Chapter.5 Globalization And Culture Test Bank Answers 3e

Chapter 5 Test Bank

Multiple Choice

1. Globalization is the
   1. idea that cultural characteristics result from internal historical dynamism.
   2. process of relationships being limited to those within nation-state boundaries.
   3. field that studies the cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism.
   4. widening scale of cross-cultural interactions caused by the rapid movement of money, people, goods, images, and ideas within nations and across national boundaries.
2. Cultural differences are often caused by
   1. the isolation of communities.
   2. interconnections between societies.
   3. innovations within a single society.
   4. insulated incidences of rapid technological change.
3. Rapid increases in the scale and amount of communication
   1. are relatively even throughout the world.
   2. include narrow use of computers and cell phones.
   3. mean that people in remote places can be in contact with people all over the world.
   4. level socioeconomic inequalities around the world.
4. Financial globalization has allowed for
   1. wealth to be evenly distributed throughout the world.
   2. corporations to move factories from one country to another.
   3. the minimum wage to stay the same.
   4. industries to stabilize in their traditional geographic areas.
5. Eric Wolf encouraged anthropologists to consider what in their field studies?
   1. Language
   2. Technology
   3. History
   4. Sexuality
6. Push–pull factors
   1. describe the factors that contribute the elevation of tides worldwide.
   2. explain why colonists adventured to the new world.
   3. provide the foundation for determining the difference between core and periphery nations.
   4. describe the factors that “push” people to migrate from their homes and that “pull” them to host countries.
7. Development anthropologists often think of themselves as
   1. critics of USAID and other development institutions.
   2. advocates of poor and marginalized people.
   3. objective observers.
   4. advocates for policy planners.
8. James Ferguson, who is an anthropologist of development, argues that development exists
   1. to alleviate poverty.
   2. to improve working conditions for farmers.
   3. to expand state power.
   4. to enhance access to new technologies such as cell phones.
9. What is the term that refers to the proliferation of similar norms and knowledge shared across national boundaries?
   1. Postcolonialism
   2. World culture
   3. Developmentalism
   4. Creolization
10. Hybridization is about
    1. maintaining distinct ethnic boundaries.
    2. technological inequality.
    3. defining a direction for change.
    4. cultural mixing.
11. The process of promoting one culture over others, through formal policy or less formal means, is referred to as
    1. Coca-Colonization.
    2. cultural relativism.
    3. localization.
    4. cultural imperialism.
12. ________________ are people who leave their homes to work for a time in other regions or countries.
    1. Migrants
    2. Immigrants
    3. Refugees
    4. Exiles
13. Paula moved to New York City from Poland twenty years ago when she married her husband. She is a(n)
14. exile.
15. refugee.
16. migrant.
17. immigrant.
18. Pedro was expelled from his home country after running against the incumbent president in a rigged national election. Pedro is a(n)
19. exile.
20. migrant.
21. refugee.
22. immigrant.
23. The reduction or elimination of tariffs to promote trade began in the 1870s and was the beginning of
24. globalization.
25. financial globalization.
26. development.
27. imperialism.
28. The expansion of capitalist markets is a feature of
29. globalization.
30. imperialism.
31. colonialism.
32. development.
33. World systems theory posits
    1. all nation-states are equally capable of becoming global leaders.
    2. that capitalism has expanded on the basis of unequal exchange throughout the world, creating a global market and global division of labor, dividing the world between a dominant “core” and a dependent “periphery.”
    3. that cultural differences have not disappeared because cultural consciousness is increasingly bringing people together around cultural similarities.
    4. that as globalization spreads cultural diversity will decline and local distinctions will gradually fade.
34. World systems theory helped anthropologists
    1. better explain the historical emergence of development patterns throughout the world.
    2. explain even development through time and space.
    3. ignore local social relations.
    4. remedy the past for the future.
35. A key feature of financial globalization is
    1. governments imposing new regulations on trade.
    2. equalization of financial opportunities around the world.
    3. greater coordination of multinational corporations.
    4. the reduction or elimination of tariffs to promote trade.
36. The research that anthropologist Karen Tranberg Hansen has done on second-hand clothing in Zambia is interesting because it
    1. highlights how poor Zambians are.
    2. highlights how the Zambian textile economy has benefited from globalization.
    3. highlights how people impose local meanings on globally sourced objects.
    4. illustrates how disconnected the United States and Zambia are.
37. Proponents of world systems theory emphasize all of the following except
    1. global connections emerged in earnest in the late fifteenth century.
    2. wealth is unevenly divided across the globe.
    3. colonialism allowed for the expansion of capitalism.
    4. the underdevelopment of certain countries was inevitable because of their geographic location.
38. The recent rise of autonomy movements among Hawaiian separatists and Basques in Europe are examples of
    1. globalization.
