Deck 4: How Has Anthropological Thinking About Cultural Diversity Changed Over Time

Question 1

The five-element theory in China

A) Is confirmed by Western science.
B) Is actually the same as the Greek theory of the elements.
C) Was as helpful to early scientific thought in China as the Greek theory of the elements was to the development of Western science.
D) All of the above.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

The key metaphor of capitalism is

A) The world is a market and everything has its price.
B) Those whose live by the sword die by the sword.
C) Mother Nature buys union.
D) Buy low, sell high.

Answer 2

A

Question 3

Political conquest of one society by another, followed by cultural domination with enforced social change, is a definition of

A) Capitalism.
B) Colonialism.
C) Feudalism.
D) Commercialism.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Western European contact with the rest of the world was

A) Neutral.
B) Based on political and economic interests.
C) Egalitarian.
D) Intended to promote cross-cultural understanding.

Question 5

When Europeans arrived in Africa,

A) European conquest was immediate and disastrous.
B) European diseases effectively wiped out large portions of local populations who lacked immunity.
C) They found themselves confined to the coast for more than 400 years.
D) Both a and b

Question 6

Which of the following statements about the fate of non-Western peoples in the wake of European exploration, conquest, colonization, and decolonization is FALSE?

A) European contact affected these societies in a radical way.
B) Fragments of precontact societies survive today.
C) An impressive variety of forms of human society remain, despite the Western onslaught.
D) Life in the non-Western world today remains timeless and unchanged.

Question 7

When Europeans first established commercial relationships in Africa,

A) Within 10 years, they had conquered deeply into the continent.
B) The Africans welcomed them as liberators from the cruel rulers of the coastal empires.
C) They were not allowed to penetrate very far inland for more than 400 years.
D) They established inland trading zones for the exchange of spices for manufactured cloth.

Question 8

With regard to disease and European contact,

A) In the Americas, the indigenous people were devastated by disease, whereas in Africa, the Europeans were not affected.
B) In the Americas, the Europeans were devastated by disease, but the indigenous people were not affected.
C) In the Americas and in Africa, indigenous peoples were affected by European diseases.
D) In Africa, disease was the major factor that enabled European conquest.

Question 9

Which of the following was an effect of the fur trade on the indigenous people of North America?

A) They were able to ignore it for long periods of time.
B) It caused serious problems for those groups that were dedicated to it once the fur-bearing animals were gone.
C) It led to the development of close ties between indigenous peoples and the major nations of Europe and Asia.
D) They learned how to negotiate effectively with the governments of Europe until the furs were gone.

Question 10

One effect of the slave trade was to

A) Draw Africa, Europe, and America increasingly tightly together.
B) Increase the birth rate in Africa and Europe.
C) Reduce the number of Native American peoples.
D) Do all of the above.

Question 11

The period of history that includes the rise of European nation-states and colonial empires is traditionally referred to as

A) Contemporary.
B) Baroque.
C) Modern.
D) Postmodern.

Question 12

The work of many American anthropologists in the early part of the twentieth century was called "salvage ethnography" because

A) It was carried out among so-called "savage" peoples.
B) Officials in state and national government were trying to eliminate the Bureau of Ethnology.
C) It was widely believed that the people among whom the anthropologists worked were doomed to disappear.
D) Both a and b

Question 13

Early twentieth-century ethnography in the United States attempted to document

A) The way in which indigenous people were adopting Western ways.
B) The ways in which indigenous people were challenging the U.S. government.
C) A wide range of cultures from all parts of the known world.
D) The "memory cultures" of indigenous people who remembered the old ways.

Question 14

The scientific value of a typology depends on

A) The truthfulness of the categories.
B) The usefulness of the categories.
C) The size of the categories.
D) The cultural appropriateness of the categories.

Question 15

Classifications of human societies help us to

A) See reality in an undistorted way.
B) Perceive the sharp boundaries that separate societies from one another.
C) See some of the ways societies are similar and different, while obscuring others.
D) Understand why some societies are more advanced than others.

Question 16

The text defines political economy as

A) A term that emphasizes the centrality of material interest and the use of power to make economic impositions on foreign economies.
B) A term that emphasizes the centrality of material interest and the use of power to protect and enhance that power.
C) A term that emphasizes the centrality of material interest and the use of power to protect and enhance that interest.
D) A term that emphasizes the centrality of material interest and the use of power to stabilize a complex political structure.

Question 17

A holistic term that attempts to capture the centrality of material interest and the use of power to defend that interest is

A) Political economy.
B) Sacred persuasion.
C) Secular persuasion.
D) Articulating modes of production.

Question 18

According to the text, the colonial political economy created three kinds of links. Which of the following is NOT one of those links?

A) Connecting conquered communities with one another within a conquered territory.
B) Connecting different conquered territories with one another.
C) Connecting conquered territories with the country of the colonizers.
D) Connecting countries of the colonizers with international organizations.

Question 19

According to Peter Whiteley, ethnographic materials collected in the Bureau of American Ethnology in the nineteenth and twentieth century

A) Were not assembled for federal agents to better control subject populations.
B) Became more detailed and complex over time.
C) Increasingly opened up a space of challenge to the colonial consciousness of domination.
D) Did all of the above.

