Deck 6: Political Systems

Question 1

The best known examples of pantribal sodalities existed among societies in

A)Melanesia.
B)Polynesia.
C)The Great Plains of North America.
D)Southern Europe.
E)Papua New Guinea.

Answer 1

The Great Plains of North America.

Question 2

According to Weber, what is the basis of social status?

A)Wealth
B)Age
C)Prestige
D)Intelligence
E)Power

Answer 2

Prestige

Question 3

Which of the following societies has village heads?

A)Qashqai
B)San
C)Kapauku
D)Yanomami
E)Basseri

Answer 3

Yanomami

Question 4

What is an age set?

A)A village council
B)A pantribal sodality that represents a certain level of social achievement, much like the stages of an undergraduate's progress in college
C)All men and women related by patrilineal descent from a human apical ancestor
D)All men and women related by matrilineal descent from a nonhuman apical ancestor
E)A group including all men or women born during a certain span of time

Question 5

Which of the following statements about nonstate societies is true?

A)Warfare is conducted by professional armies.
B)Political institutions are totally separate from economic institutions.
C)Social control is maintained mostly through physical coercion.
D)Economic, political, and religious activities are often interrelated.
E)All political power is based on religion.

Question 6

A big man's position depends on all of the following except

A)hard work.
B)inherited status.
C)generosity.
D)personal charisma.
E)accumulation of wealth.

Question 7

In band societies, what typically determines the amount of respect or status that an individual enjoys?

A)Rank ascribed at birth
B)Culturally valued personal attributes
C)The individual's possessions and their monetary value
D)The amount of labor that the individual can extract from his or her spouse and children
E)Genealogical relationships to apical ancestors

Question 8

What is a "big man"?

A)A person who holds a permanent political office
B)A hereditary ruler
C)A person of influence and prestige
D)A leader who avoids excessive displays of generosity
E)A leader who has tremendous power because he is regarded as divine

Question 9

Which of the following statements concerning the Basseri and the Qashqai is true?

A)Both were nomadic foraging groups in Iran.
B)A symbiotic relationship existed between the Basseri, who were nomadic pastoralists, and the Qashqai, who were horticulturalists.
C)The Basseri "big man" (tonowi) could enforce his decisions, whereas the Qashqai village head could only lead by example.
D)The Qashqai authority structure was more complex and hierarchical than that of the Basseri.
E)The Basseri and Qashqai were two of the age sets in Melanesian society.

Question 10

For most of human history, people lived in societies characterized by what kind of sociopolitical organization?

A)Band
B)Tribe
C)Chiefdom
D)State
E)Complex chiefdom

Question 11

Which of the following statements about leaders in foraging bands is true?

A)They retain their power by maintaining strong ties with the commoner class.
B)They inherited privileged access to strategic resources.
C)They maintain control by conquering foreign territories.
D)They have no means of forcing people to follow their decisions.
E)They are the dominant males in the largest, most powerful descent groups.

Question 12

Kin groups whose members are related to a common ancestor are known as

A)bands.
B)sodalities.
C)age sets.
D)secret societies.
E)descent groups.

Question 13

What term do social scientists use to refer to the socially approved use of power?

A)Authority
B)Influence
C)Prestige
D)Stratification
E)Endogamy

Question 14

In which of kind of society is it most likely that leaders will acquire their positions as a result of their personal backgrounds or abilities, rather than heredity?

A)Tribal society
B)Feudal state
C)Imagined community
D)Chiefdom
E)Agrarian, preindustrial state

Question 15

Which of the following is the most important factor in determining an individual's power and prestige in a state?

A)Personality
B)Socioeconomic class
C)Speaking ability
D)Anthropomorphism
E)Physical size

Question 16

Foraging economies are usually associated with which type of sociopolitical organization?

A)Band
B)Tribe
C)State
D)Chiefdom
E)Complex chiefdom

Question 17

Which of the following was not traditionally used by the Inuit to handle disputes?

A)Blood feuds
B)Song contests
C)Killing an offender
D)Courts of law
E)Kin ties

Question 18

Why does a big man accumulate wealth?

A)Big men are chiefs who are trying to make their achieved status more permanent by engaging in conspicuous symbolic displays of wealth.
B)The term big man refers to the liminal state that a Kapauku youth enters before marriage, during which he accumulates wealth in order to fund the wedding and pay the brideprice.
C)Big men typically are war leaders and as such they must maintain a supply of "grievance gifts" to compensate the families of warriors who die under their command.
D)To become a big man, an individual must wear a tonowi shell necklace, which is imported from the coast and is therefore quite expensive by Kapauku standards.
E)Big men do not keep the wealth they accumulate but rather redistribute it to create and maintain alliances with political supporters.

Question 19

What is the primary difference between a village head and a "big man"?

A)A big man can enforce his decisions.
B)A big man has supporters in multiple villages.
C)A village head is a band leader, while a big man is a tribal leader.
D)A big man's high status is ascribed, while a village head's high status is achieved.
E)Village head is a permanent political office, while big man is a temporary position.

Question 20

What kind of exchange principle was prominent in Polynesian chiefdoms?

A)Market principle
B)Redistribution
C)Generalized reciprocity
D)Balanced reciprocity
E)Negative reciprocity

Question 21

How do chiefdoms differ from states?