    2. immigration.
    3. localization.
    4. migration.
39. The most important goal of the Congolese sapeur is to
    1. imitate European consumers.
    2. steal and resell secondhand clothes.
    3. accumulate prestige.
    4. acquire smartphones.
40. One of the main reasons localization interests anthropologists is that
    1. anthropologists have always been locally focused.
    2. global integration creates opportunity for local cultures to express themselves.
    3. it is easier to study local settings than global settings.
    4. it is rapidly disappearing as a phenomenon.
41. A central feature of cultural convergence theories is that
    1. they explain the rise of cultural conflict in the world.
    2. they explain the apparent decline of cultural diversity.
    3. they articulate how and why cultures converge through mixture and hybridity.
    4. they explain why development appeals to all people around the world.
42. A key difference between anthropologists of development and development anthropologists is that
    1. the first are academics; the second work in applied fields.
    2. the first are theoretical; the second are practical.
    3. the first work in development agencies; the second criticize it.
    4. the first are analysts of development; the second seek ways to influence it from within.
43. Which of the following best describes the methodology of multisited ethnography?
    1. Analytical
    2. Comparative
    3. Genealogical
    4. Local
44. Which of the following is not true about hybridization theories?
    1. It has several aliases, among them “syncretism.”
    2. It explains why conflict is growing in the world.
    3. It reimagines old racialist thinking that abhorred mixture.
    4. It rejects the existence of cultural purities.
45. A world systems theory is important for all of the following reasons except
    1. it is useful for analyzing postcolonial conditions.
    2. it highlights resistance at the periphery.
    3. it lends itself readily to ethnographic methodology.
    4. it explains how and why global capitalism has disrupted so many societies.
46. In a study on the Olympics a hybridization theorist would likely focus on
    1. how national conflicts play out through athletic competitions.
    2. the unexpected social patterns that emerge from intermingling between athletes, fans, and officials.
    3. the shared values of amateurism and internationalism.
    4. how the principles of capitalist efficiency have reshaped the games.
47. If a development anthropologist were to get involved in a project in your city that is revitalizing a poor neighborhood, she or he would probably emphasize the overarching importance of
    1. improving the neighborhood’s economy.
    2. extending state power into the neighborhood to regularize social relations.
    3. listening to the priorities of the neighbors.
    4. building lasting infrastructure and buildings.
48. Development anthropologists are least interested in which of the following?
    1. Local perspectives and voices
    2. Efficient and successful implementation of programs meant to improve the conditions of people’s daily lives
    3. National and international investment in local development projects
    4. Major theoretical advancements within the field of anthropology
49. A believer in cultural imperialism would explain that people who watch American television in remote places like a Walpiri camp in the Australian outback are
    1. learning important lessons about life in America.
    2. experiencing a form of hybridization.
    3. likely to resist everything they see and hear.
    4. being subjected to alien cultural influences.
50. World systems theory would be most suited to which of the following research projects?
    1. An ethnographic study of village-level political leaders
    2. A historical study of indigenous resistance to colonialism
    3. A comparative study of the economic potential of different policy mechanisms to promote global trade
    4. A program evaluation of a non-profit organization
51. An anthropologist of development would be most interested in which of the following projects?
    1. How the International Monetary Fund decides how to distribute aid money to development projects.
    2. What push–pull factors motivate Central American citizens to come to the United States.
    3. How miners resist oppressive working conditions set by multinational mining corporations.
    4. The emergence of an Afrofuturist fashion industry in Senegal.
52. Which of the following would be of least interest to an anthropologist of postcolonialism?
    1. The proliferation of Indian chutney in England
    2. The popularity of European football in Africa
    3. Government subsidies for US soy farmers
    4. The influence of the French government on politics in Senegal
53. The sushi burrito, a blending of two regional foods as a result of globalization, is an example of
    1. postcolonialism.
    2. global homogenization.
    3. hybridization.
    4. international development.
54. Strikes, protests, and spirit possession are examples of
    1. globalization.
    2. development.
    3. resistance.
    4. psychosis.
55. During apartheid, South African public schools only taught English and Afrikaans and banned the use of indigenous languages. This is an example of
    1. developmentalism.
    2. cultural imperialism.
    3. localization.
    4. postcolonialism.
56. A development anthropologist would be most interested in which project?
    1. Helping distribute water filtration systems in rural communities
    2. Tracking the development of a new local dialect
    3. Analyzing the shifts in asylum application processes to account for discrimination against sexual minorities
    4. Mapping the global interconnections involved in the abalone trade

