Chapter 1 What Is Anthropology? Exam Prep - Anthropology Human 5e | Test Bank Lavenda by Robert H. Lavenda. DOCX document preview.
Chapter 1: What Is Anthropology?
Test Bank
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 01]
1) In the textbook, anthropology is defined as the study of
Feedback: Anthropology can be defined as the study of human nature, human society, and the human past.
Page reference: What is Anthropology?
a. human nature, human society, and the human past.
b. the remains of earlier societies and peoples.
c. the ways of life of contemporary peoples.
d. the physical and mental capacities of human beings.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 02]
2) Holism in anthropology is defined in the text as
Feedback: Holism is a characteristic of the anthropological perspective that describes, at the highest and most inclusive level, how anthropology tries to integrate all that is known about human beings and their activities.
Page reference: What is Anthropology?
a. trying to study everything possible about a people during the course of a research trip.
b. integrating what is known about human beings and their activities at an inclusive level.
c. studying human biology and culture at the same time.
d. fitting together economics, political science, religious studies, and biology.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 03]
3) According to the text, culture consists of
Feedback: Culture can be defined as sets of learned behavior and ideas that human beings acquire as members of society together with the material artifacts and structures that human beings create and use.
Page reference: What Is the Concept of Culture?
a. sets of learned behaviors and ideas that human beings acquire as members of society, together with the material artifacts and structures that human beings create and use.
b. those elements of the human experience that require education and good taste such as fine art, classical music, and ballet.
c. sets of innate instincts that enable human beings to function in a complex world.
d. those sets of behaviors and ideas that enable human beings to appreciate differences between one society and another.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 04]
4) Which of the following is NOT a major subfield of North American anthropology?
Feedback: Traditionally, North American anthropology has been divided into four subfields: biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and archaeology.
Page reference: What Makes Anthropology a Cross-Disciplinary Discipline?
a. Archaeology
b. Cultural anthropology
c. Biological anthropology
d. Physiological anthropology
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 05]
5) When anthropologists say that human beings are biocultural organisms, they mean that
Feedback: Human beings are biocultural organisms. Our biological makeup—our brain, nervous system, and anatomy—is the outcome of developmental processes to which our genes and cellular chemistry contribute in fundamental ways. It also makes us organisms capable of creating and using culture. Without these biological endowments, human culture as we know it would not exist. At the same time, our survival as biological organisms depends on learned ways of thinking and acting that help us find food, shelter, and mates and that teach us how to rear our children. Our biological endowment, rich as it is, does not provide us with instincts that would automatically take care of these survival needs. Human biology makes culture possible; human culture makes human biological survival possible.
Page reference: Biological Anthropology
a. the goal of their research is to identify the genes cause human cultural behavior.
b. human biology and culture both contribute to human behavior.
c. cultural has replaced biology in human evolution.
d. human biology precedes culture in understanding human behavior.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 06]
6) The branch of anthropology that is concerned with discovering what makes human beings different from other living organisms and what human beings share with other members of the animal kingdom is called
Feedback: Biological anthropology (or physical anthropology) is the specialty of anthropology that looks at human beings as biological organisms and tries to discover what characteristics make them different from other organisms and what characteristics they share.
Page reference: Biological Anthropology
a. applied anthropology.
b. archaeology.
c. biological anthropology.
d. cultural anthropology.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 07]
7) Social groupings that allegedly reflect biological differences are called
Feedback: Races are social groupings that allegedly reflect biological differences.
Page reference: Biological Anthropology
a. races.
b. populations.
c. cultures.
d. criteria.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 08]
8) Biological anthropologists who study chimpanzees are likely to be
Feedback: Primatology is the study of nonhuman primates, the closest living relatives of human beings.
Page reference: Biological Anthropology
a. cultural anthropologists.
b. medical anthropologists.
c. paleoanthropologists.
d. primatologists.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 09]
9) Paleoanthropologists study
Feedback: Paleoanthropology is the search for fossilized remains of humanity’s earliest ancestors.
