Chapter 11 Test Bank

KNOWLEDGE OF KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS

Multiple Choice

1. Which of the following refers to the family into which one is born and raised?

a) traditional family

b) natal family

c) nuclear family

d) family of procreation

2. The practice of naming parents after their children is known as

a) cognatic descent.

b) teknonymy.

c) unilineal taxonomy.

d) genealogical amnesia.

3. The family formed by a married couple and their children is called the __________ family.

a) natal

b) traditional

c) nuclear

d) extended

4. Most families function as groups of real people who work together toward common ends. Such family groups are referred to as

a) natal family.

b) extended family.

c) nuclear family.

d) corporate group.

5. If you live in a household with your mom and dad, your grandfather, as well as your aunt and two cousins, you live in a __________ family.

a) nuclear

b) traditional

c) extended

d) unnatural

6. When social norms dictate that someone from a particular clan must marry outside of that clan, anthropologists say that the clan is

a) a corporate group.

b) endogamous.

c) exogamous.

d) a lineage.

7. Matrilineal descent is traced through which relative?

a) the father

b) the mother

c) the mother’s brother

d) the father’s mother

8. In a kinship system with matrilineal descent, a man inherits his rights to land and clan wealth from the

a) father.

b) mother.

c) mother’s brother.

d) father’s mother.

9. A clan that reckons descent through both their mother and father is called a __________ clan.

a) unilineal

b) patrilineal

c) matrilineal

d) cognatic

10. When a woman marries more than one man she is practicing

a) polygyny.

b) polyandry.

c) adultery.

d) matrilineality.

11. Which of the following is not a typical reason for marriage cross-culturally?

a) politics

b) economics

c) genetics

d) public recognition

12. A surrogate mother is a woman who

a) agrees to have an embryo implanted in her womb.

b) adopts a child at birth.

c) acts like a mother to an orphan.

d) raises another woman’s child.

Fill in the Blank

13. The social system that organizes people in families based on descent and marriage is called ____________________.

kinship

14. ____________________ is the practice of one man having more than one wife.

Polygyny

15. A visual representation of family relationships is called a ____________________.

kinship chart

16. Anthropologists call family groups that consist of larger groups of relatives beyond the nuclear family ____________________ families.

extended

17. A special group of relatives who are all descended from a single ancestor is called a ____________________.

clan

18. Similar to clans, ____________________ tend be composed of people who are directly descended from known ancestors.

lineages

True/False

19. Since the early nineteenth century, the traditional American family has consisted of a husband, a wife, a few children, and perhaps a pet.

a) True

b) False

20. Nuclear family units occur in and are important to nearly every society around the world.

a) True

b) False

21. One of the key functions of family is controlling and managing its members’ wealth.

a) True

b) False

22. Weddings and marriages are usually less about the couple than about relationships with the couple’s social network, including friends and family.

a) True

b) False

23. The incest taboo, or the prohibition against marrying within the nuclear family, is a human universal.

a) True

b) False

COMPREHENSION OF FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS

Multiple Choice

24. Why were American birth rates low from 1942 to 1946?

a) Most young married men were serving in the military.

b) The majority of household incomes were low because of the Great Depression.

c) There was legislation in place that discouraged or prohibited many people from having children.

d) Americans were not having sex.

25. Clans come in three types: matrilineal, patrilineal, and

a) cognatic.

b) acephalous.

c) nuclear.

d) corporate.

26. Which of the following do Americans traditionally inherit patrilineally?

a) land

b) height

c) wealth

d) surnames

27. When descent is based in a single line it is referred to as __________ descent.

a) matrilineal

b) patrilineal

c) unilineal

d) cognatic

28. Matrilineal descent is typically difficult for Americans to grasp because it feels so unnatural to us. What explains this feeling that matrilineal descent is unnatural since as Americans we also recognize that we are descended from one mother and her parents?

a) Our kinship system is bilateral, recognizing descent through both mother and father, so it seems strange to recognize only one of these lines.

b) We usually get our surnames from our mother, giving our kinship system a matrilineal bias.

c) Although women can now own property, be breadwinner and head of a household, and can earn more than a husband, many Americans still think of the ideal family as centered on the mother.

d) Our kinship system is based on innate biological orders for nurturing.

29. What do anthropologists call the structural process of forgetting whole groups of relatives?

a) ethnic forgetting

b) ethnic amnesia

c) genealogical forgetting

d) genealogical amnesia

30. What is the combined effect of having surnames that are inherited from a child’s father and having a woman take her husband’s surname at the time of marriage?

a) Land or real estate automatically goes to the couple’s sons rather than the daughters.

b) It is easier for the family to forget the surnames of women after several generations.

c) It prevents women from having any control over the family’s wealth.

d) Children disavow their matrilineal kin.

31. Women who practice polyandry tend to marry

a) two or more male cousins.

b) a father and his sons.

c) two or more male friends.

d) two or more brothers.

