of each jati

A) Are related by ties of kinship.
B) Marry only among themselves.
C) Follow particular practices and occupations.
D) All of the above.

Question 7

In the Hindu ranking of jatis in terms of purity and pollution, which of the following activities is the least polluting?

A) A vegetarian diet.
B) Eating sheep and goats.
C) Butchering animals.
D) Washing dirty clothing.

Question 8

When people in Gopalpur say that members of different jatis should not "eat together," they actually mean that

A) All the jatis never participate together in any public rituals that involve food consumption.
B) Members of different jatis should not eat from the same dish or sitting on the same line.
C) Members of jatis that are close in rank and neither at the top nor at the bottom of the scale should not eat together.
D) Jatis may not eat together unless they are eating rice.

Question 9

The economic status of any particular jati in Gopalpur

A) Is the same as the status of that jati on the scale of purity and pollution.
B) Has no direct correlation with the status of that jati on the scale of purity and pollution.
C) Depends on its ties to local Brahmins.
D) Is unusual in India, in that all jatis are prosperous and remarkably independent of the influence of local landlords.

Question 10

In Gopalpur, the interdependence of different jatis is most important in which context?

A) Ritual.
B) Everyday.
C) Economic.
D) Leisure.

Question 11

Which of the following is NOT a dimension of caste relations that has become less significant over time?

A) The ritual status associated with different jatis has become less important.
B) Members of middle-ranking jatis have increasingly treated one another as equals outside ritual contexts.
C) Politics in India has become increasingly associated with the relationship between upper and lower jatis.
D) Middle-ranking jatis are willing to use violence to block economic mobility by low-ranking jatis.

Question 12

At the end of the twentieth century, relations between low-caste and high-caste Hindus have been characterized as

A) Competitive.
B) Cooperative.
C) Conflictive.
D) Increasingly egalitarian.

Question 13

Marghi blacksmiths are regarded by other Marghi with

A) Contempt.
B) Awe.
C) Derision.
D) Hatred.

Question 14

A key element recognized by all anthropologists who use the concept of caste is that caste groups are

A) Endogamous.
B) Exogamous.
C) Unequal.
D) Open.

Question 15

Human population categories whose boundaries allegedly correspond to a distinct set of biological attributes are called

A) Social classes.
B) Castes.
C) Races.
D) Ethnic groups.

Question 16

The systematic oppression of one or more socially defined races by another socially defined race that is justified in terms of the supposedly inherent biological superiority of the rulers and the supposed inherent biological inferiority of those they rule is called

A) Slavery.
B) Discrimination.
C) Imperialism.
D) Racism.

Question 17

The traditional concept of race in Western society is

A) Well grounded in genetics.
B) Biologically and genetically meaningless.
C) Derived from the Hindu caste system.
D) Grounded in human biology but not in human genetics.

Question 18

The social category of race

A) Has real consequences, even if it has no reality in biology.
B) Is based on the measurable differences among biological races.
C) Is less relevant to people's lives than is the biological category of race.
D) All of the above.

Question 19

The social category of race is

A) A category that derives from human biology.
B) A relatively recent invention.
C) An achieved status that goes back to the ancient Greeks.
D) Based on other forms of biological classification.

Question 20

Whether the Spanish word casta should be translated "caste" or "class" or "race" or "ethnic group" is an interesting question because

A) The original "estates" whose interbreeding produced the castas were defined in terms of race.
B) As Spaniards monopolized wealth, power, and prestige in Mexico, they could be viewed as the ruling class, with everyone else making up the subject class.
C) Members of the original colonial estates differed from one another in culture, so they might be seen as constituting separate ethnic groups.
D) All of the above.

Question 21

The Boasians' critique of the biological race concept was carried further after World War II by evolutionary biologists and biological anthropologists who focused on

A) Microevolution.
B) Macroevolution.
C) Paleoanthropologists.
D) Both b and c

Question 22

Which kind of evolutionary theorizing focuses on short-term evolutionary changes that occur within a species over relatively few generations?