Page reference: Biological Anthropology
a. modern apes.
b. biological variation in living human populations.
c. fossilized bones and teeth.
d. nutrition and physical development.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 10]
10) An extended period of close involvement by anthropologists with the people whose life is of interest to them is called
Feedback: Fieldwork is an extended period of close involvement with the people in whose language or way of life anthropologists are interested, during which anthropologists ordinarily collect most of their data.
Page reference: Cultural Anthropology
a. fieldwork.
b. surveying.
c. interviewing.
d. information gathering.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 11]
11) To cultural anthropologists, informants are people who
Feedback: Informants are people in a particular culture who work with anthropologists and provide them with insights about their way of life. Also called respondents, teachers, or friends.
Page reference: Cultural Anthropology
a. are willing to share secrets about the lives of others in their community.
b. read the books and articles that cultural anthropologists write.
c. share information about their culture and language with anthropologists.
d. serve as research subjects
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 12]
12) A comparative study of many cultures is called
Feedback: Ethnology is the comparative study of two or more cultures.
Page reference: Cultural Anthropology
a. ethnohistory.
b. ethnography.
c. ethnology.
d. ethnographer.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 13]
13) Anthropologists use the term “gender” to refer to
Feedback: Gender refers to the cultural construction of beliefs and behaviors considered appropriate for each sex.
Page reference: Cultural Anthropology
a. biological identity.
b. a culturally shaped role for each sex in a given society.
c. sexual status.
d. race roles.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 14]
14) 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
Feedback: Science studies explores the interconnections among sociocultural, political, economic, and historic conditions and practices that make scientific research both possible and successful.
Page reference: Cultural Anthropology
a. positivism.
b. globalism.
c. science studies.
d. political science.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 15]
15) 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?
Feedback: Linguistic anthropology is the specialty of anthropology concerned with the study of human languages.
Page reference: Linguistic Anthropology
a. Linguistic anthropology
b. Medical anthropology
c. Globalized anthropology
d. Cultural anthropology
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 16]
16) The system of arbitrary symbols we use to encode out experience of the world and of one another is called
Feedback: Language is the system of arbitrary symbols used to encode one’s experience of the world and of others.
Page reference: Linguistic Anthropology
a. culture.
b. language.
c. linguistics.
d. symbolism.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 17]
17) The major specialty within anthropology that involves the analysis of the material remains of the human past is called
Feedback: Archaeology is an anthropology of the human past involving the analysis of material remains left behind by earlier societies.
Page reference: Archaeology
a. applied anthropology.
b. archaeology.
c. biological anthropology.
d. cultural anthropology.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 18]
18) The major specialty within anthropology that uses information gathered from the other subfields in an effort to solve practical cross-cultural problems is
Feedback: Applied anthropology is the subfield of anthropology in which anthropologists use information gathered from the other anthropological specialties to solve practical cross-cultural problems.
Page reference: Applied Anthropology
a. applied anthropology.
b. archaeology.
c. biological anthropology.
d. cultural anthropology.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 19]
19) What is the term to describe anthropological fieldwork occurring in two or more fieldsites during the same period?
Feedback: De Leon conducted ethnographic interviews, in Spanish and English, with individuals on both sides (and several sites) along the southern border—an ethnographic practice called multisited fieldwork.
Page reference: The Promise of Anthropology
a. Ethnology
b. Multi-sited fieldwork
c. Linguistic determination
d. Historical archaeology
Type: true-false
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 20]
20) In the context of globalization, new theoretical developments, new research topics, and new kinds of collaboration are uniting the anthropological subfields like never before.
Feedback: The relationships between the various subfields of anthropology have changed over time. In the early years of the twenty-first century, some anthropologists were convinced that attempts to keep the subfields together would fail. Today, however, in a the context of globalization, new theoretical developments, new research topics, and new kinds of collaboration are bringing the subfields together again in powerful ways.