Question 20

If people, practices, or artifacts could move across social boundaries in the ways that Boas and his students showed, then this suggested that

A) The boundaries around societies were not impermeable.
B) The supposedly firm boundaries around biological "races" were vulnerable to critique.
C) Any particular association of linguistic and cultural practices with a particular human population was an artifact of history.
D) All of the above.

Question 21

There is little evidence that anthropology was a form of "applied colonialism" because

A) Anthropological findings were too specialized to be used by colonial administrators.
B) The motives that led anthropologists to the field under colonial conditions were complex and variable.
C) Anthropologists did not provide information to colonial administrators, citing the confidentiality of their sources.
D) Both a and b

Question 22

As discussed in the text, Talal Asad emphasizes that, in regard to colonialism,

A) Anthropologists have ignored colonialism.
B) Anthropologists avoided studying in colonized areas.
C) It has always been part of the reality anthropologists have tried to understand.
D) It was something that anthropologists only needed to study recently.

Question 23

Independence was granted to most European colonies

A) Before World War II.
B) After World War II.
C) In the nineteenth century.
D) After World War I.

Question 24

American anthropologists in the 1930s

A) Believed it was possible to study social and cultural change in an impartial and scientific manner.
B) Advocated particular political positions to encourage change.
C) Were active in promoting schemes for economic development.
D) Did none of the above.

Question 25

Political independence for colonies

A) Led to a return to traditional ways.
B) Made little economic difference.
C) Allowed the citizens of new states to take complete control of their own economic destinies.
D) Both a and c

Question 26

Continued economic and political influence by former colonial powers following the political independence of their former colonies is called

A) Capitalism.
B) Colonialism.
C) Neocolonialism.
D) Neoconservatism.

Question 27

Anthropologists make sense of the variety of forms of human society across space and over time through

A) Seeking the universals of the human experience.
B) Analyzing the characteristics of each individual society.
C) Sorting societies into distinct categories.
D) All of the above.

Question 28

A typology is a

A) Classification system.
B) Way of uniting social systems into one larger system.
C) Reflection of the natural world.
D) Research methodology based on participant-observation.

Question 29

When Europeans in the Age of Discovery were first getting to know other societies, they were most struck by

A) The sophistication of non-Western peoples.
B) The social forms these societies seemed to lack.
C) The universality of organized religion.
D) The universal use of money as a medium of exchange.

Question 30

The theory that proposed a series of stages through which all societies had passed or must pass to reach civilization is called

A) Culture area theory.
B) Diffusionism.
C) Structural-functional theory.
D) Unilineal cultural evolutionism.

Question 31

Which of the following was NOT a stage in the unilineal cultural evolutionists' model?

A) Barbarism.
B) Civilization.
C) Savagery.
D) Tribalism.

Question 32

Those groups possessing domesticated plants and animals but that never attained a phonetic alphabet and the art of writing were classified as

A) Savages.
B) Barbarians.
C) Civilized.
D) None of the above.

Question 33

Colonial officials were often distrustful of anthropologists' motives because

A) The sympathies of anthropologists often lay with the colonized people among whom they worked.
B) Many anthropologists who carried out fieldwork under colonial conditions were not supporters of colonialism.
C) The results of anthropological research might make colonial programs look self-serving and exploitative.
D) All of the above.

Question 34

In Africa, British officials occupied the top of the colonial hierarchy and employed traditional rulers (elders, chiefs, etc.) as their intermediaries with the common people. This is referred to as

A) Direct exchange.
B) Direct rule.
C) Indirect exchange.
D) Indirect rule.

Question 35

British anthropologists call themselves social anthropologists because of their focus on

A) Social evolution.
B) Social structure.
C) Socialism.
D) Socialization processes.

Question 36

The creation of a structural-functional typology of African political systems was the outcome of work by

A) Fortes and Evans-Pritchard.
B) Lévi-Strauss and Morgan.
C) Lewellyn and Radcliffe-Brown.
D) Malinowski and Boas.

Question 37

The enduring aspects of a society's social forms, including its political and kinship systems, are called

A) Culture areas.
B) Preindustrial political systems.
C) Social structures.
D) Taxonomies.

Question 38

The major distinction in the contemporary social structural classification of forms of human societies discussed in the text is between _____ and _____ societies.

A) Centralized; egalitarian.
B) Centralized; band.
C) Egalitarian; band.
D) Egalitarian; tribal.

Question 39

A small, egalitarian social grouping whose members neither farm nor herd, but depend on wild food resources is called a

A) Band.
B) Tribe.
C) Chiefdom.
D) State.

Question 40

An egalitarian society whose members raise domesticated plants or animals for food is called a

A) Band.
B) Tribe.
C) Chiefdom.
D) State.

Question 41

A fairly egalitarian society in which only the leader and the leader's family are set above the rest of society is called a

A) Band.
B) Tribe.
C) Chiefdom.
D) State.

