Deck 2: Researching Culture

Question 1

A major challenge for Richard Kurin, during his fieldwork in Pakistan, was

A)learning proper rules of gift exchange.
B)false role assignments.
C)learning the language.
D)not having a wife or children, which would have made him an "adult."
E)learning proper rules of greeting.

Answer 1

false role assignments.

Question 2

Compared to Malinowski's research in the Trobriands, Weiner's restudy addressed

A)women's lives.
B)changing leadership patterns.
C)the rise of HIV/AIDS.
D)the decline of the kula trade.
E)the high rate of suicide.

Answer 2

women's lives.

Question 3

Given current globalization and the rarity of small, isolated cultures, many contemporary cultural anthropologists have abandoned

A)fieldwork.
B)learning a non-Western language.
C)the concept of holism.
D)the concept of cultural relativism.
E)participant observation.

Answer 3

the concept of holism.

Question 4

Culture shock occurs when

A)an anthropologist finds that he/she learns the local language more easily than expected.
B)you discover, to your surprise, that you really like living in another culture.
C)a person has shifted from one culture to another.
D)two different cultural groups compete with each other.
E)all of the above.

Question 5

According to the code of ethics of the American Anthropological Association, the anthropologist's first responsibility is to

A)protect the people studied from harm related to the research.
B)the agency that funded the study since they are the ones who paid for it.
C)the home country of the anthropologist.
D)the host government in the country where the research is conducted.
E)the United Nations.

Question 6

The Hawthorne effect refers to

A)the tendency for men to answer questions on behalf of women.
B)the stage that comes in fieldwork after culture shock when the researcher begins to feel comfortable.
C)biases in the data when the researcher doesn't know the language well.
D)the tendency for respondents to avoid telling the truth about private matters.
E)the tendency for respondents to change their behavior to correspond with the researcher's interests.

Question 7

The research method in cultural anthropology that involves living in a culture for an extended period while gathering data is

A)the inductive method.
B)archival research.
C)participant observation.
D)life history.
E)the interview method.

Question 8

Research that is guided by a hypothesis is called

A)emic.
B)deductive.
C)holistic.
D)inductive.
E)prescriptive.

Question 9

A major catalyst to the adoption of a code of ethics by the American Anthropological Association was

A)the decline of small, isolated populations and increase in research in "modern" cultures.
B)the increasing proportion of anthropologists from non-Western cultures who supported a code of ethics.
C)World War II.
D)the Vietnam-American War.
E)the realization that "native" peoples were learning to read and would be able to comment on anthropological writings.

Question 10

One thing about which most cultural anthropologists agree is

A)that anthropologists should study primarily people's thoughts and ideas.
B)that culture is genetically determined.
C)the definition of culture.
D)the importance of doing fieldwork.
E)whether anthropological fieldwork should proceed inductively or deductively.

Question 11

A key factor that helps in selecting a research project is

A)finding a topic that has been neglected by previous researchers.
B)a certain degree of intuition and luck.
C)relating to a current issue of importance such as refugee movements.
D)finding a place that was studied long ago and merits restudy.
E)all of the above.

Question 12

__________ is a cluster name for many indigenous peoples who live in the eastern Canadian Arctic.

A)Eskimo
B)Neanderthal
C)Sri Lankan
D)Inuit
E)Trobriand

Question 13

In the Trobriand Islands, the British colonialists substituted which activity for local warfare?

A)Christianity
B)the kula
C)village dances
D)boat racing
E)cricket

Question 14

People's naming of places is called

A)rapport.
B)toponymy.
C)numerology.
D)topography.
E)ethnocentrism.

Question 15

Inuit place naming is an example of

A)indigenous knowledge.
B)cultural relativism.
C)globalization.
D)clash of civilizations.
E)leveling mechanism.

Question 16

On the basis of his experience in the Trobriand Islands during World War I, Bronislaw Malinowski is generally considered to be

A)the "father" of participant observation.
B)the founder of the etic approach.
C)the first person to realize that no culture is more or less "civilized" than another.
D)the first person to define the concept of culture.
E)the first person to do fieldwork in his own culture.

Question 17

During his fieldwork in Japan, Matthews Hamabata had a problem in terms of

A)learning to appreciate the food.
B)learning when to smile and when not to smile.
C)having to sit for long periods of time with his legs folded underneath him.
D)how to understand the meaning of a gift given to him and the appropriate response.
E)how to get people to tell him the truth.

Question 18

The life history approach

A)is more successful for women respondents than men since women have more time.
B)has been rejected in cultural anthropology as too unreliable.
C)was popular in the nineteenth century but has been abandoned as too time-consuming.
D)is favored by anthropologists who seek quantitative data for large populations.
E)none of the above.

Question 19

Interpretivist anthropologists tend to favor which kind of research approach?

A)inductive
B)deductive
C)etic
D)applied
E)predictive

Question 20

When doing fieldwork, establishing rapport

A)is easier for male than female anthropologists.
B)is a waste of time when you could be conducting a survey instead.
C)usually happens during the first week.
D)makes life easier but doesn't improve the quality of the information gathered.
E)can involve exchanging gifts with the local people.

Question 21

In the Trobriand Islands, kinship follows the female line.

Question 22

Maria Catédra's use of tape recording during her research in Spain revealed the importance of maintaining people's trust.

Question 23

One method of gathering data on people's time allocation patterns is asking people to keep daily logs or diaries.