Page reference: The Promise of Anthropology
a. True
b. False
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 21]
21) To say that anthropology is comparative means that
Feedback: Anthropology is a discipline interested in comparison. Generalizing about human nature, human society, and the human past requires evidence from the widest possible range of human societies. It is not enough, for example, to observe only our own social group, discover that we do not eat insects, and conclude that human beings as a species do not eat insects.
Page reference: What is Anthropology?
a. each anthropologist studies many different societies and cultures during his or her career.
b. anthropological generalizations must draw on evidence from many different societies and cultures.
c. anthropologists use data from many different academic fields of study when they do their research.
d. there is no one way for the anthropologist to do research.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 22]
22) Anthropologists place their observations about human culture and society in a temporal framework. This consideration of change over time relies on theories of
Feedback: Evolution is a characteristic of the anthropological perspective that requires anthropologists to place their observations about human nature, human society, or the human past in a temporal framework that takes into consideration change over time.
Page reference: What is Anthropology?
a. holism.
b. ethnology.
c. evolution.
d. developmental anthropology.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 23]
23) Which of the following statement corresponds to anthropologist Daniel Miller’s definition of the humility of things?
Feedback: The phenomenon that anthropologist Daniel Miller calls the humility of things: “objects are important, not because they are evident and physically constrain or enable, but quite the opposite. It is often precisely because we do not see them” (2010, 50).
Page reference: What Is the Concept of Culture?
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.
Type: true-false
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 24]
24) 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.
Feedback: Material culture includes objects created or shaped by human beings and given meaning by cultural practices.
Page reference: What Is the Concept of Culture?
a. True
b. False
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 25]
25) Most anthropologists reject single cause explanations of human behavior. Instead, they employ a perspective that is
Feedback: Biocultural organisms are organisms (in this case, human beings) whose defining features are codetermined by biological and cultural factors.
Page reference: What Makes Anthropology a Cross-Disciplinary Discipline?
a. humanistic.
b. ethnological.
c. evolutionary.
d. biocultural.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 26]
26) By the early twentieth century, some anthropologists and biologists concluded that the concept of “race” was
Feedback: By the early twentieth century, some anthropologists and biologists were arguing that “race” was a cultural label invented by human beings to sort people into groups and that races with distinct and unique sets of biological attributes simply did not exist. Anthropologists like Franz Boas, for example, who in the early 1900s founded the first department of anthropology in the United States, at Columbia University, had long been uncomfortable with racial classifications in anthropology.
Page reference: Biological Anthropology
a. justified by the increasingly scientific biological research on human beings.
b. a cultural label invented by human beings to sort people into groups.
c. a political liability, although the evidence was increasingly strong in its favor.
d. a label that recognized important intellectual and biological differences among groups.
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 27]
27) 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.
Feedback: Anthropology is also a field-based discipline. That is, for almost all anthropologists, the actual practice of anthropology—its data collection—takes place away from the office and in direct contact with the people, the sites, or the animals that are of interest.
Page reference: Cultural Anthropology
a. True
b. False
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 28]
28) The anthropological research methodology called participant-observation is characterized by
Feedback: Participant observation is the method anthropologists use to gather information by living as closely as possible to the people whose culture they are studying while participating in their lives as much as possible.
Page reference: Cultural Anthropology
a. long-term intensive interviewing of informants.
b. spending extended periods of time both watching and recording behavior, especially in public places.
c. both getting involved in social activities and watching those activities.
d. becoming a member of the society being studied.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 29]
29) Ethnographic research that focuses on human-machine hybrids that blur boundaries between nature and culture, the living and the nonliving, is known as
Feedback: Cyborg anthropology refers to ethnographic research that focuses on human–machine hybrids that blur boundaries between nature and culture, the living and the nonliving.