A) Microevolution.
B) Macroevolution.
C) Racial typologies.
D) Species selection.

Question 23

After World War II, the biological anthropology had what features?

A) It was influenced by the modern evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s.
B) It incorporated population genetics.
C) It addressed questions about patterns of biological variation within the human species as a whole.
D) It had all of the above features.

Question 24

Which of the following were conclusions reached by the new physical anthropology concerning the biological race concept?

A) Humankind is not divided into a series of genetically distinct units.
B) "Races" have been culturally imposed on shifting and unstable clusters of alleles.
C) The distribution of some physical traits in human populations does not match the distributions of other traits.
D) All of the above are true.

Question 25

Which of the following is true about clines?

A) Clines are not groups.
B) Clinal distributions of different traits do not match up neatly with the distributions of other physical traits in human populations.
C) Clines for a particular phenotypic trait like dark skin color can be represented on maps that show the patterns of distribution of such a trait over the inhabited world.
D) All of the above are true.

Question 26

Which of the following statements is true?

A) To deny the existence of biological race is not to deny the existence of human biological or genetic diversity.
B) Clines overlap with racial categories discovered in the nineteenth century.
C) Clinal mapping shows that patterns of human diversity can be usefully sorted into a handful of mutually exclusive categories.
D) Macroevolutionary studies carried out after World War II made the study of within-species variation possible.

Question 27

Some mestizos and mulattos in colonial Oaxaca were allowed to carry arms, an elite privilege. This suggests to John Chance that

A) The sistema de castas actually had no effect on upward mobility in the colony.
B) Concern with indigenous ancestry and African ancestry disappeared in Oaxaca as soon as there were enough mestizos and mulattos to attract attention.
C) The status of mestizos and mulattos was ambiguous in colonial Oaxaca.
D) Both a and b

Question 28

During the colonial period in Oaxaca, the people with the greatest opportunity to improve their status were

A) Those of African descent.
B) Those of mixed background.
C) Those of indigenous descent.
D) Those of rural background who had moved to the city.

Question 29

A system of social identities negotiated situationally along a continuum between white and black is called

A) Colorism.
B) Racism.
C) Castification.
D) Social races.

Question 30

Roger Lancaster points out that in Nicaragua, the system of color terms

A) Presupposes white superiority and black inferiority.
B) Is not repressive.
C) Takes account of the lower levels of racism in Nicaragua.
D) Is being replaced by a classification system that ignores color differences.

Question 31

A principle of social classification that creates groups on the basis of a set of distinctive cultural criteria that people in the group are believed to share is referred to as

A) Caste.
B) Class.
C) Race.
D) Ethnicity.

Question 32

Many anthropologists accept that ethnicity is created by

A) Genetics.
B) Descent.
C) Historic processes.
D) Invasion.

Question 33

According to the text, one outcome of the struggle of ethnic groups to define themselves is

A) Constant ethnic warfare, as ruling elites set one ethnic group against the other.
B) The appearance of new ethnic groups that do not correspond with earlier cultural groups.
C) The transformation of ethnic groups into races.
D) The development of political movements that are based on ethnic membership.

Question 34

In an ethnically stratified society, ambitious individuals and groups

A) Use politics to attempt to raise the position of their own ethnic group within the system of stratification.
B) Use violence to undermine the system of stratification so they can surmount it.
C) Can manipulate ethnicity as a resource to pursue their interests.
D) Are out of luck unless they belong to highly ranked ethnic groups.

Question 35

Some anthropologists argue that ethnicity becomes racialized under certain circumstances. Why?

A) To mark and stigmatize certain peoples as essentially different.
B) To take account of the way in which long-term intermarriage within an ethnic group can lead to the formation of a race.
C) To enable members to take advantage of the stronger position that membership in a race provides them.
D) All of the above.

