Ch15 Test Questions & Answers What Can Anthropology Tell Us

Chapter 15: What Can Anthropology Tell Us about Social Inequality?

Test Bank

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 01]

1) The deliberate representations of particular identities such as caste, race or nation as if they were the result of biology or nature, rather than history or culture are called

Feedback: Naturalizing discourses are claims that consider social categories as eternal and unchanging, rather than the result of history or culture.
Page reference: What Are Naturalizing Discourses?

a. naturalizing discourses.

b. strategic essentialism.

c. transformist hegemony.

d. nation building.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 02]

2) What term refers to a ranked group within a hierarchically stratified society whose membership is defined primarily in terms of wealth, occupation, or other economic criteria?

Feedback: Class is a ranked group within a hierarchically stratified society whose membership is defined primarily in terms of wealth, occupation, or other economic criteria.
Page reference: Class

a. False consciousness

b. Clientage

c. Class

d. Caste

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 03]

3) When individuals belonging to upper and lower levels in a stratified society are linked socially, anthropologists call their relationship

Feedback: Clientage refers to the institution linking individuals from upper and lower levels in a stratified society.
Page reference: Class

a. False consciousness

b. Clientage

c. Class

d. Caste

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 04]

4) Ranked groups within a hierarchically stratified society that are closed, prohibiting individuals to move from one rank to another is a

Feedback: A caste is a ranked group within a hierarchically stratified society that is closed, prohibiting individuals to move from one caste to another.
Page reference: Class

a. classes.

b. castes.

c. clientage.

d. ethnic groups.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 05]

5) A key element recognized by all anthropologists who use the concept of caste is that caste groups are

Feedback: A key element recognized by all anthropologists who use the concept of caste is the endogamy that is enforced, at least in theory, on the members of each ranked group. As van den Berghe (1970) put it, membership in such groups is “determined by birth and for life” (351). Sharma (1999) notes the significance of this link between descent and caste, observing that “in societies where descent is regarded as a crucial and persistent principle (however reckoned, and whatever ideological value it is given) almost any social cleavage can become stabilized in a caste-like form” (85). She suggests the term castification to describe a political process by which ethnic or other groups become part of a ranked social order of some kind, probably managed from the top, but which need not develop into a caste system (Sharma 1999, 92–93).

Page reference: Class

a. endogamous.

b. exogamous.

c. unequal.

d. open.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 06]

6) The human population category whose boundaries allegedly correspond to distinct sets of biological attributes is

Feedback: Races are social groupings that allegedly reflect biological differences.

Page reference: Caste

a. social class.

b. caste.

c. race.

d. ethnic group.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 07]

7) The systematic oppression of one or more socially defined “races” by another socially defined “race” that is justified in terms of the supposedly inherent biological superiority of the rulers and the supposed inherent biological inferiority of those they rule is called

Feedback: Racism is the systematic oppression of one or more socially defined “races” by another socially defined “race” that is justified in terms of the supposedly inherent biological superiority of the rulers and the supposed inherent biological inferiority of those they rule.
Page reference: Race

a. slavery.

b. discrimination.

c. imperialism.

d. racism.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 08]

8) A system of social identities negotiated situationally along a continuum between white and black is called

Feedback: Colorism is a system of color identities negotiated situationally along a continuum between white and black.

Page reference: Race

a. colorism.

b. racism.

c. castification.

d. social races.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 09]

9) A principle of social classification that creates groups on the basis of a set of distinctive cultural criteria that people in the group are believed to share is referred to as

Feedback: Ethnicity is a principle of social classification used to create groups based on selected cultural features such as language, religion, or dress. Ethnicity emerges from historical processes that incorporate distinct social groups into a single political structure under conditions of inequality.

Page reference: Ethnicity

a. caste.

b. class.

c. race.

d. ethnicity.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 10]

10) Social groups that are distinguished from one another on the basis of cultural features such as language, religion, or dress are referred to as

Feedback: Ethnic groups are social groups that are distinguished from one another on the basis of ethnicity.