True/False

1. The processes of capital accumulation and the expansion of European colonialism disrupted many societies.
   1. True
   2. False
2. People in the periphery responded passively to capitalist expansion.
   1. True
   2. False
3. Localization is the creation and assertion of highly particular, place-based identities and communities.
   1. True
   2. False
4. Anthropologists are generally ignored by “development” experts at institutions like the World Bank.
   1. True
   2. False
5. When people consume the same clothes, food, and goods they eventually think and behave the same.
   1. True
   2. False
6. Globalization is so exciting to anthropologists right now because they have never studied interconnectivity before.
   1. True
   2. False
7. Cultural diversity persists in the world because cultures have been isolated from each other for so long but that diversity is bound to disappear as cultures intermingle more.
   1. True
   2. False
8. A key marker of development anthropology’s success is when local perspectives and voices are paid attention to in development projects.
   1. True
   2. False
9. Globalization and localization are complementary dynamics.
   1. True
   2. False
10. According to anthropologists, globalization is the contemporary widening of scale of cross-cultural interactions owing to the rapid movement of money, people, goods, images, and ideas.
    1. True
    2. False
11. Migrants are people who are expelled by the authorities of their home countries.
    1. True
    2. False
12. Franz Boas and his students were diffusionists, emphasizing that cultural characteristics result from a spread of cultural attributes from one society to another.
    1. True
    2. False
13. Often, anthropologists use the term “interconnectivity” rather than “globalization” to refer to the “global” circulation of goods and people.
    1. True
    2. False
14. Hybridization theory argues that globalization has encouraged open-ended and ongoing cultural intermingling and fusion, resulting in persistent cultural diversity.
    1. True
    2. False
15. Anthropologists use multisited ethnography to juxtapose phenomena that were once thought worlds apart.
    1. True
    2. False

Short Answer

1. What are the primary strengths of world systems theory? Give an example of a project in which you might employ it.
2. Do you think an ethnographer could employ a multisited approach in a project studying Walmart’s cultural influence inside and outside the United States. If not, why not? If yes, what field sites would you study?
3. Describe how you would apply the theory of Coca-Colonization to explain the prevalence of Hollywood movies globally.
4. For what kinds of research projects is multisited ethnography useful and not useful? In your answer give at least one example for each.
5. Is hybridization occurring in American life? If not, why? If so, give an example and use the discussion of hybridization from the book to make your case.
6. Is the diffusionist perspective of Boas and his students useful in anthropology today?
7. What elements of social life are affected by globalization?
8. Why is development an uneven process?
9. How and why do people participate in global processes and local communities simultaneously? Give some examples to illustrate your point.
10. How do the findings and theories of anthropologists of globalization affect your understanding of culture?

