Test Bank Answers Culture Giving Meaning To Human Lives Ch.2 - Test Bank Welsch Cultural Anthro Humanity 3e by Robert L. Welsch. DOCX document preview.
Chapter 2: Culture: Giving Meaning to Human Lives
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 01
1) The anthropologist responsible for the concept of historical particularism was named
Feedback: Franz Boas was a pioneer anthropologist and the major figure responsible for establishing anthropology in America. Although he had a doctorate in physics, he became interested in studying non-Western cultures while conducting research on Baffin Island (today part of the Canadian territory of Nunavut) on the color of ice and sea water. He befriended many Inuit (so-called Eskimos) and learned that they thought about the world differently; for example, they did not distinguish between the colors green and blue. From these conversations, he learned a valuable lesson that would be at the heart of his work for the rest of his life: to learn about another people’s perspective, one has to try to overcome one’s own cultural frame-work. This perspective has come to be known as cultural relativism.
Page reference: What is Culture?
a. E. B. Tylor.
b. Morgan.
c. Alfred Kroeber.
d. Franz Boas.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 02
2) Who was responsible for the theory of functionalism?
Feedback: Malinowski is a key developer of functionalism, the idea that cultural practices, beliefs, and institutions fulfill psychological and social needs.
Page reference: How Do Social Institutions Express Culture?
a. Franz Boas
b. E. B. Tylor
c. Bronislaw Malinowski
d. Alfred Kroeber
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 03
3) The theory of culture that proposes that cultural practices, beliefs, and institutions fulfill the psychological and physical needs of society is called
Feedback: Malinowski is a key developer of functionalism, the idea that cultural practices, beliefs, and institutions fulfill psychological and social needs.
Page reference: How Do Social Institutions Express Culture?
a. historical particularism.
b. social evolution.
c. functionalism.
d. cultural materialism.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 04
4) Culture is
Feedback: The notion that culture is shared refers to the idea that people make sense of their worlds and or-der their lives through their participation in social groups. Although all human beings are born with the ability to learn culture, nobody is born as a fully formed cultural being. The process of learning a culture begins at birth, and that is partly why our beliefs and conduct seem so natural: we have been doing and thinking in certain ways since we were young.
Page reference: What is culture?
a. learned and shared.
b. a product of biology.
c. a product of individual psychology.
d. something you get when you go to the opera.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 05
5) Ethnocentrism
Feedback: Ethnocentrism is he assumption that one’s own way of doing things is correct, and that other people’s practices or views are wrong or ignorant.
Page reference: What is Culture?
a. is part of being a good anthropologist.
b. means you think your culture is superior to others.
c. is a rare feature of culture.
d. is the idea that all human actions are the products of culture.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 06
6) Cultural relativism is a concept that was pioneered by which anthropologist?
Feedback: Cultural relativism is the moral and intellectual principle that one should seek to understand cultures on their own terms and withhold judgment about seemingly strange or exotic beliefs and practices. This concept was developed by Franz Boas.
Page reference: What is Culture?
a. E. B. Tylor
b. Franz Boas
c. Alfred Kroeber
d. Clifford Geertz
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 07
7) The process of learning culture from a very young age is called
Feedback: Anthropologists call the process of learning the cultural rules and logic of a society enculturation. Enculturation happens both explicitly and implicitly and begins as soon as we are born.
Page reference: What is Culture?
a. enculturation.
b. Ethnocentrism.
c. Symbolism
d. acculturation.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 08
8) Enculturation starts
Feedback: Anthropologists call the process of learning the cultural rules and logic of a society enculturation. Enculturation happens both explicitly and implicitly and begins as soon as we are born.
Page reference: What is Culture?
a. around five years old.
b. around two years old.
c. as soon as we are born.
d. after puberty.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 09
9) Cultural determinism is
Feedback: Cultural determinism is the idea that all human actions are the product of culture, which denies the in-fluence of other factors like physical environment and human biology on human action.
Page reference: What is Culture?
a. the idea that culture waxes and wanes according to population size.
b. the idea that culture is determined by human evolution.
c. the belief that culture is determined by environment.
d. the belief that culture is responsible for all human action.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 10
10) Values are
Feedback: Values are symbolic expressions of intrinsically desirable principles or qualities.
Page reference: If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?
a. symbolic expressions of intrinsically desirable principles of qualities.
b. typical patterns of behavior viewed as rules of how things should be done.
c. the most enduring and ritualized aspects of culture.
d. something that conventionally stands for something else.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 11
11) Traditions are
Feedback: Traditions include practices and customs that have become most ritualized and enduring.