Page reference: Ethnicity

a. castes.

b. classes.

c. ethnic groups.

d. races.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 11]

11) When people live permanently in a setting in which they are surrounded by people with cultural backgrounds different from their own and are struggling to define with them the degree to which the cultural beliefs and practices should or should not be accorded respect and recognition, they are said to live in a

Feedback: Multiculturalism is living permanently in settings surrounded by people with cultural backgrounds different from one’s own and struggling to define with them the degree to which the cultural beliefs and practices of different groups should or should not be accorded respect and recognition by the wider society.

Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Human Rights?

a. cosmopolitan society.

b. hybrid society.

c. multicultural society.

d. transnational society.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 12]

12) In discussions of the right to culture in international treaties, responsibility for defending the culture of the rights-bearing person is

Feedback: One key issue in the struggle to protect the right to culture is shared by any claim to human rights. It concerns the kinds of legal mechanisms needed to ensure protection. The great promise of international documents like the UN Declaration on Human Rights seems to be that people are now free to bring allegations of human rights abuses to an international forum to seek redress. But in fact this is not the case. As human rights activists have discovered, human rights are legally interpreted as individual rights, not group rights. This means that people must demand that the governments of the nation-states in which they are citizens recognize and enforce the individual rights defended in international documents. International institutions like the UN have been unwilling to challenge the sovereignty of individual nation-states.

Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Human Rights?

a. his or her own.

b. the nation-state’s.

c. the international organization’s.

d. not recognized in international treaties.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 13]

13) In the traditional view, what is the difference between classes and castes?

Feedback: Class is a ranked group within a hierarchically stratified society whose membership is defined primarily in terms of wealth, occupation, or other economic criteria. A caste is a ranked group within a hierarchically stratified society that is closed, prohibiting individuals to move from one caste to another.
Page reference: Class

a. Classes are open; castes are closed.

b. Classes are achieved; castes ascribed.

c. Classes are independent; castes are interdependent.

d. Classes are contemporary; castes are historic.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 14]

14) According to Carla Jones, in 2009, the middle-income segment of Indonesia’s population was

Feedback: Carla Jones studied the middle class in Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country and the largest majority Muslim country in the world. Jones notes that market-research companies estimate that the middle-income segment of this population (based on monthly expenditures of approximately US$300) rose from about 19 percent in the mid-1990s to 30 percent in 2009 (Jones 2012, 151). Jones (2012) points out that middle-class status in Indonesia is highly gendered: “it is impossible to think of the virtues, thrills, and concerns associated with being middle class in Indonesia without seeing those qualities take form in gendered ways” (146).
Page reference: Class

a. nonexistent.

b. about 19 percent.

c. 30 percent.

d. located only on the island of Bali.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 15]

15) According to Oliver Cromwell Cox, as discussed in the text, race relations in the United States could not be equated with caste relations because

Feedback: In 1948, an African American sociologist named Oliver Cromwell Cox rejected an equation between caste and race. Cox pointed out that many authorities on caste in India claimed that Hindu castes were harmoniously integrated within a caste system shaped by Hindu religious beliefs about purity and pollution. Most importantly, it appeared that members of low-ranked “impure” castes did not challenge the caste system although it oppressed them. If this were true, Cox concluded, caste relations were unlike race relations in the United States because whites had imposed the color bar by force and only by force had they been able to repress black resistance to the injustice of the system. Ursula Sharma (1999) points out, however, that both Warner and Cox were relying on an understanding of Hindu castes that today is considered highly misleading.

Page reference: Caste

a. the caste system in found in India, not the United States.

b. races are ascribed, while castes are achieved.

c. racial inequality was imposed, while castes were harmoniously integrated.

d. racial injustice was more severe than caste inequality.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 16]

16) In Gopalpur, the interdependence of different jatis is most important in which context?