Short Answer Key

1. What are the primary strengths of world systems theory? Give an example of a project in which you might employ it.
   1. What Are the Outcomes of Global Integration?
   2. For several decades, world systems theory has provided the social sciences with an important theoretical lens for understanding global inequality. Developed by economic historians André Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein, world systems theory rejects the idea that global interconnections are anything new, identifying the late fifteenth century as the beginning of a new capitalist world order that connected different parts of the world in new ways. During this historical period, according to world systems theory, the expansion of overseas European colonies was enabled by and rooted in the creation of a global capitalist market. This market was based on unequal exchange between a “core” (the home countries) and a “periphery” (the rest of the world). The core (the winners) developed its economy by exploiting the periphery (the losers), whose role was to provide labor and raw materials for the core’s consumption. European colonial institutions and authority secured capitalism’s ability to extract labor and natural resources from the periphery. The result is the periphery’s long-term poverty, underdevelopment, and dependency on the core. In relation to these conditions, anthropologists have posed a question other social scientists have not: How has this world system affected the native peoples and cultural systems of the periphery?
2. Do you think an ethnographer could employ a multisited approach in a project studying Walmart’s cultural influence inside and outside the United States. If not, why not? If yes, what field sites would you study?
   1. How Can Anthropologists Study Global Interconnections?
   2. One technique is to use multisited ethnography, which is a strategy of following connections, associations, and putative relationships from place to place (Marcus 1995). Its goal is not a holistic representation of the world system as a totality. Rather, it seeks to track cultural themes as they express themselves in distinct places and settings that are typically connected in some concrete way. Its goal is to describe relationships and connections between these different places. In this sense, multisited ethnography offers a comparative method by juxtaposing phenomena that were once thought “worlds apart” (Marcus 1995:102).
   3. Multisited fieldwork has been productive for studying transnational phenomena like environmentalism and other social movements, the media, certain religious societies, and the spread of science and technology. As the object of anthropological research has expanded to include topics like these, more and more anthropologists are doing multisited research.
3. Describe how you would apply the theory of Coca-Colonization to explain the prevalence of Hollywood movies globally.
   1. If the World Is Not Becoming Homogenized, What Is Actually Happening?
   2. In the 1960s the famous media scholar Marshall McLuhan suggested that the world was becoming a “global village” in which cultural diversity was in decline. Many social scientists agree. The British philosopher and social anthropologist Ernest Gellner, for example, believed the spread of industrial society created a common worldwide culture, based on similar conditions of work within the same industry. Making T-shirts in a factory is going to be similar whether situated in Honduras, Tanzania, or Vietnam. Gellner wrote that “the same technology canalizes people into the same type of activity and the same kinds of hierarchy, and that the same kind of leisure styles were also engendered by existing techniques and by the needs of productive life” (1983:116–7). Gellner’s view was that local distinctions and traditions will gradually fade as Western ideas replace those in non-Western communities.
   3. One variation on this theme imagines “Coca-Colonization,” alternatively called Westernization or Americanization (Foster 2008). This model proposes that the powerful and culturally influential nations of the West (especially the United States) impose their products and beliefs on the less powerful nations of the world, creating what is known as cultural imperialism, or the promotion of one culture over others, through formal policy or less formal means, like the spread of technology and material culture.
   4. The appeal of these theories is that they address the underlying causes of why the world feels smaller, as well as how rich societies systematically exploit poor societies by drawing them into a common political-economic system. They also appear to explain the appearance of a common world culture, based on norms and knowledge
4. For what kinds of research projects is multisited ethnography useful and not useful? In your answer give at least one example for each.
   1. How Can Anthropologists Study Global Interconnections?
   2. One technique is to use multisited ethnography, which is a strategy of following connections, associations, and putative relationships from place to place (Marcus 1995). Its goal is not a holistic representation of the world system as a totality. Rather, it seeks to track cultural themes as they express themselves in distinct places and settings that are typically connected in some concrete way. Its goal is to describe relationships and connections between these different places. In this sense, multisited ethnography offers a comparative method by juxtaposing phenomena that were once thought “worlds apart” (Marcus 1995:102).
   3. Multisited fieldwork has been productive for studying transnational phenomena like environmentalism and other social movements, the media, certain religious societies, and the spread of science and technology. As the object of anthropological research has expanded to include topics like these, more and more anthropologists are doing multisited research.
5. Is hybridization occurring in American life? If not, why? If so, give an example and use the discussion of hybridization from the book to make your case.
   1. How Can Anthropologists Study Global Interconnections?
   2. An alternative theory that many anthropologists prefer is hybridization, which refers to open-ended and ongoing cultural intermingling and fusion. While the convergence theories imagine a world based on or moving toward cultural purities, hybridization emphasizes a world based on promiscuous mixing, border crossing, and persistent cultural diversity (García Canclini 1995; Piot 1999; Figure 5.7). Hybridization has several aliases, including syncretism and creolization. Anthropologists have usually applied the word syncretism to the fusion of religious systems; creolization is used to mean the intermingling of languages. In both cases, we see the synthesis of distinct elements to create new and unexpected possibilities.