Page reference: Cultural Anthropology
a. cyborg anthropology.
b. globalization.
c. medical anthropology.
d. biological anthropology.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 30]
30) When anthropologists study what happens when speakers of unrelated languages are forced to communicate with one another, they are studying
Feedback: Contemporary linguistic anthropologists and their counterparts in sociology (called sociolinguists) study the way language differences correlate with differences in gender, race, class, or ethnic identity. Some have specialized in studying what happens when speakers are fluent in more than one language and must choose which language to use under what circumstances. Others have written about what happens when speakers of unrelated languages are forced to communicate with one another, producing languages called pidgins.
Page reference: Linguistic Anthropology
a. pidgins.
b. sign language.
c. literacy.
d. nonliterate societies.
Type: true-false
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts cepts: Chapter 01 Question 31]
31) Prehistoric time periods are those that existed after the advent of writing.
Feedback: Through archaeology, anthropologists discover much about human history, particularly about the long stretch of time before the development of writing, which some have called “prehistory,” but which others prefer to describe as “deep history.”
Page reference: Archaeology
a. True
b. False
Type: true-false
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 32]
32) Applied anthropologists often become involved in policy issues, to avoid impacting social issues.
Feedback: In recent years, some anthropologists have become involved in policy issues, participating actively in social processes that attempt to shape the future of those among whom they work (Moore 2005, 3), and this has involved a change in their understanding of what applied anthropology is.
Page reference: Applied Anthropology
a. True
b. False
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 33]
33) Anthropologists who work for government agencies or nonprofit organizations often describe what they do as the anthropology of
Feedback: More and more universities in the United States have begun to develop courses and programs in a variety of forms of applied anthropology. Anthropologists who work for government agencies or nonprofit organizations or in other nonuniversity settings often describe what they do as the anthropology of practice. In the twenty-first century, it has been predicted that more than half of all new Ph.D.s in anthroplogy will become practicing anthropologists rather than take up positions as faculty in university departments of anthropology.
Page reference: Applied Anthropology
a. modernity.
b. globalization.
c. practice.
d. development.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 34]
34) Which of the following is true about the rapidly growing field of medical anthropology?
Feedback: Biomedical understandings, however, often do not mesh well with different ideas about health and illness held by people of different cultural backgrounds. Medical anthropologists have done important work to bridge these differences. Because of their holistic training in anthropology, they have also been vocal in pointing out how various forms of suffering and disease cannot be explained by focusing on individual bodies alone. For example, Seth Meyers, the anthropologist who has studied migrant farmworkers from Oaxaca, Mexico, is also a medical anthropologist. His work with migrants was motivated not simply to document migration itself, but also to study the toll migration takes on the bodies and minds of migrants.
Page reference: Medical Anthropology
a. Medical anthropologists support the proposition that humans are biocultural organisms.
b. Medical anthropologists are often employed to provide market research for pharmaceutical companies.
c. Medical anthropologists avoid taking a critical stand on issues of social inequality in health care.
d. It focuses exclusively on non-Western medical practices.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 35]
35) In a world in which people from different cultural backgrounds come into contact with one another for extended periods, anthropology offers a
Feedback: Studying anthropology may help prepare you for some of the shocks you will encounter in dealing with people who look different from you, speak a different language, or do not agree that the world works exactly the way you think it does. Anthropology can equip you to deal with people with different cultural backgrounds in a less threatened, more tolerant manner. At the same time, cross-cultural encounters offer many unfamiliar pleasures and rewards.
Page reference: The Promise of Anthropology
a. solution to cultural misunderstandings.
b. means of learning to cope with cultural differences.
c. way of determining which cultural background is better under the circumstances.
d. set of techniques for removing cultural barriers.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 36]
36) A study that examines how economics, politics, religion, and kinship shape one another in a specific society would be
Feedback: Holism is a characteristic of the anthropological perspective that describes, at the highest and most inclusive level, how anthropology tries to integrate all that is known about human beings and their activities.