A)Chiefdom status systems are based on differential access to resources.
B)Chiefdoms lack socioeconomic stratification and stratum endogamy.
C)Chiefdoms lack ascribed statuses.
D)Chiefdoms have permanent political regulation.
E)Chiefdoms have full-time religious specialists.

Question 22

What is the basis of political organization in states?

A)Kinship and marriage
B)Segmentary lineage organization
C)Influence
D)Monopoly of force by a central authority
E)Egalitarian social organization

Question 23

A caste system is characterized by all of the following except

A)social status ascribed at birth.
B)clearly defined distinctions between castes.
C)religious and legal sanctions for people who cross caste lines.
D)upward or downward change in a person's social status.
E)shared social position with one's parents.

Question 24

What are some of the ways in which social order is maintained in band and tribal societies?

Question 25

What are the major implications of food production? How does reliance on food production affect the social, economic, and political organization of societies?

Question 26

The nuclear family and the band are the two basic social groups typically found in forager societies.

Question 27

To what extent can modern foragers serve as the basis for reconstructions of social, political, and economic organization among ancient hunter-gatherer bands? Justify your answer.

Question 28

What is an ascribed status?

A)A status that a person has little or no choice about occupying
B)A status that a person chooses
C)A status that a person earns, as when a successful law student becomes a lawyer
D)A position of dominance in a society
E)A status based on standardized test scores

Question 29

What are the differences between open- and closed-class systems?

Question 30

In nonstate societies, relationships based on kinship, descent, and marriage are essential to sociopolitical organization.Discuss two ethnographic cases that illustrate this point.

Question 31

What is the term for a social status based on talents, actions, efforts, choices, and accomplishments?

A)Ascribed status
B)Achieved status
C)Situational status
D)Negotiated status
E)Ethnicity

Question 32

In what kind of society is differential access to resources based on social stratification?

A)Chiefdom
B)Band
C)Clan
D)Tribe
E)State

Question 33

In order for a class system to be open, it must facilitate

A)apartheid.
B)anomie.
C)alienation.
D)petty capitalism.
E)vertical mobility.

Question 34

Which of the following is not typical of state societies?

A)A primarily foraging-based subsistence strategy
B)Class stratification
C)Boundary maintenance systems
D)Intensive agriculture
E)Fiscal systems

Question 35

Which of the following does not describe the situation of the Yanomami?

A)Missionaries lived with the Yanomami for 50 years, providing health care and transportation.
B)The Venezuelan president expelled the missionaries from the Venezuelan Amazon.
C)The Yanomami claim that the government is not providing the same level of health care assistance as the missionaries, leading to an increase in deaths.
D)Some Yanomami are being trained in health care.
E)The Yanomami are isolated from missionaries and the Venezuelan government, and are self-sufficient.

Question 36

How do anthropologists distinguish between a chiefdom and a state? Is this a useful distinction? Is it always easy to make such a distinction?

Question 37

What are the three dimensions of social stratification as defined by Weber? What is the basis of each dimension? How does stratification differ from status systems in nonstate societies?

Question 38

Contrast two of the following: (a) band leaders, (b) village heads, (c) big men, (d) chiefs.How do these political figures attain-and keep-their leadership positions? To what extent can they enforce their decisions? How permanent are their political roles?

Question 39

What factors are responsible for the variable development of political regulation and authority structures among pastoralists?

Question 40

The most inhumane, coercive, and degrading form of stratification is

A)proletarianism.
B)vertical mobility.
C)slavery.
D)an open-class system.
E)capitalism.

Question 41

The elites of archaic states enjoyed restricted access to sumptuary goods.

Question 42

The best known chiefdoms arose in Papua New Guinea and Melanesia.

Question 43

Population control in states refers to police and military forces.

Question 44

Band leaders occupy official offices and are able to force other band members to obey their commands.

Question 45

A big man has supporters in many villages, while a village head has supporters only in his own village.

Question 46

An age set is an example of a pantribal sodality.

Question 47

Vertical mobility refers to a subsystem in the capitalist world economy that exploits closely spaced environmental zones that contrast with one another in elevation, rainfall, and vegetation.

Question 48

States are complex systems of sociopolitical organization that aim to control and administer everything from conflict resolution to fiscal systems to population movements.

Question 49

The Yanomami are one of the few tribes that is completely isolated from the national government.

Question 50

Status in chiefdoms and states is based primarily on differential access to resources.

Question 51

Big men are found in tribes, chiefdoms, and archaic states.

Question 52

A fiscal system includes the judges, laws, and courts that resolve conflicts.

Question 53

Of the specialized subsystems characteristic of states, the religious subsystem is the most important.

Question 54

In chiefdoms, stratum endogamy ensured that only chiefs belonged to the elite social stratum.

Question 55

Most bands and tribal groups in the world today are completely cut off from other human societies.

Question 56

In chiefdoms, individuals were ranked according to seniority, but everyone was believed to have descended from a common set of ancestors.

Question 57

Chiefs occupied formal offices and administered or regulated a series of villages.

Question 58

In tribal societies, the village head leads by example and through persuasion; he lacks the ability to force people to do things.

Question 59

Since bands lack formalized law, they have no means of settling disputes.