Question 36

Nationalist thinking became important in Europe after the French Revolution because

A) The French state was created by the French Revolution.
B) The French Revolution thoroughly discredited the divine right of kings.
C) Nationalism was invented during the French Revolution.
D) French territorial boundaries were not accepted until after the French Revolution.

Question 37

An ideal political unit in which national identity and political territory coincide is known as a

A) Nationality.
B) Transnational culture.
C) Nation-state.
D) Stratified society.

Question 38

When nationalist leaders define nationality in a way that preserves the cultural domination of the ruling group but also includes enough cultural features from subordinated groups to ensure their loyalty, they are engaging in a process called

A) Nation-building.
B) State socialism.
C) Ethnic domination.
D) Transformist hegemony.

Question 39

According to Alonso, Mexican nationalist ideology completely ignores the contributions of which group that was part of colonial Mexican society?

A) European whites.
B) African slaves.
C) Creoles.
D) Conquered indigenous peoples.

Question 40

The doctrine of terra nullius argues that land ownership is demonstrated by

A) Permanent settlement.
B) "Improvement" of the land.
C) Planting crops or grazing animals on it.
D) All of the above.

Question 41

In 1992, the High Court of Australia handed down the so-called Mabo decision, which

A) Rejected the doctrine of terra nullius.
B) Reaffirmed the doctrine of terra nullius.
C) Declared that all land titles held by white settlers or their descendants were invalid.
D) Seriously undermined the efforts of those Australians who want to construct a multicultural Australian national identity.

Question 42

According to Robert Tonkinson, most of Australia's Aboriginal people will be barred from making land claims as a result of the Mabo decision because

A) The Mabo decision reaffirmed the doctrine of terra nullius.
B) The Mabo decision only affects Torres Straits Islanders.
C) Most Aboriginals live in Australia's large towns and cities and have for generations been separated from the land of their ancestors.
D) White Australians opposed to the Mabo decision were able to get it reversed.

Question 43

According to Robert Tonkinson, which of the following have developed since the Mabo decision?

A) The ratification of the legitimacy of Aboriginal land rights.
B) The stimulation of the exploration of Aboriginal cultural expression.
C) The creation of programs that bring urban Aboriginals together with rural Aboriginal people.
D) All of the above.

Question 44

The use by activists of essentialist rhetoric that describes an "inner something" shared by all members of their social group, in the hope that by stressing their difference, they may be able to extract concessions from a nationalist government, is known as

A) Stereotyping.
B) Strategic essentialism.
C) Tactical humanism.
D) Transformist hegemony.

Question 45

Kelly and Kaplan, as cited in the text, emphasize that the united Fijian nation projected at the time of independence was undercut by

A) Mechanisms of political representation carried over from the colonial period.
B) A military that was still under the control of the colonial power.
C) A lack of institutions that could provide unity.
D) Strong ties to India.

Question 46

Why did W. Lloyd Warner claim that the color bar in the United States in the 1930s looked like a caste system, and what was Oliver Cromwell Cox's response?

Question 47

What are some of the changes that have occurred in caste relations in India?

Question 48

What are the similarities and differences between caste in India and caste among the Marghi of western Africa?

Question 49

Discuss the significance of descent in understanding dimensions of inequality in the contemporary world.

Question 50

Why have anthropologists argued that race is a culturally constructed social category?

Question 51

Describe the operation of the sistema de castas in colonial Oaxaca. What does the history of this system of social organization tell us about social categories in human societies?

Question 52

What is "colorism" in Nicaragua as Roger Lancaster uses the term? What is its connection to racism?

Question 53

Discuss how ethnicity develops in societies with a single political structure under conditions of inequality. How does the concept of "nesting identities" add to our understanding of ethnicity?

Question 54

Why is ethnicity sometimes racialized?

Question 55

Using the example of Australia found in the text as your base, discuss how nation-states incorporate subordinate cultural groups.

Question 56

What are the dangers of nationalism in the contemporary world? Please use examples in your discussion.