Page reference: If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?
a. symbolic expressions of intrinsically desirable principles of qualities.
b. typical patterns of behavior viewed as rules of how things should be done.
c. the most enduring and ritualized aspects of culture.
d. something that conventionally stands for something else.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 12
12) Norms are
Feedback: Norms include typical patterns of actual behavior as well as the rules about how things should be done.
Page reference: If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?
a. symbolic expressions of intrinsically desirable principles of qualities.
b. typical patterns of behavior viewed as rules of how things should be done.
c. the most enduring and ritualized aspects of culture.
d. something that conventionally stands for something else.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 13
13) The most enduring and ritualized aspects of culture are referred to as
Feedback: Traditions include practices and customs that have become most ritualized and enduring.
Page reference: If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?
a. values.
b. norms.
c. traditions.
d. symbols.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 14
14) A symbol
Feedback: Symbols can be an object, idea, image, figure, or character- something that represents something else.
Page reference: If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?
a. has no basis of influencing human behaviour.
b. is something that conventionally stands for something else.
c. has a very limited period of cultural salience.
d. is the idea that people collectively build meanings through collective negotiation.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 15
15) The perspective that aims to identify and understand cultures in their entirety is called
Feedback: A holistic perspective that aims to identify and understand the whole—that is, the systematic connections between individual cultural beliefs, practices, and social institutions—rather than the individual parts.
Page reference: How Do Social Institutions Express Culture?
a. holism.
b. structural.
c. symbolic
d. ethnocentrism.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 16
16) Examples of social institutions are
Feedback: The social institutions of any society are the organized sets of social relationships that link individuals to each other in a structured way. These institutions include patterns of kinship and marriage (domestic arrangements, the organization of sex and reproduction, raising children, etc.), economic activities (farming, herding, manufacturing, and trade), religious institutions (rituals, religious organizations, etc.), and political forms for controlling power.
Page reference: How Do Social Institutions Express Culture?
a. kinship, marriage, and farming.
b. numbers and the alphabet.
c. texts, books, and archival materials.
d. material artifacts.
Title: Chapter 02 Question 17
17) Anthropologists generally believe in one unified theory of culture.
Feedback: Since Tylor’s time, anthropologists have developed many theories of culture. We discuss many of these theories in later chapters, and we explore in more detail how they have changed over time. One of the most important changes in cultural theory is that early anthropologists tended to see cultures in societies with simple technologies as more fixed and stable than anyone does today. We now know that every culture is quick to change as conditions around it change. Another key change is that in recent decades anthropologists have emphasized the symbolic dimensions of people’s social lives, or how they are bound up in power relations. These approaches have led to more emphasis in recent times on interpretive and post-structuralist theories of culture. Nevertheless, across all these theories, there are seven basic elements that anthropologists agree are critical to any theory of culture.
Page reference: What is culture?
a. True
b. False
Type: True/False
Title: Chapter 02 Question 18
18) All humans are born with some culture.
Feedback: Although all human beings are born with the ability to learn culture, nobody is born as a fully formed cultural being. The process of learning a culture begins at birth, and that is partly why our beliefs and conduct seem so natural: we have been doing and thinking in certain ways since we were young.
Page reference: What is culture?
a. True
b. False
Type: True/False
Title: Chapter 02 Question 19
19) The very power of culture is that its processes feel totally unnatural and unpredictable.
Feedback: People need cultural stability. If we always had to stop and think about changes in the rules of social interaction, we could not function in our society. The very power of culture is that its pro-cesses feel totally natural and simultaneously predictable.
Page reference: If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?
a. True
b. False
Type: True/False
Title: Chapter 02 Question 20
20) Activities that are biologically based, such as eating and sleeping, are universally practiced in the same way for all humans.
Feedback: How we sleep also demonstrates that activities you might think of as “natural”—that is, biologically based, as sleeping is, and therefore universally the same for all humans—are actually culturally patterned. Culture helps shape the basic things all humans must do for biological survival, like eating, sleeping, drinking, defecating, having sex, and so on. There is no better illustration of this fact than food preferences. As omnivores, humans can eat an enormous range of foods. But many Americans’ stomachs churn at the thought of eating delicacies like rotten shark flesh (Iceland), buffalo penis stew (Thailand), or dogs (East Asia).
Page reference: What is culture?
a. True
b. False
Type: True/False
Title: Chapter 02 Question 21
21) Culture can be transmitted virtually through the Internet in addition to face-to-face interaction.
Feedback: Until recently, most anthropologists thought about culture as being transmitted and participated in through face-to-face networks in real communities. But, as every student knows, today we can participate in social groups virtually through the Internet, suggesting that the dynamics of creating shared cultures are shifting.