Feedback: In practice, these rules are not as confining as they appear. In Gopalpur, “‘food’ referred to particular kinds of food, principally rice. ‘Eating together’ means eating from the same dish or sitting on the same line. . . . Members of quite different jatis may eat together if they eat out of separate bowls and if they are facing each other or turned slightly away from each other” (Beals 1962, 41). Members of jatis that are close in rank and neither at the top nor at the bottom of the scale often share food and eat together on a daily basis. Strict observance of the rules is saved for ceremonial occasions.

Page reference: Class

a. Ritual

b. Everyday

c. Economic

d. Leisure

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 17]

17) At the end of the twentieth century, relations between low-caste and high-caste Hindus were characterized as

Feedback: In rural areas many disputes continue to be over land, as in Gopalpur. However, even worse violence has been seen in urban India, as in 1990, when unrest was triggered by publication of a report recommending increases in the numbers of government jobs and reserved college places set aside for members of low castes. At the end of the twentieth century, relations between low-caste and high-caste Hindus were described as “conflictual rather than competitive in some localities” with “caste violence. . . . recognized as a serious problem in contemporary India” (Sharma 1999, 67).

Page reference: Class

a. competitive.

b. cooperative.

c. conflictual.

d. increasingly egalitarian.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 18]

18) The social category of race

Feedback: Racial thinking persists at the beginning of the twenty-first century, suggesting that racial categories have their origins not in biology but in society. And as we saw in earlier chapters, anthropologists have long argued that race is a culturally constructed social category whose members are identified on the basis of certain selected phenotypic features (e.g., skin color) that all are said to share. The end result is a highly distorted but more or less coherent set of criteria that members of a society can use to assign people they see to one or another culturally defined racial category. Once these criteria exist, members of society can treat racial categories as if they reflect biological reality, using them to build institutions that include or exclude particular culturally defined races. In this way, race can become “real” in its consequences, even if it has no reality in biology.
Page reference: Race

a. has real consequences, even if it has no reality in biology.

b. is based on the measurable differences among biological races.

c. is less relevant to people’s lives than is biological category of race.

d. violates the right of members of the group to practice their own customs.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 19]

19) Roger Lancaster points out that in Nicaragua, the system of color terms

Feedback: Lancaster (1992) discovered that “Whiteness is a desired quality, and polite discourse inflates its descriptions of people” (219). People compete in different settings to claim whiteness. In some settings, individuals may be addressed as blanco if everyone else has darker skin; but in other settings, they may have to yield the claim of whiteness to someone else with lighter skin than theirs and accept classification as moreno.

Page reference: Race

a. presupposes white superiority and black inferiority.

b. is not repressive.

c. takes account of the lower levels of racism in Nicaragua.

d. is being replaced by a classification system that ignores color differences.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 20]

20) Many anthropologists accept that ethnicity is created by

Feedback: Ethnicity, like race, is a culturally constructed concept. Many anthropologists today would agree with John and Jean Comaroff (1992) that ethnicity is created by historical processes that incorporate distinct social groups into a single political structure under conditions of inequality (55–57; see also Williams 1989; Alonso 1994). The Comaroffs recognize that ethnic consciousness existed in precolonial and precapitalist societies; however, they and most contemporary anthropologists have been more interested in forms of ethnic consciousness that were generated under capitalist colonial domination.

Page reference: Ethnicity

a. genetics.

b. descent.

c. historic processes.

d. invasion.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 21]

21) In an ethnically stratified society, ambitious individuals and groups

Feedback: Ambitious individuals and groups in an ethnically stratified society can manipulate ethnicity as a resource to pursue their interests. When nesting identities are present, people may regularly alternate between different identities in different contexts.

