Deck 12: Political Systems 

Question 1

Tribal societies, which are typically organized by village life or membership in descent groups, tend to be egalitarian. However, egalitarianism diminishes

A) as the village head's family grows.
B) as tribal leaders gain too much power and start to put it to use to buy favors.
C) as village size and population density increase.
D) as the overall population ages.
E) the closer one is to the big man's wife.

Answer 1

as village size and population density increase.

Question 2

Which of the following kinds of societies is most likely to have stratum endogamy (marriage within one's own group)?

A) society with segmentary lineage organization
B) state
C) band
D) tribe
E) chiefdom

Answer 2

state

Question 3

A big man's position depends on all of the following EXCEPT

A) creation of wealth superior to that of others.
B) personal charisma.
C) generosity.
D) hard work.
E) inherited inequality.

Answer 3

inherited inequality.

Question 4

In the context of tribal societies, what is a "big man"?

A) a hereditary ruler
B) someone who holds a permanent political office
C) a leader who has tremendous power because he is regarded as divine
D) a person who creates his reputation through entrepreneurship and generosity to others
E) a leader who avoids excessive displays of generosity

Question 5

Modern foragers are not Stone Age relics, living fossils, lost tribes, or noble savages. Still, to the extent that foraging has been the basis of their subsistence, contemporary and recent hunter-gatherers

A) illustrate the social precursors to hegemony.
B) illustrate links between foraging economies and the emergence of social stratification.
C) can illustrate links between foraging economies and other aspects of society and culture, such as their sociopolitical organization.
D) suggest that the most basic motive driving human survival is the need for power.
E) are the closest we can come to studying true human nature.

Question 6

How does a big man increase his status?

A) The term big man refers to the liminal state a Kapauku youth enters before marriage; he accumulates wealth as a way of funding the wedding and paying the bride price.
B) Big men are typically war leaders, and as such must have a standing supply of "grievance gifts" to compensate the families of warriors who die under their command.
C) The primary means of becoming a big man is the wearing of a tonowi shell necklace, which is imported from the coast and is therefore quite expensive by Kapauku standards.
D) Big men are village heads who are trying to turn their achieved status into something more permanent; the standard way of doing this is through conspicuous symbolic displays of wealth.
E) Big men do not keep the wealth they accumulate; instead, they redistribute it to create and maintain alliances with political supporters.

Question 7

As an example of how virtually no one is immune from larger political and economic forces, the Yanomami tribal society of Brazil has suffered recent changes as a result of

A) encroachment by gold miners and ranchers.
B) village raiding among tribal groups.
C) the involvement of NGOs in their internal political affairs.
D) being overrun by the more expansion-minded Nilotic peoples.
E) modern-minded big men amassing so much wealth that people have begun to regard them as chiefs.

Question 8

Noting that chiefdoms created the megalithic cultures of Europe, such as the one that built Stonehenge, Kottak reminds us that

A) all chiefdoms end up becoming states.
B) all powerful chiefdoms required elaborate stonework to be recognized by competing groups.
C) chiefdoms that failed to become states did not have enough stone.
D) chiefdoms have been among the rarest forms of social organization throughout human history.
E) chiefdoms and states can fall as well as rise.

Question 9

A comparison between the Basseri and Qashqai, two Iranian nomadic tribes, illustrates how as regulatory problems increase,

A) political hierarchies become more complex.
B) rules regarding crime and punishment become more severe.
C) pastoralists are less likely to interact with other populations in the same space and time.
D) silence becomes the best strategy for avoiding conflict.
E) age sets begin to disintegrate.

Question 10

In which of the following forms of political organization is it most likely that the most important leaders will acquire their positions based on personal background or ability, rather than heredity?