Page reference: What is Anthropology?
a. detailed.
b. cultural.
c. holistic.
d. comparative.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 37]
37) An anthropologist studying a social group observes that people shake hands when greeting one another and concludes that handshaking is universal among human beings. This study is faulty because the anthropologist has not been
Feedback: Anthropology is a discipline interested in comparison. Generalizing about human nature, human society, and the human past requires evidence from the widest possible range of human societies. It is not enough, for example, to observe only our own social group, discover that we do not eat insects, and conclude that human beings as a species do not eat insects.
Page reference: What is Anthropology?
a. holistic.
b. evolutionary.
c. ethnocentric.
d. comparative.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 38]
38) To claim that members of a particular social group do not typically eat insects because they have learned to label insects as inedible is to use an explanation based on
Feedback: Generalizing about culture requires evidence from the widest possible range of human societies. It is not enough, for example, to observe only our own social group, discover that we do not eat insects, and conclude that human beings as a species do not eat insects. When we compare human diets in different societies, we discover that insect eating is quite common and that our North American aversion to eating insects is nothing more than a dietary practice specific to our own society.
Page reference: What Is the Concept of Culture?
a. culture.
b. biology.
c. ethnocentrism.
d. genetic programming.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 39]
39) The people of society X believe that the people of society Y are inherently inferior to them biologically, and prevent them from gaining access to a high level of education and other resources. According to the text, this is an example of
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 supposed inherent biological superiority of the rulers and the supposed inherent biological inferiority of those they rule.
Page reference: Biological Anthropology
a. racism.
b. ethnocentrism.
c. labeling.
d. holism.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 40]
40) An anthropologist is sitting in the town square in a Bolivian village watching a group of women who are chatting. One wanders over and asks the anthropologist if she would like to join them in shopping for thread for their looms and then help to string the looms. She agrees, and they go off together. This form of research is called
Feedback: Participant observation is the method anthropologists use to gather information by living as closely as possible to the people whose culture they are studying while participating in their lives as much as possible.
Page reference: Cultural Anthropology
a. participant-observation.
b. working with informants.
c. cultural sharing.
d. reciprocal research.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 41]
41) 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
Feedback: Globalization refers to the reshaping of local conditions by powerful global forces on an ever-intensifying scale.
Page reference: Cultural Anthropology
a. colonialism.
b. capitalism.
c. self-determination.
d. globalization.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 42]
42) After an excavation, _______ may use radio-carbon dating technique to establish the age of portable objects modified by human beings, called _______.
Feedback: Archaeology is an anthropology of the human past involving the analysis of material remains left behind by earlier societies. Artifacts are objects that have been deliberately and intelligently shaped by human or near-human activity.
Page reference: Archaeology
a. ethnographers; assemblages
b. archaeologists; artifacts
c. archaeologists; sherds
d. ethnographers; objects
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 43]
43) An anthropologist who studies the environmental features and affect human well-being would probably be called a
Feedback: Medical anthropology is the specialty of anthropology that concerns itself with human health—the factors that contribute to disease or illness and the ways that human populations deal with disease or illness.
Page reference: Medical Anthropology
a. archaeologist.
b. linguistic anthropologist.
c. medical anthropologist.
d. primatologist.
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 44]
44) Choose one of the five subdisciplines in anthropology and explain what is distinctive about its approach to the human condition.
Feedback: Traditionally, North American anthropology has been divided into four subfields: biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and archaeology. Because of their commitment to holism, many anthropology departments try to represent most or all of the subfields in their academic programs. Many North American anthropologists, however, associate holistic four-field North American anthropology with the successful repudiation of nineteenth-century scientific racism by Franz Boas and other early twentieth-century anthropologists.
Page reference: What Makes Anthropology a Cross-Disciplinary Discipline?
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 45]
45) How might a college undergraduate benefit from taking a course in cultural anthropology?