Page reference: Ethnicity

a. use politics to attempt to raise the position of their own ethnic group within the system of stratification.

b. use violence to undermine the system of stratification so they can surmount it.

c. can manipulate ethnicity as a resource to pursue their interests.

d. are out of luck unless they belong to highly ranked ethnic groups.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 22]

22) As anthropologists have begun to study “the culture of human rights” they have come to see the central role played by

Feedback: Anthropological approaches are well suited for investigating the so-called culture of human rights that appears to have emerged in recent years. As in the cultures traditionally studied by anthropologists, the culture of human rights is based on certain ideas about human beings, their needs, and their ability to exercise agency, as well as the kinds of social connections between human beings that are considered legitimate and illegitimate. The entire question of “legitimacy” in human rights discourse points to the central role played by law, both as a way of articulating specific human rights and as a tool for defending those rights. Cowan and colleagues (2001) have drawn on earlier anthropological work in which systems of law were analyzed as cultural systems.

Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Human Rights?

a. law.

b. politics.

c. international development agencies.

d. citizenship.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 23]

23) According to Didier Fassin, after the 1980s a new form of governmentality developed in the world, one that emphasized both the existence of a universal humanity and a universal affective movement drawing humans toward their fellows, which creates the obligation to provide assistance and attention to others. He calls this form of governmentality

Feedback: French anthropologist Didier Fassin (2012) has detected a significant change in the way national governments and international organizations have come to respond to asylum-seekers in recent decades. Until the 1980s, the persecution and suffering of asylum-seekers had generally been interpreted as human rights violations. After that time, however, political asylum-seekers were increasingly lumped together with victims of earthquakes and tsunamis and addressed by a new form of governmentality, which Fassin calls humanitarianism, “a mode of governing that concerns the victims of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and exile, as well as disasters, famines, epidemics and wars—in short, every situation characterized by precariousness” (x).

Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Human Rights?

a. human rights.

b. cosmopolitanism.

c. reciprocity.

d. humanitarianism.

Type: true-false

Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 24]

24) Stratification is does not depend at all upon culturally invented differences between groups of people.

Feedback: Inequality in the contemporary world may be constructed out of multiple categories arranged in different, and sometimes contradictory, hierarchies of stratification. Some of these categories—sex, gender, and sexuality— intersect with other categories in the production of such hierarchies. In this chapter, we will pay close attention to some additional important social categories involved in the construction of hierarchies of social inequality: class, caste, race, and ethnicity. It is important to emphasize from the outset that all of these categories are culturally and historically created.
Page reference: What Are Naturalizing Discourses?

a. True

b. False

Topic: What Are Naturalizing Discourses?

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 25]

25) According to Carla Jones, middle-class status in Indonesia is

Feedback: Carla Jones studied the middle class in Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country and the largest majority Muslim country in the world. Jones notes that market-research companies estimate that the middle-income segment of this population (based on monthly expenditures of approximately US$300) rose from about 19 percent in the mid-1990s to 30 percent in 2009 (Jones 2012, 151). Jones (2012) points out that middle-class status in Indonesia is highly gendered: “it is impossible to think of the virtues, thrills, and concerns associated with being middle class in Indonesia without seeing those qualities take form in gendered ways” (146).
Page reference: Class

a. highly gendered.

b. defined solely in terms of income or money.

c. dependent on male consumption patterns.

d. false consciousness.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 26]

26) In the Hindu ranking of jatis in terms of purity and pollution, which of the following activities is the least polluting?

Feedback: Jatis are distinguished in terms of the foods they eat as well as their traditional occupations. These features have a ritual significance that affects interactions between members of different jatis. In Hindu belief, certain foods and occupations are classed as pure and others as polluting. In theory, all jatis are ranked on a scale from purest to most polluted (Figure 15.3). Ranked highest of all are the vegetarian Brahmins, who are pure enough to approach the gods. Carpenters and blacksmiths, who also eat a vegetarian diet, are also assigned a high rank.

Page reference: Class

a. A vegetarian diet

b. Eating sheep and goats

c. Butchering animals

d. Washing dirty clothing

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 27]

27) When people in Gopalpur say that members of different jatis should not “eat together,” they actually mean that

Feedback: Type general feedback here (maximum of 1000 characters, including spaces)

Page reference: Type relevant section heading here

a. all the jatis never participate together in any public rituals that involve food consumption.

b. members of different jatis should not eat from the same dish or sitting on the same line.

c. members of jatis that are close in rank and neither at the top nor at the bottom of the scale should not eat together.

d. jatis may not eat together unless they are eating rice.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 28]

28) Which of the following is NOT a dimension of caste relations that has not become increasingly significant over time?