Page reference: What is culture?
a. True
b. False
Type: True/False
Title: Chapter 02 Question 22
22) At one level, nobody can own culture, but many will claim the exclusive right to the symbols that give it power and meaning.
Feedback: As we have defined culture, the question of “owning culture” may appear to make little sense. How can somebody own the collective processes through which people construct and naturalize certain meanings and actions as normal and necessary? For the most part, owning culture is about power relations between people who control resources and (typically) minority communities who have been kept outside the mainstream. At one level, nobody can own culture, but many will claim the exclusive right to the symbols that give it power and meaning.
Page reference: Can Anybody Own Culture?
a. True
b. False
Type: True/False
Title: Chapter 02 Question 23
23) The unilateral decision of one social group to take control of the symbols, objects, and practices of others is called cultural appropriation.
Feedback: Cultural appropriation is the unilateral decision of one social group to take control over the symbols, practices, or objects of another.
Page reference: Can Anybody Own Culture?
a. True
b. False
Type: True/False
Title: Chapter 02 Question 24
24) There is nothing anthropologists can do about cultural appropriation, the practice is as old as humanity itself.
Feedback: Cultural appropriation is as old as humanity itself. The fact that people adopt ideas, practices, and technologies from other societies demonstrates the fluidity of social boundaries and partly ex-plains why societies and cultures are changing all the time. Anthropologists work with individuals and group to address issues of cultural appropriation.
Page reference: Can Anybody Own Culture?
a. True
b. False
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 25
25) The main idea behind the holistic perspective is to study culture
Feedback: A holistic perspective that aims to identify and understand the whole—that is, the systematic connections between individual cultural beliefs, practices, and social institutions—rather than the individual parts.
Page reference: How Do Social Institutions Express Culture?
a. by its individual parts.
b. through systematic connections of different parts.
c. as integrated and balanced.
d. via symbols alone.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 26
26) Because our values and beliefs include many elements of life such as clothes, food, and language means that culture is
Feedback: The holistic perspective is a perspective that aims to identify and understand the whole—that is, the systematic connections between individual cultural beliefs, practices, and social institutions—rather than the individual parts. This does not mean contemporary anthropologists still see a society as wholly integrated and balanced. Rather, the holistic perspective is a methodological tool that helps show the interrelationships among different domains of a society, domains that include environmental context, history, social and political organization, economics, values, and spiritual life.
Page reference: How Do Social Institutions Express Culture?
a. static.
b. integrated.
c. a system.
d. symbolic.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 27
27) Anthropologists overcome ethnocentrism by
Feedback: Franz Boas was a pioneer anthropologist and the major figure responsible for establishing anthropology in America. Although he had a doctorate in physics, he became interested in studying non-Western cultures while conducting research on Baffin Island (today part of the Canadian territory of Nunavut) on the color of ice and sea water. He befriended many Inuit (so-called Eskimos) and learned that they thought about the world differently; for example, they did not distinguish between the colors green and blue. From these conversations, he learned a valuable lesson that would be at the heart of his work for the rest of his life: to learn about another people’s perspective, one has to try to overcome one’s own cultural frame-work. This perspective has come to be known as cultural relativism.
Page reference: What is Culture?
a. developing theories to explain human action.
b. studying a culture's customs.
c. defending whatever another culture does.
d. seeing matters from the point of view of another culture.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 28
28) Cultural determinism is unproductive for cultural analysis because it
Feedback: Cultural determinism is the idea that all human actions are the product of culture, which denies the in-fluence of other factors like physical environment and human biology on human action.
Page reference: What is Culture?
a. denies the influence of factors like physical environment and biology on humans.
b. denies the history of social atrocities.
c. explains that human action is the product of biology alone.
d. is commonly used as a guiding framework by contemporary cultural anthropologists.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 29
29) Norms are stable because
Feedback: Norms include typical patterns of actual behavior as well as the rules about how things should be done.
Page reference: If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?
a. culture doesn't change.
b. people learn them when they are older.
c. people learn them when they are young.
d. they are the same in every culture.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 30
30) The controversy between Native Americans and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) schools using mascots illustrates
Feedback: Traditions include practices and customs that have become most ritualized and enduring.