A) tribal societies
B) imagined communities
C) chiefdoms
D) feudal states
E) agrarian, preindustrial states

Question 11

Kottak prefers the term sociopolitical organization to Morton Fried's term political organization in discussing the regulation or management of interrelations among groups and their representatives. This is because

A) the term sociopolitical is more politically correct.
B) Fried's definition is much less applicable to nonstates, in which it is often difficult to detect any public policy.
C) the term political refers only to contemporary Western states.
D) sociopolitical is the term the founders of anthropology used to refer to the regulation or management of interrelations among groups and their representatives.
E) anthropologists and political scientists have an interest in political systems and organization, but they cannot agree on the same terminology.

Question 12

What is an age set?

A) a group uniting men born during a certain span of time in some pastoral African societies
B) a pantribal sodality that represents a certain level of achievement in the society, much like the stages of an undergraduate's progress through college
C) a village council
D) all men and women related by virtue of matrilineal descent from a nonhuman apical ancestor
E) all men and women related by virtue of patrilineal descent from a human apical ancestor

Question 13

Foraging economies are usually associated with which type of sociopolitical organization?

A) primate
B) tribal
C) band
D) state
E) chiefdom

Question 14

Why is it important to remember that the chiefdom and the state, like many categories used by social scientists, are ideal types?

A) They are labels that make social contrasts seem sharper than they really are.
B) They distinguish political and sociopolitical analyses among social scientists.
C) They represent social goals that politicians should strive to achieve.
D) They ensure that the field of anthropology remains more scientific.
E) They are useless in sociopolitical analysis.

Question 15

Which of the following was NOT used by traditional Inuit to handle disputes?

A) song contests
B) blood feuds
C) killing of the offender
D) courts of law
E) kin ties

Question 16

Which of the following statements about political leaders in foraging bands is true?

A) They are the most dominant males in the largest, most powerful descent group.
B) They have no means of forcing people to follow their decisions.
C) They maintain control by conquering foreign territories.
D) They maintain power by nurturing strong ties with the commoner class.
E) They have inherited special access to strategic resources.

Question 17

The status systems of chiefdoms and states are similar in that both are based on differential access to resources. Nevertheless, a key distinction is that

A) status is much more important to leaders in chiefdoms than in states.
B) stratum endogamy exists in chiefdoms but not in state status systems.
C) in chiefdoms, women are always excluded from the competition for status, whereas in states, this gender difference does not exist.
D) differential access in chiefdoms is still very much tied to kinship.
E) the status system of chiefdoms can sometimes function in a completely egalitarian manner when the populations are small enough.

Question 18

Despite the analytical usefulness of learning about anthropologist Elman Service's typology of political organization into bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states, it is important to remember that

A) Bronislaw Malinowski first came up with this typology.
B) none of these political entities, or polities, can be studied as a self-contained form of political organization, because all exist within nation-states.
C) it applies only to the reality of societies in the so-called Third World.
D) people all over the world vocally reject being classified under such a typology and typically express their anger through hidden transcripts.
E) it has no practical value in ethnographic research, only in theoretical anthropology.

Question 19

The Yanomami of Venezuela and Brazil have descent groups, which span more than one village and are

A) matrilineal and primarily dependent on foraging.
B) without gender stratification.
C) patrilineal and exogamous in nature.
D) purely horticultural.
E) typically led by a female leader.

Question 20

The Inuit song battle is

A) a widespread feature of tribal society.
B) used to initiate colonial strategies.
C) sometimes the occasion for a "treacherous feast."
D) a ritualized means of designating hunting lands.
E) a means of resolving disputes in order to forestall open conflict.

Question 21

The presence and acceptance of which of the following is one of the key distinguishing features of a state?

A) gender differences in terms of access to resources
B) generosity, even at the fiscal level
C) the authority of charismatic leaders
D) rapport between the elites and commoners
E) stratification

Question 22

In tribal societies, the village head leads by example and through persuasion; he lacks the ability to force people to do things.

Question 23

What is hegemony?