   3. Hybridization theory does have critics. Some argue that cultural mixing is merely a superficial phenomenon, the real underlying condition being convergence. Others charge that all the talk about boundary crossing and mixture ignores the fact that boundaries—national, social, ethnic, and so on—have never disappeared (Friedman 1999), even getting stronger in recent years due to the combined effects in countries like the United States of anti-immigrant sentiment, resurgent nationalisms, and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the heart of this criticism is the charge that hybridization theory ignores real political and economic power and inequalities. Others assert that these two approaches do not have to be mutually exclusive, but that convergence is happening in some places and hybridization is happening everywhere at the same time.
6. Is the diffusionist perspective of Boas and his students useful in anthropology today?
   1. Is the World Really Getting Smaller?
   2. Early American anthropologists also recognized these facts. Franz Boas and his students Alfred Kroeber and Ralph Linton developed a theory of culture that emphasized the interconnectedness of societies. The Boasians were diffusionists, emphasizing that cultural characteristics result from either internal historical dynamism or a spread (diffusion) of cultural attributes from one society to another (Figure 5.1). Later, beginning in the 1950s, Marxist anthropologists like Eric Wolf argued against the isolation of societies, suggesting that non-Western societies could not be understood without reference to their place within a global capitalist system.
7. What elements of social life are affected by globalization?
   1. Is the World Really Getting Smaller?
   2. Defining globalization is a challenge for two reasons. First, different academic disciplines define globalization differently because they study different things. Economists focus on investment and markets, political scientists on policies and interactions of nation-states, and sociologists on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other international social institutions. But there is a second problem. Is globalization a general process or a trend of growing worldwide interconnectedness? Is it a system of investment and trade? Is it the explicit goal of particular governments or international trade bodies that promote free trade? Or is it, as some say, “globaloney,” something that does not actually exist at all (Veseth 2005)?
   3. Anthropologists define globalization as the contemporary widening scale of cross-cultural interactions owing to the rapid movement of money, people, goods, images, and ideas within nations and across national boundaries (Kearney 1995; Inda and Rosaldo 2002). But we also recognize that social, economic, and political interconnection and mixing are nothing new for humanity. Archaeological and historical records show that humans have always moved around, establishing contacts with members of other groups, and that sharing or exchanging things, individuals, and ideas is deeply rooted in human evolutionary history.
8. Why is development an uneven process?
   1. What Are the Outcomes of Global Integration?
   2. Because world systems theory focused on the rise of capitalism as a global system, this macro-level perspective did not readily lend itself to ethnographic research of smaller communities and non-global economics. But the theory helped anthropologists better explain the historical emergence and contemporary persistence of uneven development patterns around the world and has been of critical interest to scholars of postcolonialism, the field that studies the cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism. It has also helped anthropologists understand the linkages between local social relations (families, kin networks, communities) and other levels of political-economic activity, like the regional, national, and transnational.
9. How and why do people participate in global processes and local communities simultaneously? Give some examples to illustrate your point.
   1. What Are the Outcomes of Global Integration?
   2. People always define their identities locally. What is different today from previous generations, perhaps, is that people increasingly express their local identities through their interaction with transnational processes, such as communications, migration, or consumerism, and with institutions, such as transnational businesses. In today’s world, people participate in global processes and local communities simultaneously. But they rarely participate in global processes on equal footing, because of their subordinate place in the world system or in their own countries—a theme we explore in “A World in Motion: Instant Ramen Noodles Take Over the Globe.” Nevertheless, many anthropologists feel that to identify them in stark terms as either winners or losers of global integration greatly simplifies the complexity of their simultaneous involvement in globalization and localization processes.
10. How do the findings and theories of anthropologists of globalization affect your understanding of culture?
    1. What Are the Outcomes of Global Integration?
    2. In public debates, the most common way of framing globalization’s outcomes is in terms of winners and losers. Globalization’s promoters focus on winners, arguing that greater economic integration brings unprecedented prosperity to millions. They cite evidence that the more open a country is to foreign trade, the more rapidly its economy grows (Norberg 2006). Critics focus on losers, invoking images of sweatshops and poverty. They offer evidence that the gap between rich countries and poor countries has actually widened, and we are witness to a “globalization of poverty” (Chossudovsky 1997). In recent years, a nationalist backlash has emerged, evident among some political leaders in the United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia who have argued that the real “losers” in globalization are the working classes in their countries whose jobs have been shipped overseas or “taken” by newer immigrants. In the face of such arguments, it is useful to remember that all sides are often discussing fairly narrow economic policy questions related to free trade, labor conditions, outsourcing of jobs, and so on. These are important issues, but they tend to ignore the cultural nuances of global interconnections, which include inequality, confrontation, domination, accommodation, and resistance.