Deck 2: Culture

Question 1

Which of these statements best describes culture from the perspective of anthropology?

A) Culture is strongly related to level of education.
B) Culturally sophisticated people have higher status than others.
C) Culture is socially transmitted.
D) The culture of some groups is often better than that of others.

Answer 1

Culture is socially transmitted.

Question 2

Anthropologists tend to agree that culture

A) is responsible for the differences in thinking and behaving between different groups.
B) is better developed and easier to understand in industrialized societies.
C) is a matter of individual preferences and attitudes.
D) cannot be studied in a systematic way.

Answer 2

is responsible for the differences in thinking and behaving between different groups.

Question 3

How do cultural anthropologists use the word culture?

A) To refer to unchanging, traditional ways of doing things.
B) To designate which practices are more worthy of study than others.
C) To refer to the beliefs and customs of people that distinguish them from others.
D) To describe a situation of high sophistication and education.

Answer 3

To refer to the beliefs and customs of people that distinguish them from others.

Question 4

Ideas about the proper behavior for men and women are part of the ____ components of culture.

A) material
B) mental
C) behavioral
D) biological

Question 5

What are the most important aspects of culture for anthropologists?

A) Genetic differences
B) Rewarded behaviors
C) Immoral behaviors
D) Patterns of behavior

Question 6

Which of the following is NOT considered a component of cultural knowledge?

A) Norms
B) Values
C) Belongings
D) Perceptions

Question 7

Part of the anthropological definition of culture is that it is shared or collective. This means that

A) the people who share a culture are all members of the same nation-state.
B) people who share a culture are able to communicate and interact without serious misunderstandings or needing to explain their behavior.
C) culture is always shared by an easily identifiable group of people.
D) people who share a culture have a single, shared cultural identity.

Question 8

Enculturation is

A) the total knowledge of a culture.
B) the process by which the young learn the culture of those around them.
C) present in some cultures and absent in others.
D) thought to be immoral in some societies.

Question 9

Social learning refers to learning by which of these methods?

A) Trial-and-error
B) Instinct
C) Enculturation
D) Technological know-how

Question 10

Nonviolence among the Semai is

A) a pattern of behavior.
B) very rare.
C) learned through teasing their children.
D) seen in women but not in men.

Question 11

Dressing correctly at a wedding is an example of what component of cultural knowledge?

A) Norms
B) Values
C) Symbols
D) Worldview

Question 12

A people's beliefs about the way of life that is most desirable for them and for their society are called

A) norms.
B) worldview.
C) values.
D) collective understandings.

Question 13

The emphasis on the rights of individuals in the Bill of Rights is an example of American

A) values.
B) norms.
C) material culture.
D) ethnocentrism.

Question 14

Two important properties of all symbols are that their meanings are conventional and

A) iconic.
B) arbitrary.
C) religious.
D) concrete.

Question 15

Symbols have the ability to express many ideas at the same time. Victor Turner termed this property of symbols

A) condensation.
B) multivocality.
C) arbitrary.
D) conventionality.

Question 16

The text describes the people of one Micronesian island who say yes by

A) shaking their head.
B) pointing.
C) raising their eyebrows.
D) none of these; they have no expression for "yes."

Question 17

A culture that names the sister of one's mother differently from the sister of one's father

A) classifies reality differently than we do.
B) must hold a very different worldview than we do.
C) is very different from us in terms of the interpretation of symbols.
D) is being ethnocentric.

Question 18

Why is understanding the cultural construction of reality so important within anthropology?

A) It motivates anthropologists to recognize the objective truth in situations.
B) It implies there are universal meanings for all cultural phenomena.
C) It suggests that humans do not all perceive and interpret the world in the same ways.
D) None of these; this is not a particularly useful concept within anthropology.

Question 19

With which of these statements about race do most anthropologists agree?

A) Race is obvious.
B) Race is culturally constructed.
C) There are only three races.
D) It is better to classify race using blood groups than skin color.