Page reference: If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?
a. the scientific method.
b. historical particularism.
c. the power of tradition.
d. cultural determinism.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 31
31) When Kay Warren presented her anthropological research, a group of Maya intellectuals, activists, and political leaders
Feedback: Anthropologists have not escaped indigenous scrutiny and criticism for claiming expertise about native cultures. Anthropologist Kay Warren (1998), for example, studied the rise of the Pan-Maya ethnic movement in Guatemala. When she gave an academic presentation on Maya political activism, Maya intellectuals and political leaders in attendance responded by challenging the right of foreign anthropologists even to study Maya culture. As Warren points out, indigenous movements like Pan-Mayanism reject the idea that anthropological knowledge is neutral or objective. They insist that doing anthropology raises important political and ethical questions: Who should benefit from anthropological research? Why do the people studied by anthropologists not get an opportunity to help define and evaluate research projects?
Page reference: Can Anybody Own Culture?
a. were there cheering her on.
b. challenged her right to study the Maya culture as a foreign anthropologist.
c. collaborated with Warren.
d. copublished the paper.
Type: True/False
Title: Chapter 02 Question 32
32) Cultural relativism is important because it helps anthropologists understand and defend all the things that people in other cultures do.
Feedback: Cultural relativism is he moral and intellectual principle that one should seek to understand cultures on their own terms and withhold judgment about seemingly strange or exotic beliefs and practices.
Page reference: What is Culture?
a. True
b. False
Type: True/False
Title: Chapter 02 Question 33
33) Culture consists of the collective processes that make the artificial seem natural.
Feedback: Culture is the taken-for-granted notions, rules, moralities, and behaviors within a social group.
Page reference: If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?
a. True
b. False
Type: True/False
Title: Chapter 02 Question 34
34) People rarely hold conflicting values.
Feedback: Values are symbolic expressions of intrinsically desirable principles or qualities.
Page reference: If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?
a. True
b. False
Type: True/False
Title: Chapter 02 Question 35
35) Cultural appropriation involves relationships of power.
Feedback: As we have defined culture, the question of “owning culture” may appear to make little sense. How can somebody own the collective processes through which people construct and naturalize certain meanings and actions as normal and necessary? For the most part, owning culture is about power relations between people who control resources and (typically) minority communities who have been kept outside the mainstream. At one level, nobody can own culture, but many will claim the exclusive right to the symbols that give it power and meaning.
Page reference: Can Anybody Own Culture?
a. True
b. False
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 36
36) The application of a holistic perspective to understand changes in everyday practices, such as eating breakfast cereals, reveals the
Feedback: The holistic perspective is a perspective that aims to identify and understand the whole—that is, the systematic connections between individual cultural beliefs, practices, and social institutions—rather than the individual parts. This does not mean contemporary anthropologists still see a society as wholly integrated and balanced. Rather, the holistic perspective is a methodological tool that helps show the interrelationships among different domains of a society, domains that include environmental context, history, social and political organization, economics, values, and spiritual life.
Page reference: How Do Social Institutions Express Culture?
a. interconnections between different domains of a society.
b. processes of cultural appropriation.
c. relativity of culture.
d. creation of cultural constructions.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 37
37) If you wanted to understand the norms of a society, you would be most likely to focus on
Feedback: Norms include typical patterns of actual behavior as well as the rules about how things should be done.
Page reference: If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?
a. ceremonialized aspects of a society.
b. everyday interactions.
c. the symbolic use of the body.
d. the principles and values people hold dear.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 38
38) How would a critical relativist explain Native American criticisms of cultural appropriation?
Feedback: As we have defined culture, the question of “owning culture” may appear to make little sense. How can somebody own the collective processes through which people construct and naturalize certain meanings and actions as normal and necessary? For the most part, owning culture is about power relations between people who control resources and (typically) minority communities who have been kept outside the mainstream. At one level, nobody can own culture, but many will claim the exclusive right to the symbols that give it power and meaning.
Page reference: Can Anybody Own Culture?
a. They are baseless complaints; cultural appropriation is as old as humanity itself.
b. Cultural appropriation is a positive process of change for any society.
c. It is important to understand Native American claims from their point of view though it doesn't necessarily mean we should accept them as the only way to view the issue.
d. It is in their culture to criticize dominant settler society.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 39
39) A cross-cultural perspective on eating insect larvae would reveal
Feedback: Anthropologists stress that a cross-cultural perspective (analyzing a human social phenomenon by comparing that phenomenon in different cultures) is necessary to appreciate just how “artificial” our beliefs and actions are. A cross-cultural perspective demonstrates the incredible flexibility and plasticity of the human species—human belief and practices come in all shapes and forms.
Page reference: What Is Culture?
a. that taste is biologically hardwired.
b. that eating insects is culturally maladaptive.
c. that eating insects is disgusting in all cultures.
d. the cultural constructions of insects as food.