Feedback: . Anthropologists experience both the rewards and risks of getting to know how people live (and sometimes how they die). For over century, anthropological work has helped to dispel many harmful stereotypes that sometimes make cross-cultural contact dangerous or impossible. Studying anthropology may help prepare you for some of the shocks you will encounter in dealing with people who look different from you, speak a different language, or do not agree that the world works exactly the way you think it does. Anthropology can equip you to deal with people with different cultural backgrounds in a less threatened, more tolerant manner. At the same time, cross-cultural encounters offer many unfamiliar pleasures and rewards.
Page reference: The Promise of Anthropology
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 46]
46) Select three skills that you can learn as an anthropology major and describe how those skills are relevant to your own field of study.
Feedback: The Career Development Center at SUNY Plattsburgh developed a document that highlights what students typically learn from a major in anthropology.
Page reference: The Promise of Anthropology
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 01 Question 47]
47) Develop, in your own words, a short definition of anthropology and describe its connection to the social sciences, the natural sciences, and the humanities.
Feedback: Anthropology can be defined as the study of human nature, human society, and the human past.
Page reference: What is Anthropology?
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 01 Question 48]
48) What does it mean when anthropologists claim that their discipline is holistic, comparative, and evolutionary? Provide examples for each concept.
Feedback: Anthropology is holistic, comparative, field based, and evolutionary. First, anthropology emphasizes that all aspects of human life intersect with one another in complex ways. They shape one another and become integrated with one another over time. Anthropology is thus the integrated, or holistic, study of human nature, human society, and the human past. Second, in addition to being holistic, anthropology is a discipline interested in comparison. Generalizing about human nature, human society, and the human past requires evidence from the widest possible range of human societies. Finally anthropologists are interested in documenting and explaining change over time in the human past; this is why evolution is at the core of the anthropological perspective. Anthropologists examine the biological evolution of the human species, which documents change over time in the physical features and life processes of human beings and of our ancestors.
Page reference: What is Anthropology?
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 01 Question 49]
49) 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?
Feedback: Human beings are biocultural organisms. Our biological makeup—our brain, nervous system, and anatomy—is the outcome of developmental processes to which our genes and cellular chemistry contribute in fundamental ways. It also makes us organisms capable of creating and using culture. Without these biological endowments, human culture as we know it would not exist. At the same time, our survival as biological organisms depends on learned ways of thinking and acting that help us find food, shelter, and mates and that teach us how to rear our children. Our biological endowment, rich as it is, does not provide us with instincts that would automatically take care of these survival needs. Human biology makes culture possible; human culture makes human biological survival possible.
Page reference: Biological Anthropology
Module 1 Test Bank
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 01]
1) For anthropologists, stories whose truth seems self-evident because the stories integrate personal experiences with wider assumptions about the world are called
Feedback: Myths are stories that recount how various aspects of the world came to be the way they are. The power of myths comes from their ability to make life meaningful for those who accept them. The truth of myths seems self-evident because they effectively integrate personal experiences with a wider set of assumptions about the way society, or the world in general, must operate.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
a. Myths.
b. Scientific theories.
c. Folktales.
d. hypotheses.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 02]
2) Explanations of the world that are explicitly open-ended and self-correcting are called
Feedback: Science is the invention of explanations about what things are, how they work, and how they came to be that can be tested against evidence in the world itself.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
a. Myths.
b. Scientific theories.
c. Folktales.
d. Hypotheses.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 03]
3) Basic understandings about the way the world works that are never questioned are called
Feedback: Assumptions are basic, unquestioned understandings about the way the world works. Under ordinary circumstances, most human beings do not question whether the sun will come up in the morning; it is taken for granted. If you want to go birdwatching tomorrow, you might be concerned about how cold it will be or whether it will rain, but you need not worry whether the sun will rise.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
b. evidence.
c. hypotheses.
d. theories.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 04]
4) What observers can see when they observe a particular part of the world with great care is/are called
Feedback: In science, evidence refers to what we can see when we examine a particular part of the world with great care. The structures and processes of living cells as revealed under the microscope, the systematic distribution of related species of birds in neighboring geographical regions, the different kinds of bones found together again and again in the same geological strata—these are examples of the kinds of evidence scientists use to support theories of biological evolution. There are two different kinds of evidence: material and inferred.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
a. assumptions.