Question 20

What course of action has the AAA (American Anthropological Association) recommended in terms of the use of the concept of race?

A) Eliminating the word race from the 2011 U.S. census
B) Establishing a biological definition for race
C) Adding the term Hispanic as a race instead of an ethnicity
D) Using the concept of race to explain cultural differences

Question 21

Any culture's classification of time is

A) "natural" and based on movements of the sun.
B) biologically based.
C) part of its classification of reality.
D) the same everywhere.

Question 22

Which of these is an example of a worldview?

A) The Hindu taboo on eating pork
B) The Muslim taboo on eating pork
C) The meanings of nonverbal behavior
D) Explanations for human existence

Question 23

Most anthropologists believe that the essential basis for culture is

A) the ability to use tools.
B) the discover of agriculture.
C) the ability to create and use symbols.
D) the division of labor based on gender.

Question 24

Which of the following do prehistoric archaeologists search for to determine when culture first developed?

A) Ancient musical instruments
B) Ancient evidence of symbols
C) Ancient artwork
D) All of these

Question 25

Currently, anthropological research indicates that humans first had the capacity for culture by around ____ years ago.

A) 1 million
B) 500,000
C) 80,000
D) 4,000

Question 26

Which of these statements best describes the relationship between culture and individual behavior?

A) Culture dictates individual behavior.
B) Culture exists external to individuals and controls their behavior.
C) Culture provides rough and sometimes conflicting guidelines for behavior.
D) There is no relationship between culture and individual behavior.

Question 27

What is the name of the idea that physical differences cause cultural differences?

A) Cultural universals
B) Biological determinism
C) Evolutionary theory
D) Cultural integration

Question 28

Anthropologists explain the differences between East African Kikuyu culture and Vietnamese culture by researching the two peoples' _____ differences.

A) genetic
B) racial
C) biological
D) none of the above

Question 29

All human cultures have methods of communication, family systems, and means of social control. These are termed ____ by anthropologists.

A) cultural universals
B) cultural generalities
C) cultural particulars
D) cultural norms

Question 30

Which of these terms best relates to cultural incest taboos?

A) Biological determinism
B) Cultural universal
C) Worldview
D) Instinct

Question 31

Culture is the genetically transmitted knowledge shared by a group of people.

Question 32

Culture is necessary to make individuals into complete people.

Question 33

From an anthropological perspective, culture is fixed and unchanging.

Question 34

Anthropologists are more interested in patterns of behavior than in the behavior of individuals.

Question 35

One's cultural identity is the same thing as one's nationality.

Question 36

Cultural differences and biological differences are largely independent of each other.

Question 37

Cultural norms are not always followed by everyone within the same group.

Question 38

Anthropologists are not in agreement as to whether material objects should be considered a part of culture.

Question 39

The meanings of symbols within any particular culture are easily explained by other aspects of the culture.

Question 40

All symbols are either objects or written depictions.

Question 41

People are not always conscious of what they are communicating symbolically.

Question 42

While much knowledge is culturally specific, people everywhere view the natural world in the same way.

Question 43

Most anthropologists believe that race is a biological reality.

Question 44

Different cultures have different racial classification systems.

Question 45

Not all cultures define reality in the same way.

Question 46

Religion and worldview are essentially the same thing.

Question 47

Most anthropologists think that the essence of culture is the ability to create and use tools.

Question 48

Culture controls and determines individual behavior.

Question 49

Recreational or leisure activities are an example of cultural universals.

Question 50

Biologically, the people of the world are overwhelmingly similar to each other.

Question 51

Define culture and describe its components.

Question 52

Define the five components of cultural knowledge and give an example of each.

Question 53

Explain the evidence that justifies the anthropological stance that race is a cultural construction.

Question 54

Describe the relationship between cultural diversity and biological diversity. How has understanding of this relationship changed over the past century?

Question 55

Discuss the reasons culture is essential to human life. How does it make our life possible?