Deck 2: Culture

Question 1

The human capacity for culture has an evolutionary basis that extends back at least 2.6 million years.This date corresponds to

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

Answer 1

early toolmakers, whose products survive in the archaeological record.

Question 2

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

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

Answer 2

People use culture to fulfill their basic biological needs for food, drink, shelter, comfort, and reproduction.

Question 3

Culture can be adaptive or maladaptive.It is maladaptive when

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

Answer 3

cultural traits, patterns, and inventions threaten the group's continued survival and reproduction and thus its very existence.

Question 4

What archaeological evidence suggests that humans were hunting by at least 2.6 million years ago?

A) cave paintings
B) the fossil record
C) stone meat-cutting tools
D) generational enculturation
E) contents of trash pits

Question 5

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz defined culture as ideas based on cultural learning and symbols.For anthropologist Leslie White,culture originated when our ancestors acquired the ability to use symbols.What is a symbol?

A) a distinctive or unique cultural trait, pattern, or integration that can be translated into other cultures
B) any element within a culture that distinguishes it from other cultures, precisely because it is difficult to translate
C) 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
D) a linguistic sign within a particular language that comes to stand for something else in another language
E) something verbal or nonverbal with a non-arbitrary association with what it symbolizes

Question 6

Anthropologists agree that cultural learning is uniquely elaborated among humans and that all humans have culture.They also accept a doctrine designated in the 19^th century as the "psychic unity of man." What does this doctrine mean?

A) 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.
B) Although individuals differ in their emotional and intellectual capacities, all human populations have equivalent capacities for culture.
C) 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.
D) Although human populations differ in their emotional and intellectual capacities, all individuals have equivalent capacities for culture.
E) Both mental abilities and mental disabilities are evenly distributed among individuals of all cultures.

Question 7

Which of the following statements about enculturation is NOT true?

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

Question 8

Culture

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

Question 9

What are cultural particularities?

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

Question 10

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

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

Question 11

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

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

Question 12

What do anthropologists mean when they say culture is shared?

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

Question 13

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) learning ability based on a large brain.
D) substantial parental investment in a limited number of offspring.
E) echolocation, made possible by overlapping visual fields.

Question 14

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

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

Question 15

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

A) ethnocentrism
B) cultural relativism
C) dendritic acculturation
D) gene flow
E) cultural diffusion, whether direct, indirect, or by force

Question 16

Which of the following is a cultural generality?

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

Question 17

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

Question 18

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

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

Question 19

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

Question 20

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

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

Question 21

Cultures are integrated,patterned systems in which a change in one part often leads to changes in other parts.

Question 22

Human rights are seen as inalienable.This means that

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

Question 23

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

Question 24

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

Question 25

Which of the following statements about culture is NOT true?

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) Everyone is cultured.
E) It is transmitted genetically.

Question 26

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

Question 27

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 28

Culture is transmitted in society.

Question 29

Which of the following statements about subcultures is NOT true?

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

Question 30

According to Leslie White,culture is dependent upon the ability to create and use symbols.

Question 31

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

Question 32

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

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

How are cultural rights different from human rights?

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

Question 35

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

Question 36

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

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

Question 37

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

Question 38

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

Question 39

The Makah,a tribe that lives near the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the Olympic Peninsula,see themselves as whalers and continue to identify themselves spiritually with whales.Their ongoing struggle to maintain their traditional way of life,which involves whale hunting,demonstrates how

A) some indigenous communities are able to isolate themselves from national and international politics despite continuous threat from outsiders.
B) indigenous communities do not understand the threat their activities pose to endangered species.
C) contemporary law is useless in solving disputes with indigenous communities.
D) contemporary indigenous groups have to grapple with multiple levels of culture, contestation, and political regulation.
E) animals do not have rights.

Question 40

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

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

Question 41

What does it mean to say that culture is all-encompassing?

Question 42

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

Question 43

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

Question 44

Agency refers to the actions that individuals take,both alone and in groups,in forming and transforming culture.Describe examples in your own life that illustrate the relationship between agency and culture.

Question 45

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 46

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 47

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

Question 48

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 49

What does it mean to say that there are levels of culture? What are they? How do cultural traits extend to a broader geographic area?

Question 50

Explain the distinctions among cultural universals,generalities,and particularities,and give examples of each.

Question 51

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

Question 52

What are the different kinds of learning? On which kind (or kinds)of learning is culture based? How is culture transmitted across generations?

Question 53

How has this chapter challenged your understanding of the concept of human nature?

Question 54

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

Question 55

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

Question 56

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

Question 57

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

Question 58

Modern means of transportation and communication have facilitated the process of globalization.

Question 59

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

Question 60

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 61

What are ethnocentrism and cultural relativism,and how do they affect the work of anthropologists? How do they influence your own life in an increasingly diverse society?

Question 62

Compare and contrast the various mechanisms of cultural change discussed in this chapter.In particular,to what extent does each model for change suggest that culture shapes human behavior or is shaped by human behavior?