b. evidence.
c. hypotheses.
d. theories.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 05]
5) Statements that assert a particular connection between fact and interpretations are called
Feedback: Scientists state their interpretations of data in the form of hypotheses, which are statements that assert a particular connection between fact and interpretation, such as “The bones found at the Hadar site in Ethiopia belonged to an extinct form of primate that appears ancestral to modern human beings.” Hypotheses are also predictions about future data based on data already in hand.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
a. assumptions.
b. evidence.
c. hypotheses.
d. theories.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Knowledge of Key Terms and Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 06]
6) The separation of observation and reporting from the researcher’s wishes refers to
Feedback: Objectivity refers to the separation of observation and reporting from the researcher’s wishes.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
a. assumptions.
b. hypothesis building.
c. objectivity.
d. testability.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 07]
7) What sets science apart from other forms of explanation is that science is
Feedback: Empirical means something is based on concrete experience and observation.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
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
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 08]
8) The capacity of scientific hypotheses to be matched against nature to see whether the hypotheses are confirmed or refuted is called
Feedback: Testability is the scientific requirement that a hypothesis must be matched against evidence to see whether it is confirmed or refuted. That is, our assertion about the connection between fact and interpretation must be subject to testability if it is to be regarded as a scientific hypothesis.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
a. testability.
b. objectivity.
c. theory building.
d. evidence.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 09]
9) If a hypothesis cannot be tested, it
Feedback: Some hypotheses, however, may not be subject to testability. That is, there may be no way, even in principle, to find evidence in nature that could show a hypothesis to be false. As a result, even if such a hypothesis were correct, it could not be considered a scientific hypothesis.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
a. can be used as an assumption.
b. is false.
c. can be used for evidence of other hypotheses.
d. cannot be considered scientific.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 10]
10) A series of testable hypotheses that are linked up in a coherent manner in order to explain a body of material evidence is called
Feedback: Scientists speak of a scientific theory only when they are able to link up a series of testable hypotheses in a coherent manner to explain a body of material evidence. Scientific theories are the combined result of sifting data, testing hypotheses, and imagining how all the resulting information might be put together in an enlightening way. Scientific theories are taken seriously because they account for a wide range of material evidence in a coherent, persuasive manner even though their hypotheses remain open to testing and possible falsification.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
a. a set of assumptions.
b. a set of verifiable hypotheses.
c. a scientific theory.
d. an objective meaning structure.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 11]
11) 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
Feedback: Science studies refers to research that explores the interconnections among the sociocultural, political, economic, and historic conditions that make scientific research both possible and successful.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
a. positivism
b. science studies
c. genomics
d. laboratory ethnography
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Comprehension of Fundamental Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 12]
12) 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
Feedback: One innovation of science studies that is important for anthropology was laboratory ethnography. Laboratory fieldwork involves following scientists as they go about their everyday laboratory activities and brings to light the range of embodied skills that scientists in certain fields must master if they are effectively to operate the often-elaborate technological apparatuses that make successful research possible.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
a. positivism
b. science studies
c. genomics
d. laboratory ethnography
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 13]
13) 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
Feedback: Scientists state their interpretations of data in the form of hypotheses, which are statements that assert a particular connection between fact and interpretation, such as “The bones found at the Hadar site in Ethiopia belonged to an extinct form of primate that appears ancestral to modern human beings.” Hypotheses are also predictions about future data based on data already in hand.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
a. assuming.
b. objectivizing.
c. hypothesizing.
d. theorizing.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 14]
14) 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
Feedback: Testability is the scientific requirement that a hypothesis must be matched against evidence to see whether it is confirmed or refuted. That is, our assertion about the connection between fact and interpretation must be subject to testability if it is to be regarded as a scientific hypothesis.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
a. theory building.
