Deck 1: What Is Anthropology

Question 1

Social groupings that allegedly reflect biological differences are called

A) races.
B) populations.
C) cultures.
D) criteria.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Anthropologists who explore the interconnections among sociocultural, political, economic, and historical conditions that make scientific research both possible and successful are contributing to the field of

A) positivism.
B) globalism.
C) science studies.
D) political science.

Answer 2

C

Question 3

What subfield of anthropology emphasizes that human beings are biocultural organisms means that instinct must be recognized as an important part of any explanation of human behavior?

A) Linguistic anthropology
B) Medical anthropology
C) Globalized anthropology
D) Cultural anthropology

Answer 3

A

Question 4

What is the term to describe anthropological fieldwork occurring in two or more fieldsites during the same period?

A) Ethnology
B) Multi-sited fieldwork
C) Linguistic determination
D) Historical archaeology

Question 5

In the context of globalization, new theoretical developments, new research topics, and new kinds of collaboration are uniting the anthropological subfields like never before.

Question 6

Which of the following statement corresponds to anthropologist Daniel Miller's definition of the humility of things?

A) Objects are not important unless humans notice them.
B) Objects are not important because they do not resist human activity.
C) Objects are often important precisely because we do not see them.
D) Anthropologists used to pay attention to things, but stopped doing so when they recognized that symbols matter more.

Question 7

Studying material culture is important to anthropologists because the way people deal with artifacts is shaped by the cultural meanings people attach to those artifacts.

Question 8

To say that anthropology is a field-based discipline means that information about particular social groups comes through direct contact with them and the experience of being in the field is central to modern anthropology.

Question 9

Ethnographic research that focuses on human-machine hybrids that blur boundaries between nature and culture, the living and the nonliving, is known as

A) cyborg anthropology.
B) globalization.
C) medical anthropology.
D) biological anthropology.

Question 10

When anthropologists study what happens when speakers of unrelated languages are forced to communicate with one another, they are studying

A) pidgins.
B) sign language.
C) literacy.
D) nonliterate societies.

Question 11

Prehistoric time periods are those that existed after the advent of writing.

Question 12

Applied anthropologists often become involved in policy issues, to avoid impacting social issues.

Question 13

Anthropologists who work for government agencies or nonprofit organizations often describe what they do as the anthropology of

A) modernity.
B) globalization.
C) practice.
D) development.

Question 14

After the end of the Cold War in 1989, local communities all over the world began to experience increasing movement and mixture, contacts and linkages, and persistent cultural interaction and exchange. Anthropologists call this experience

A) colonialism.
B) capitalism.
C) self-determination.
D) globalization.

Question 15

After an excavation, _______ may use radio-carbon dating technique to establish the age of portable objects modified by human beings, called _______.

A) ethnographers; assemblages
B) archaeologists; artifacts
C) archaeologists; sherds
D) ethnographers; objects

Question 16

Choose one of the five subdisciplines in anthropology and explain what is distinctive about its approach to the human condition.

Question 17

How might a college undergraduate benefit from taking a course in cultural anthropology?

Question 18

Select three skills that you can learn as an anthropology major and describe how those skills are relevant to your own field of study.

Question 19

Develop, in your own words, a short definition of anthropology and describe its connection to the social sciences, the natural sciences, and the humanities.

Question 20

What does it mean when anthropologists claim that their discipline is holistic, comparative, and evolutionary? Provide examples for each concept.

Question 21

What does it mean to say that anthropologists approach the study of humanity from a biocultural perspective? How is this similar or different than your chosen field of study?

Question 22

For anthropologists, stories whose truth seems self-evident because the stories integrate personal experiences with wider assumptions about the world are called

A) Myths.
B) Scientific theories.
C) Folktales.
D) hypotheses.

Question 23

Explanations of the world that are explicitly open-ended and self-correcting are called

A) Myths.
B) Scientific theories.
C) Folktales.
D) Hypotheses.