Feedback: In the past half century, class differentiation has become increasingly evident, especially in India’s cities. Anthropologist Sara Dickey has worked in urban India for over 30 years, and she has studied how caste and class intertwine. Many Indians dream of moving into a higher social class; however, the hurdles poor people face are enormous and involve more than higher income alone. Dickey points out that class status depends not only on economic capital but also on “cultural capital” (how you speak, how you dress, what kind of housing you live in, what kinds of consumer goods you possess) as well (whom you know). Being able to amass sufficient amounts of all these kinds of capital is typically beyond the reach of most Indian citizens.

Page reference: Class

a. The ritual status associated with different jatis has become less important.

b. Members of middle-ranking jatis have increasingly treated one another as equals outside ritual contexts.

c. Politics in India has become increasingly associated with the relationship between upper and lower jatis.

d. Middle-ranking jatis are willing to use violence to block economic mobility by low-ranking jatis.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 29]

29) According to Sara Dickey,

Feedback: Anthropologist Sara Dickey has worked in urban India for over 30 years, and she has studied how caste and class intertwine. Many Indians dream of moving into a higher social class; however, the hurdles poor people face are enormous and involve more than higher income alone. Dickey points out that class status depends not only on economic capital but also on “cultural capital” (how you speak, how you dress, what kind of housing you live in, what kinds of consumer goods you possess) as well (whom you know).
Page reference: Caste

a. class status in India is an individual achievement.

b. class status is a consequence of choices made by the families of individuals, such that different siblings may belong to different classes.

c. Sending one’s children to a government school is seen as a better investment than sending a child to a private school, because the education provided at a private school is seen as inferior to that provided in government schools.

d. Education alone can ensure that students will be able to acquire all the additional forms of social and cultural capital that might permit their movement to a higher social class.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 30]

30) The social category of race is

Feedback: Racial thinking persists at the beginning of the twenty-first century, suggesting that racial categories have their origins not in biology but in society. And as we saw in earlier chapters, anthropologists have long argued that race is a culturally constructed social category whose members are identified on the basis of certain selected phenotypic features (e.g., skin color) that all are said to share. The end result is a highly distorted but more or less coherent set of criteria that members of a society can use to assign people they see to one or another culturally defined racial category. Once these criteria exist, members of society can treat racial categories as if they reflect biological reality, using them to build institutions that include or exclude particular culturally defined races. In this way, race can become “real” in its consequences, even if it has no reality in biology.
Page reference: Race

a. a category that derives from human biology.

b. a relatively recent invention.

c. an achieved status that goes back to the ancient Greeks.

d. based on other forms of biological classification.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 31]

31) According to the text, one outcome of the struggle of ethnic groups to define themselves is

Feedback: Ethnicity develops as members of different groups try to make sense of the material constraints they experience within the single political structure that confines them. This is sometimes described as a struggle between self-ascription (i.e., insiders’ efforts to define their own identity) and other-ascription (i.e., outsiders’ efforts to define the identities of other groups). In the Comaroffs’ view, furthermore, the ruling group turns both itself and the subordinated groups into classes because all subordinated social groupings lose independent control “over the means of production and/or reproduction” (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992, 56). One outcome of this struggle is the appearance of new ethnic groups and identities that are not continuous with any single earlier cultural group (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992, 56).

Page reference: Ethnicity

a. constant ethnic warfare, as ruling elites set one ethnic group against the other.

b. the appearance of new ethnic groups that do not correspond with earlier cultural groups.

c. the transformation of ethnic groups into races.

d. the development of political movements that are based on ethnic membership.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 32]

32) Some anthropologists argue that ethnicity becomes racialized under certain circumstances. Why?