b. an assumption.
c. testability.
d. hypothesis formation.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 15]
15) The most powerful scientific theories are those
Feedback: Scientists speak of a scientific theory only when they are able to link up a series of testable hypotheses in a coherent manner to explain a body of material evidence. Scientific theories are the combined result of sifting data, testing hypotheses, and imagining how all the resulting information might be put together in an enlightening way. Scientific theories are taken seriously because they account for a wide range of material evidence in a coherent, persuasive manner even though their hypotheses remain open to testing and possible falsification. The most powerful theories in science, such as the theory of relativity or the theory of evolution, are valued not just because they explain more of the material evidence than their competitors but also because their central hypotheses are open to testing and potential falsification—and yet, after repeated tests, they have never been disconfirmed.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
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.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 16]
16) Since total objectivity is impossible, should people choose the theories they like best?
Feedback: Western science has traditionally emphasized the demands that objectivity places on individual scientists. From this point of view, objectivity can be defined as “the separation of observation and reporting from the researcher’s wishes” (Levins and Lewontin 1985, 225). Because theories are rooted in material evidence, new material evidence can tip the balance in favor of one theory over its alternatives or expose all current theories as inadequate. Scientific researchers who faithfully report results even when these results undermine their own pet hypotheses would be viewed as objective in this individual sense.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
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.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 17]
17) Which of the following describes a key discovery of science studies research?
Feedback: Latour and others revealed the significance of a range of “nonscientific” institutions and individuals outside the laboratory whose support was essential if “strictly scientific” research projects inside the laboratory were to continue (Latour and Woolgar 1986; Latour 1987). Successful directors of laboratories, for example, must wear many hats: Not only must they be able to secure proper working conditions for their scientific staff, but also they must cultivate good relationships with university administrators, laboratory instrument makers, government funding agencies, and, increasingly, private industry. These days, some scientists even run their own companies.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
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.
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 18]
18) Define science and myth. How are these two concepts similar and different? Discuss why they are both useful concepts to understand humanity.
Feedback: Science is the invention of explanations about what things are, how they work, and how they came to be that can be tested against evidence in the world itself. Myths are stories that recount how various aspects of the world came to be the way they are. The power of myths comes from their ability to make life meaningful for those who accept them. The truth of myths seems self-evident because they effectively integrate personal experiences with a wider set of assumptions about the way society, or the world in general, must operate.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: [Application of Concepts: Chapter 01 Question 19]
19) 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?
Feedback: Scientists speak of a scientific theory only when they are able to link up a series of testable hypotheses in a coherent manner to explain a body of material evidence. Scientific theories are the combined result of sifting data, testing hypotheses, and imagining how all the resulting information might be put together in an enlightening way. Scientific theories are taken seriously because they account for a wide range of material evidence in a coherent, persuasive manner even though their hypotheses remain open to testing and possible falsification. The most powerful theories in science, such as the theory of relativity or the theory of evolution, are valued not just because they explain more of the material evidence than their competitors but also because their central hypotheses are open to testing and potential falsification—and yet, after repeated tests, they have never been disconfirmed.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 01 Question 20]
20) 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?
Feedback: Objectivity refers to the separation of observation and reporting from the researcher’s wishes.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: [Analysis and Synthesis: Chapter 01 Question 21]
21) 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?
Feedback: One innovation of science studies that is important for anthropology was laboratory ethnography. Laboratory fieldwork involves following scientists as they go about their everyday laboratory activities and brings to light the range of embodied skills that scientists in certain fields must master if they are effectively to operate the often-elaborate technological apparatuses that make successful research possible. Successful directors of laboratories, for example, must wear many hats: Not only must they be able to secure proper working conditions for their scientific staff, but also they must cultivate good relationships with university administrators, laboratory instrument makers, government funding agencies, and, increasingly, private industry. These days, some scientists even run their own companies.
Page reference: Anthropology, Science, and Storytelling