Question 24

Dangers from the physical environment, social violence and war can affect fieldwork.

Question 25

An emic approach focuses on

A)what people in the study area say about their own culture.
B)gathering data on culturally shared rules for behavior.
C)explanations for culture offered by members of that culture.
D)events that have meaning for members of a particular culture.
E)all of the above.

Question 26

Many Institutional Review Boards now accept the possibility of informed oral consent in some research situations.

Question 27

During Christa Salamandra's research in Damascus, Syria, some people suspected that she was a tax collector.

Question 28

Cultural anthropologists who use the interview method feel that only the open-ended interview provides reliable data.

Question 29

A major challenge facing the Trobriand Islanders today is the large number of western tourists.

Question 30

Gender is a less important microcultural factor in anthropological fieldwork than "race" or ethnicity.

Question 31

The armchair approach in cultural anthropology came before the verandah approach.

Question 32

When Tony Whitehead, an African American anthropologist, did fieldwork in Jamaica, he was surprised that

A)he was unable to speak easily with the people because of his American English.
B)people thought he was much older than he was.
C)people expected him to bring his family with him and found it difficult to accept him as a lone male.
D)people assigned him to a high status.
E)none of the above: Whitehead's fieldwork proceeded with no surprises since he was of the same "race" as the people he was studying.

Question 33

Interpretivist anthropologists tend to collect etic data.

Question 34

Data that are numerical and are presented in charts and tables are called quantitative.

Question 35

Culture shock can occur when an anthropologist returns home as well as when he/she enters the field.

Question 36

According to the ethical guidelines of the American Anthropological Association, undergraduate students are not allowed to do anthropological fieldwork.

Question 37

Deductive methods of research are more likely to collect quantitative data while the inductive approach tends to emphasize qualitative data.

Question 38

An ethnography is

A)the main way cultural anthropologists present their findings about culture.
B)a descriptive writing about a culture.
C)an important aspect of anthropological research.
D)all of the above.
E)none of the above

Question 39

Some cultural anthropologists seek to reveal how a culture works by looking closely at one person's life.

Question 40

One recommendation for improving fieldwork safety is that fieldworkers should obtain appropriate medical training.

Question 41

The rationale for developing the food product Go-Gurt was based on study of California people's busy lifestyles.

Question 42

__________ data are mainly words and description while __________ data are mainly numeric.

Question 43

The goal of the Inuit Place Names Project is to __________

Question 44

Damascus is one of the world's oldest continually occupied cities.

Question 45

Lanita Jacobs-Huey's study of African-American women's hair culture is an example of __________ research.

Question 46

One step in anthropological fieldwork that comes before going to the field is __________.

Question 47

__________ is research that puts the anthropologist in danger because it is carried out in war zones and areas of conflict.

Question 48

Liza Dalby's research among the geisha of Japan involved the study of a microculture based on which factor?

Question 49

Multi-sited research conducts fieldwork on a topic in more than one location.

Question 50

Annette Weiner's fieldwork on women's trading networks in the Trobriand Islands is an example of a restudy.

Question 51

Define rapport and discuss an example of an anthropologist having difficulty establishing it.

Question 52

Doing research among powerful people is called __________.

Question 53

Men's trading networks in the Trobriands are called __________ and they involve __________.

Question 54

How has research in anthropology changed since the nineteenth century? Mention specific figures in the development of research methods.

Question 55

The Vietnam-American War prompted anthropologists to give serious attention to the issue of __________.

Question 56

Collaborative research involves anthropologists working with members of the study populations as __________.

Question 57

The approach in cultural anthropology that focuses on what local people think or say is called __________, while the outsider's analysis is referred to as __________.

Question 58

In the AAA Code of Ethics, the Association makes it clear that anthropologists' ethical obligations to people, species, and material are more important than the goal of seeking __________.

Question 59

One way that cultural anthropologists record their findings while in the field is in the form of __________.

Question 60

When an anthropologist has difficulty adjusting to a new culture and feels uneasy, unhappy and wishes to go home, this condition is referred to as __________.

Question 61

Describe the difference between deductive and inductive research and how this difference relates to fieldwork methods. Discuss the kinds of ethnographies that cultural materialists and interpretivists tend to write.

Question 62

Discuss two ways that cultural anthropologists record data while in the field.

Question 63

What are some of the key ethical issues in cultural anthropology and how do they make cultural anthropology different from another discipline that you have studied (such as history, chemistry or political science?).

Question 64

What are two special methods used by cultural anthropologists in addition to participant observation?

Question 65

Name three microcultures that the textbook mentions as affecting fieldwork and describe the effects of one of them on an anthropologist's experience.

Question 66

Describe the research phases in The South Baffin Island Place Name Project and the kind of information each phase produced.

Question 67

What is participant observation, when was it "discovered" as a method, and what positive benefits does it have in terms of data quality?

Question 68

Discuss one example of danger in doing fieldwork and describe a way of reducing that danger.

Question 69

What is the background and context of Trobriand Island culture and what are some of the major issues facing the Trobriand Islanders today?

Question 70

What is the background of the American Anthropological Association's Code of Ethics and how is this background related to two of its key principles?

Question 71

What are two common problems in anthropological fieldwork?

Question 72

What is a life history and why is this method controversial?

Question 73

Discuss the findings of Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands and then the findings of Weiner. Do the differences suggest that anthropologists should always work in teams comprising more than one gender?