Type: multiple choice question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 40
40) If a functionalist were to explain why the teacher lectures from the front of the classroom to students organized in neatly arranged chairs, she or he would emphasize that
Feedback: Malinowski is a key developer of functionalism, the idea that cultural practices, beliefs, and institutions fulfill psychological and social needs.
Page reference: How Do Social Institutions Express Culture?
a. learning happens best when students are being talked at.
b. this way of teaching organizes people to promote shared cultural goals.
c. this mode of teaching evolved over time.
d. the teacher is the symbolic head of the class.
Type: Short Answer
Title: Chapter 02 Question 41
41) Explain how a focus on values can help us understand why people around the world love their countries.
Feedback: Values are symbolic expressions of intrinsically desirable principles or qualities.
Page reference: If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?
Title: Chapter 02 Question 42
42) How would you apply a holistic approach to the study of technological change?
Feedback: The holistic perspective is a perspective that aims to identify and understand the whole—that is, the systematic connections between individual cultural beliefs, practices, and social institutions—rather than the individual parts. This does not mean contemporary anthropologists still see a society as wholly integrated and balanced. Rather, the holistic perspective is a methodological tool that helps show the interrelationships among different domains of a society, domains that include environmental context, history, social and political organization, economics, values, and spiritual life.
Page reference: How Do Social Institutions Express Culture?
Type: Short Answer
Title: Chapter 02 Question 43
43) How would you apply a cross-cultural approach to study sleeping habits?
Feedback: Anthropologists stress that a cross-cultural perspective (analyzing a human social phenomenon by comparing that phenomenon in different cultures) is necessary to appreciate just how “artificial” our beliefs and actions are. A cross-cultural perspective demonstrates the incredible flexibility and plasticity of the human species—human belief and practices come in all shapes and forms.
Page reference: What Is Culture?
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 44
44) How would you use the culture concept to help you analyze the social relationships involved in social media?
Feedback: The concept of culture is also at the heart of anthropology. But anthropologists interpret culture differently from these uses of the term and provide it with its most foundational and scientific definitions. Culture, as anthropologists use the term, is a concept that refers to the per-pectives and actions that a group of people consider natural, self-evident, and appropriate. These perspectives and actions are rooted in shared meanings and the ways people act in social groups. Culture is, as we will see, a uniquely human capacity that helps us confront the common problems that face all humans, like communicating with each other, organizing ourselves to get things done, making life predictable and meaningful, and dealing with conflict and change. From an anthropological perspective, culture is a central component of what it means to be human.
Page reference: What is culture?
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 45
45) How would (a) a functionalist and (b) an interpretive anthropologist analyze Americans' love of baseball? How would their analyses differ?
Feedback: Malinowski is a key developer of functionalism, the idea that cultural practices, beliefs, and institutions fulfill psychological and social needs.
Page reference: How Do Social Institutions Express Culture?
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 46
46) What is the role of symbols in our everyday lives? Give an example of an important symbol, and discuss how and why it creates meaning.
Feedback: Symbols can be an object, idea, image, figure, or character- something that represents something else.
Page reference: If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 47
47) Why does culture feel stable and natural when it is something that is artificial?
Feedback: Imagine how chaotic life would be if you could not expect the same rules and processes for inter-acting with others from one week to the next. People need cultural stability. If we always had to stop and think about changes in the rules of social interaction, we could not function in our socie-ty. The very power of culture is that its processes feel totally natural and simultaneously predict-able. Yet the previous section defined culture in a way that emphasizes its processes as dynamic and emergent.
Page reference: If Culture Is Always Changing, Why Does It Feel So Stable?
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 48
48) What are social institutions, and how do they affect culture?
Feedback: The holistic perspective is a perspective that aims to identify and understand the whole—that is, the systematic connections between individual cultural beliefs, practices, and social institutions—rather than the individual parts. This does not mean contemporary anthropologists still see a society as wholly integrated and balanced. Rather, the holistic perspective is a methodological tool that helps show the interrelationships among different domains of a society, domains that include environmental context, history, social and political organization, economics, values, and spiritual life.
Page reference: How Do Social Institutions Express Culture?
Type: essay/short answer question
Title: Chapter 02 Question 49
49) Thinking holistically, what would you study if you wanted to understand the introduction of the cell phone into a rural community?
Feedback: The holistic perspective is a perspective that aims to identify and understand the whole—that is, the systematic connections between individual cultural beliefs, practices, and social institutions—rather than the individual parts. This does not mean contemporary anthropologists still see a society as wholly integrated and balanced. Rather, the holistic perspective is a methodological tool that helps show the interrelationships among different domains of a society, domains that include environmental context, history, social and political organization, economics, values, and spiritual life.
Page reference: How Do Social Institutions Express Culture?