Feedback: For dominant groups, however, defense of ethnic identity can be a way of defending privilege. Those who dominate may be threatened rather than flattered by subordinate groups who master elite cultural practices. Members of the dominant ethnic group may stress their cultural superiority and question the eligibility (and even the humanity) of subordinate groups who challenge them. It is at this point that anthropologists like Faye Harrison would argue that ethnicity becomes racialized. In her view, race differs from ethnicity precisely because it is used to “mark and stigmatize certain peoples as essentially and irreconcilably different, while treating the privileges of others as normative.

Page reference: Ethnicity

a. To mark and stigmatize certain peoples as essentially different

b. To take account of the way in which long-term intermarriage within an ethnic group can lead to the formation of a race

c. To enable members to take advantage of the stronger position that membership in a race provides them

d. To decrease hierarchies and stratification

Type: multiple choice question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 33]

33) In order to fit the way human rights laws are written, indigenous people often have to

Feedback: According to Merry, for example, groups like the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement have successfully achieved some of their political goals by making claims based on the requirements of their “traditional culture.” But this is because they live in a society that is “willing to recognize claims on the basis of cultural authenticity and tradition but not reparations based on acts of conquest and violation” (Merry 2001, 42–43). Outside the courtroom, many members of indigenous groups think of their culture the way contemporary anthropologists think about culture: there are some common patterns but culture is basically unbounded, heterogeneous, and open to change. The conflict between these two understandings of culture has the potential to reshape their ideas about what their culture is. Groups that enter into the human rights process, thus, are entering into ethically ambiguous territory that is “both enabling and constraining” (Cowan et al. 2001, 11).

Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Human Rights?

a. get law degrees to protect themselves.

b. portray their cultures in ways that are different from their own everyday understandings.

c. learn the language of the courts.

d. emphasizes rights over duties.

Type: true-false

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 34]

34) Anthropologists are suspicious of naturalizing discourses because they ignore historical evidence showing how present-day arrangements contrast with earlier social arrangements.

Feedback: Anthropologists are suspicious of naturalizing discourses for three related reasons. First, they ignore historical evidence showing how present-day arrangements contrast with earlier social arrangements in society. Second, they ignore variations in social arrangements in other present-day societies, which also show that social life may be organized differently. Finally, they direct attention away from current social inequalities, insisting that these inequalities are so deeply rooted that attempting to change them would be impossible.
Page reference: What Are Naturalizing Discourses?

a. True

b. False

Type: true-false

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 35]

35) If people are believed to have no choice but to follow the rules of the culture into which they were born, then they should be protected from interference by outsiders who do not share their cultural beliefs and practices.

Feedback: Arguments that pit human rights against culture depend on the assumption that “cultures” are homogeneous, bounded, and unchanging sets of ideas and practices and that each society has only one culture, which its members are obligated to follow. As we saw in Chapter 8, this view of culture has been severely criticized by cultural anthropologists. But it is a view of culture that is very much alive in many human rights disputes because if people have no choice but to follow the rules of the culture into which they were born, international interference with customs said to violate human rights would seem itself to constitute a human rights violation. Outsiders would be disrupting a supposedly harmonious way of life and preventing those who are committed to such a way of life from observing their own culturally specific understandings about rights.
Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Human Rights?

a. True

b. False

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 36]

36) Compare and contrast “class” in Indonesia and the contemporary United States.

Feedback: The concept of “class” in anthropology has a double heritage: Europeans tended to view class boundaries as closed and rigid, whereas North Americans tended to view them as open and permeable. Class solidarity may be undercut by clientage relations that bind individuals to one another across class boundaries. Carla Jones studied the middle class in Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country and the largest majority Muslim country in the world. Jones notes that market-research companies estimate that the middle-income segment of this population (based on monthly expenditures of approximately US$300) rose from about 19 percent in the mid-1990s to 30 percent in 2009 (Jones 2012, 151). Jones (2012) points out that middle-class status in Indonesia is highly gendered: “it is impossible to think of the virtues, thrills, and concerns associated with being middle class in Indonesia without seeing those qualities take form in gendered ways” (146).