Question 42

A hierarchical, stratified society in which some groups permanently monopolize wealth, power, and prestige is called a

A) Band.
B) Tribe.
C) Chiefdom.
D) State.

Question 43

Which of the following approaches to the diversity of human social forms does not rely on typologies of individual societies?

A) Unilineal cultural evolutionism.
B) Structural-functionalism.
C) Culture area studies.
D) Political anthropology.

Question 44

A single element or part of a cultural tradition, such as a dance or a way of making pots, is called a

A) Typology.
B) Culture trait.
C) Culture area.
D) Social structure.

Question 45

Which of the following researchers argued that culture change was more a result of borrowing from neighboring societies than of independent invention?

A) Boas.
B) Evans-Pritchard.
C) Malinowski.
D) Radcliffe-Brown.

Question 46

Which of the following statements accurately characterizes the structural-functional approach to social typology?

A) Questions of evolution and social change are uppermost.
B) It is based on a decisive refutation of unilineal evolutionism.
C) It is based on the interplay of material forces and domination.
D) The emphasis is on how traditional structures of societies endure over time.

Question 47

The term culture area refers to a geographical region

A) In which a particular stage of cultural evolution has been reached.
B) In which all societies can be classified as representatives of the same structural-functional type.
C) Marking the limits of the diffusion of a particular cultural trait or set of traits.
D) Within which no cultural traits have been borrowed.

Question 48

Those anthropologists who are most likely to rely on typologies of human societies today are those who study

A) Art and religion.
B) Linguistics and literature.
C) Politics and economics.
D) All of the above rely on typologies.

Question 49

The voices of non-Western anthropologists were most influential during which period?

A) The age of discovery.
B) The period of Western colonization of the non-Western world.
C) Following the breakup of Western colonial empires.
D) Prior to Western contact.

Question 50

Many anthropologists would insist that an important watershed in social organization is marked by a shift from

A) Foraging for wild foods to depending on domesticated plants and animals for food.
B) Egalitarian societies to stratified societies.
C) Organization in terms of kinship to organization in terms of social class.
D) All of the above.

Question 51

A form of contemporary anthropological comparison that avoids the drawbacks of unilineal schemes of cultural evolution is

A) The comparative study of processes.
B) The comparative study of races.
C) The comparative study of clines.
D) The comparative study of alleles.

Question 52

As described in the text, which of the following is a principal reason for rejecting the post-World War II designations of "developed" and "underdeveloped"?

A) Such an attempt to sort states fails to acknowledge a history of Western colonialism with conflict, conquest, and domination.
B) Such comparisons do not adequately account for the Second World.
C) Mass consumption has fundamentally altered the evolutionary conditions for human societies.
D) European colonialism exposed backward societies to a route to prosperity.

Question 53

The anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff argue that for most of the twentieth century anthropologists failed to adequately connect history with anthropology. Which of the following endeavors illustrates a lack of sensitivity to this concern for historicity?

A) Examining the relationships of a cultural group like the Tswana with other, neighboring groups before their colonial encounter.
B) Attempting to show how, although missionaries affected the indigenous groups that they contacted, they remained unchanged themselves.
C) Emphasizing the long-term, cumulative effects of small changes in a given culture responding to colonialism.
D) None of the above.

Question 54

Research by anthropologists influenced by such scholars as Donna Haraway has been called "cyborg anthropology." Which of the following statements appearS to be a contribution of the work of these researchers?

A) They have provided insight into hybridization produced by globalization.
B) The cyborg has emerged as a model for challenging taken-for-granted boundaries between people.
C) Insight into the significance of human-machine coevolution.
D) All of the above.

Question 55

The imposition of colonialism affected different groups in the colonized society in different ways. Discuss, illustrating with examples.

Question 56

Why have some anthropologists found the concept of political economy to be useful in helping them understand the way societies in the Third World are structured? Discuss, giving examples.

Question 57

Discuss the effect of contact with Europe on indigenous peoples in Africa and in the Americas.

Question 58

Why do anthropologists attempt to classify different forms of human society? What are the advantages and limitations of typologies?

Question 59

Discuss British social anthropology, paying particular attention to the intellectual and political context within which it developed.

Question 60

What historical circumstances influenced the development of unilineal cultural evolutionism? What are the strengths and weaknesses of unilineal typologies, such as the one proposed by Morgan? Discuss.

Question 61

Both British and American anthropologists eventually came to reject unilineal cultural evolutionism, but each group replaced it with a different approach for dealing with the variety of human social forms. What were these approaches? How did they differ, both from each other and from unilineal cultural evolutionism?

Question 62

"Ethnographic data show that colonial conquest did not affect all groups in the same ways." Discuss this comment with reference to men and women in colonial situations.

Question 63

It has been suggested by some scholars that anthropology was a kind of "applied colonialism." Do you agree? Why or why not?

Question 64

How has the historical ethnography of the anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff influenced our understanding of cultural diversity in changing historical contexts?

Question 65

What does it mean to say that the effects of globalization are "uneven"?

Question 66

How would you describe the significance of cyborg anthropology for our understanding of phenomena such as globalization? What does this approach suggest about what it means to be human today?