32. Which of the following is known as the “Westermarck effect”?

a) a birth defect that occurs among children of siblings

b) a birth defect that occurs among children of cousins

c) the psychological revulsion against having sex with close relatives

d) the psychological state where people are sexually attracted to their close relatives

33. In vitro fertilization (IVF) births account for approximately how many live births in the United States today?

a) 1 percent

b) 3 percent

c) 5 percent

d) 7 percent

34. Which technology led to what is referred to as the “sexual revolution” in the 1960s?

a) television

b) condoms

c) in vitro fertilization

d) birth control pills

Fill in the Blank

35. The practice of referring to people by the names of their children (such as father of Peter or mother of Susan) is called ____________________.

teknonyms

36. In the 1980s, technological developments moved away from ____________________ reproduction toward ____________________ reproduction.

preventing / encouraging (or assisting)

37. While many Americans consider marriage to be all about ____________________ and love, in many communities, it is also key in cultivating political and economic relations between families.

sex

38. Payments of cash, cattle, pigs, or shell ornaments between brothers-in-law are ____________________.

bride price

True/False

39. Nearly all cultures around the world give a similar importance to biological relatedness as the basis for defining a family.

a) True

b) False

40. Though the incest taboo is almost universal cross-culturally, there is no definitive biological explanation for its existence.

a) True

b) False

41. Forgetting large portions of relatives is usually done on purpose when people want to distance themselves from a certain part of their broad extended family.

a) True

b) False

42. Studies have shown that marriage is mostly about sex.

a) True

b) False

APPLICATION OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONCEPTS

Multiple Choice

43. Anthropologists think of bride price as being about not buying anyone but compensation for rights in women—her labor, her support for family affairs, her looking after children, and rights of sexual access. What other social payment is structurally most dissimilar to a bride price payment from this perspective?

a) a series of child price payments

b) a father’s purchase of a new car for his daughter when she goes off to college

c) a countergift for a bride price payment, usually of much lesser value than the original bride price payment

d) an American Valentine’s gift, given by a college student to his girlfriend

44. When cultural anthropologists examine families in different cultures, they use cultural analysis to understand all of the following except

a) why it makes sense for people to get married or not to get married in terms of the economic costs of establishing a separate household.

b) the genetic differences among different members of the extended family.

c) how popular media in the society being studied shapes people’s expectations of married life.

d) who looks after children in typical households.

45. Which of the following is not an anthropological concern that arises with in vitro fertilization (IVF), surrogacy, adoption, and the high rate of divorce and remarriage in American society?

a) whose names should be listed on the birth certificate as mother and father

b) the psychological effects of deviations from the nuclear family

c) what the child should expect of his or her relationship with the biological parents, surrogate mother, adopted parent, and all of the possible siblings

d) how the child should address each of these relatives

46. Why are soap operas and telenovelas and their popular consumption so interesting to anthropology?

a) They derive a lot of their plot lines from classic ethnographies.

b) They usually depict the opposite of idealized family life.

c) They are often censored by national governments, demonstrating the government’s regulation of family life.

d) They rely on cultural assumptions about family life and are fictional depictions of the family dynamics that are so important to so many people.

47. A cultural anthropologist interested in changing family structures in the United States would be least interested in studying

a) nuclear families.

b) political messaging around “traditional” family values.

c) natal families.

d) genetic drift.

48. An anthropologist interested in how technology affects kinship would be most likely to study

a) how much money families are spending on weddings.

b) which genetic diseases can be discovered and treated while a fetus is still in utero.

c) people who used the same anonymous sperm donor connecting online and planning family reunions.

d) religious bans on family planning methods such as condom use.

49. If you were an anthropologist studying polyandry, which of the following examples would be of most interest to you for your research?

a) contention among former South African president Jacob Zuma’s many wives

b) the popular television show, Big Love, which depicts a Mormon family who practice polygyny

c) recent adaptations in American home-building to appeal to multigenerational families living under one roof

d) the common practice of two brothers marrying one woman in Sherpa communities of Nepal

Short Answer

50. For most of our history American kinship has had a patrilineal bias, but in most American families women play a key role in keeping the families together. Using anthropological approaches to kinship, how do you explain this difference?

51. Extended families are important in America as they are in most societies. In the United States, what determines whether members of an extended family will meet face to face?

52. What are the social consequences that arise from having a system of unilineal descent rather than a cognatic system such as in the United States?

Essays

53. There are many different systems that people around the world use to classify their kin. Regardless of the system, most people suffer from some sort of genealogical amnesia. How and why does this “amnesia” occur? What are its consequences?

54. Although romance novels and romantic comedy films routinely emphasize that people should marry for love, there are many other reasons for marriage. Identify three of these other reasons why people might want to marry, whether they are in love or not. Could one be in love and still marry for these other reasons?

55. What kind of American corporate kin groups are found today? More than one-third of all households are single-person households. Can these individuals belong to corporate kin groups?

OPPORTUNITIES FOR ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS

Essays

56. When we hear people talk about the traditional American family as if it has always been structured in the same way since the Revolutionary War, we know they are simplifying the situation in unrealistic ways. What cultural factors are behind these unrealistic simplifications?

57. Dowry is often used in India to make a daughter more attractive to possible husbands, while bride price is used to compensate a family for the work and children of one of their daughters. Explain how both of these payments unite families but in different ways.

58. Same-sex marriage is legal in a number of states, but various kinds of restrictions on same-sex marriage and its recognition exist in the other states. What anthropological questions can you identify about the meaning that such unions have for Americans in different parts of the country that help to explain the legislative patterns in each state? What can we say about these cultural expectations when all of these changes happened within less than a decade?

59. Who would possibly be the “parents” and what kind of possible relationships would exist between those parents and a child in a birth in which an infertile couple used a sperm bank and the egg from the wife’s sister, a surrogate mother? What would change if the legal parents were killed in an auto accident and the child was adopted by the mother’s sister?