Question 24

Basic understandings about the way the world works that are never questioned are called

A) assumptions.
B) evidence.
C) hypotheses.
D) theories.

Question 25

What observers can see when they observe a particular part of the world with great care is/are called

A) assumptions.
B) evidence.
C) hypotheses.
D) theories.

Question 26

Statements that assert a particular connection between fact and interpretations are called

A) assumptions.
B) evidence.
C) hypotheses.
D) theories.

Question 27

The separation of observation and reporting from the researcher's wishes refers to

A) assumptions.
B) hypothesis building.
C) objectivity.
D) testability.

Question 28

What sets science apart from other forms of explanation is that science is

A) empirical, open-ended, and self-correcting
B) experimental and concerned with facts
C) provable and valid
D) a form of language that creates verifiable propositions

Question 29

The capacity of scientific hypotheses to be matched against nature to see whether the hypotheses are confirmed or refuted is called

A) testability.
B) objectivity.
C) theory building.
D) evidence.

Question 30

If a hypothesis cannot be tested, it

A) can be used as an assumption.
B) is false.
C) can be used for evidence of other hypotheses.
D) cannot be considered scientific.

Question 31

A series of testable hypotheses that are linked up in a coherent manner in order to explain a body of material evidence is called

A) a set of assumptions.
B) a set of verifiable hypotheses.
C) a scientific theory.
D) an objective meaning structure.

Question 32

An important multidisciplinary research program to rethink traditional assumptions about what science is and how it works began in the 1980s and is well established in the twenty-first century. This research program is called

A) positivism
B) science studies
C) genomics
D) laboratory ethnography

Question 33

Following scientists as they go about their everyday laboratory activities, studying the range of embodied skills that scientists must master to operate the technological apparatuses that make successful research possible, is an example of

A) positivism
B) science studies
C) genomics
D) laboratory ethnography

Question 34

When university students in the United States walk into a classroom on the first day, they observe the following facts: there is an adult standing in the front of the classroom with a folder open on a podium and a stack of papers on the desk. They link these facts with the following interpretation: this is the instructor. Linking fact and interpretation in this way is called

A) assuming.
B) objectivizing.
C) hypothesizing.
D) theorizing.

Question 35

When university students in the United States walk into a classroom on the first day, they observe that there is a person standing in the front of the classroom with a folder open on a podium and a stack of papers on the desk. Based on their experience, they decide that this must be the instructor. One student approaches the person and asks, "Are you the instructor?" The student's question is an example of

A) theory building.
B) an assumption.
C) testability.
D) hypothesis formation.

Question 36

The most powerful scientific theories are those

A) based on a series of powerful assumptions about the world.
B) whose hypotheses have been tested often and have never been falsified.
C) most closely tied to the nature of the reality they describe.
D) that combine both material and inferred evidence in new and effective ways.

Question 37

Since total objectivity is impossible, should people choose the theories they like best?

A) Yes, since one theory is as good as any other.
B) Yes, since all theories are true to some degree.
C) No, since scientists will eventually discover the truth, even if they do not know it now.
D) No, since some theories better account for more important data than do others.

Question 38

Which of the following describes a key discovery of science studies research?

A) Successful scientific research is driven by technology
B) Successful scientific research is driven by individual scientists of genius
C) Successful scientific research inside laboratories depends on a range of "nonscientific" institutions and individuals outside the laboratory
D) Successful scientific research depends on maintaining a protective barrier between what goes on inside the laboratory and what goes on outside the laboratory.

Question 39

Define science and myth. How are these two concepts similar and different? Discuss why they are both useful concepts to understand humanity.

Question 40

Explain the definition for scientific theories. What is their role in the scientific process? Why are they taken seriously even when their hypotheses remain open to testing?

Question 41

Discuss the nature of objectivity in anthropology. How is objectivity connected with the other aspects of a scientific approach? What are the limits of objectivity?

Question 42

Identify features of scientific activity that were neglected in older descriptions of scientific research. How do anthropologists of science and technology learn about these activities?