Page reference: Class

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 37]

37) Describe the similarities and differences between caste in India and discrimination against the Roma in Hungary. How do these examples compare and contrast with your home culture?

Feedback: The stratification system of India has been taken as the prototype of caste stratification, although anthropologists also have applied the concept to social hierarchies encountered elsewhere in the world. Local caste divisions (jatis) in village India adhere to rules of purity and pollution defined in terms of the occupations their members perform and the foods they eat and which govern whom they may marry. Prejudice against Roma—widely known as “Gypsies” and long among Europe’s most oppressed minority groups—has swelled into a wave of violence. Over the past year, at least seven Roma have been killed in Hungary, and Roma leaders have counted some 30 Molotov cocktail attacks against Roma homes, often accompanied by sprays of gunfire.

Page reference: Caste

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 15 Question 38]

38) Discuss the significance of descent in understanding dimensions of inequality in the contemporary world.

Feedback: The principle of descent has also played a central role in the identification and persistence of race, ethnicity, and nation. As noted above, these three categories are all closely bound up with historical developments over the past 500 years that built the modern world. Indeed, these categories are particularly significant in nation-states, and many contemporary nation-states are of very recent, postcolonial origin. Clearly, to make sense of contemporary postcolonial forms of social stratification, we also need to look more closely at the categories of race and ethnicity.

Page reference: Class

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 15 Question 39]

39) Describe and provide evidence for the anthropological argument that race is a culturally constructed social category.

Feedback: Some European intellectuals argued at that time that the human species was subdivided into “natural kinds” of human beings called “races” that could be sharply distinguished from one another on the basis of outward phenotypic appearance. All individuals assigned to the same race were assumed to share many other common features, such as language or intelligence, of which phenotype was only the outward index. Race was used both to explain human diversity and to justify the domination of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans. European thinkers, including many early anthropologists, devised schemes for ranking the “races of mankind” from lowest to highest. Not surprisingly, the “white” northern Europeans at the apex of imperial power were placed at the top of this global hierarchy.

Page reference: Race

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 15 Question 40]

40) Discuss how ethnicity develops in societies with a single political structure under conditions of inequality. How does the concept of “nesting identities” add to our understanding of ethnicity?

Feedback: For anthropologists, ethnic groups are social groups whose members distinguish themselves (and/or are distinguished by others) in terms of ethnicity—that is, in terms of distinctive cultural features, such as language, religion, or dress. Ethnicity, like race, is a culturally constructed concept. Many anthropologists today would agree with John and Jean Comaroff (1992) that ethnicity is created by historical processes that incorporate distinct social groups into a single political structure under conditions of inequality (55–57; see also Williams 1989; Alonso 1994). Ambitious individuals and groups in an ethnically stratified society can manipulate ethnicity as a resource to pursue their interests. When nesting identities are present, people may regularly alternate between different identities in different contexts.

Page reference: Ethnicity

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 15 Question 41]

41) What is the difference between a discourse of human rights and a discourse of humanitarianism?

Feedback: The culture of human rights that appears to have emerged in recent years. As in the cultures traditionally studied by anthropologists, the culture of human rights is based on certain ideas about human beings, their needs, and their ability to exercise agency, as well as the kinds of social connections between human beings that are considered legitimate and illegitimate. The entire question of “legitimacy” in human rights discourse points to the central role played by law, both as a way of articulating specific human rights and as a tool for defending those rights. After that time, however, political asylum-seekers were increasingly lumped together with victims of earthquakes and tsunamis and addressed by a new form of governmentality, which Fassin calls humanitarianism, “a mode of governing that concerns the victims of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and exile, as well as disasters, famines, epidemics and wars—in short, every situation characterized by precariousness” (x).

Page reference: How Do Anthropologists Study Human Rights?