A) use of social controls that induce guilt and shame in the population
B) a stratified social order in which subordinates comply with domination by internalizing their rulers' values and accepting the "naturalness" of domination
C) overt sociopolitical strategies used to control people
D) the critique of power by the oppressed that goes on offstage, in private, where the power holders can't see it
E) open, public interactions between dominators and the oppressed-the outer shell of power relations

Question 24

In an ethnographic field study of political systems in northern Mozambique, Nicholas Kottak found that avoiding shame can be an effective control against breaking social norms. This example of how shame can be a powerful social sanction

A) joins the work of many other anthropologists that cite the importance of informal processes of social control, including gossip and stigma.
B) is unique among ethnographic cases illustrating the variety of sociopolitical systems that exist in the world today.
C) is often a key component of the formal processes of social control.
D) is an indication that women tend to suffer from the consequences of shame more than men do.
E) is evidence that shame is a cultural universal.

Question 25

Age grades represent stages in one's life with specific tasks, obligations, and duties for the individuals in a given grade.

Question 26

The sociopolitical organization of foragers tends to be bands.

Question 27

The key difference between a village head and a big man is that the big man has supporters in many villages, whereas the supporters of the village head are restricted to his respective village.

Question 28

The anthropological approach to the study of political systems and organization is global and comparative and includes nonstates as well as the states and nation-states usually studied by political scientists.

Question 29

According to Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault,

A) overt violence is critical in order for a state to succeed in dominating its population.
B) anatomically modern humans have a long way to go in the process of evolution, since they are so easily tricked into believing that forms of state control are both natural and good.
C) if state institutions such as prisons and schools are able to control people's bodies, their minds will follow.
D) it is easier and more effective to dominate people in their minds than to try to control their bodies.
E) anthropologists have no business studying the process of how the dominant ideology becomes internalized, since this is the job of psychologists and political scientists.

Question 30

How do chiefdoms differ from states?

A) Chiefdoms are based on differential access.
B) Chiefdoms lack socioeconomic stratification and stratum endogamy.
C) Chiefdoms have permanent political regulation.
D) Chiefdoms lack ascribed statuses.
E) Chiefdoms have full-time religious specialists.

Question 31

In the anthropological study of political systems, social control maintains social norms (cultural standards) and regulates conflict. Which of the following is NOT a form of social control?

A) exogamy
B) shame
C) making subordinates believe they will eventually gain power
D) hegemony
E) gossip

Question 32

Which of the following is the most important factor in determining an individual's power and prestige in a state?

A) physical size
B) speaking ability
C) personality
D) social status
E) anthropomorphism

Question 33

The influential sociologist Max Weber defined which three related dimensions of social stratification?

A) superordinate, ordinate, and subordinate
B) wealth, power, and prestige
C) judiciary, enforcement, and fiscal
D) cultural capital, power, and population control
E) selfishness, greed, and ignorance

Question 34

Pantribal sodalities function to integrate the community by providing a series of important nonkin relationships.

Question 35

According to Max Weber, prestige is the basis of

A) social status.
B) economic status.
C) political status.
D) power.
E) political capital.

Question 36

Most band and tribal societies in the world today are completely cut off from the rest of the world.

Question 37

In the southern United States before the Civil War, gatherings of five or more slaves were forbidden unless a white person was present, because

A) these whites were actually covert anthropologists eager to study social relations during these politically difficult times.
B) resistance is most likely to be expressed openly when people are allowed to assemble.
C) some whites were eager to join the black slaves in their plans, some successful, in establishing free communities in isolated areas.
D) resistance was most likely to be expressed openly when black slaves were provoked by the presence of white persons.
E) white persons were curious about the use of the story of Moses that was popular among slaves at the time.

Question 38

Which of the following is/are NOT typical of state-level societies?

A) a purely foraging-based subsistence strategy
B) a specialized decision-making system
C) class stratification
D) intensive, managed agriculture
E) boundary maintenance systems

Question 39

In bands, the leader occupies an official office with coercive control over the members of the community.

Question 40

Since bands lack formalized law, they have no way of settling disputes.

Question 41

In chiefdoms, chiefs occupy formal offices and administer or regulate a series of villages.

Question 42

States are complex systems of sociopolitical organization that aim to control and administer everything from conflict resolution to fiscal systems to population movements.

Question 43

Social controls refers to the fields of the social system-beliefs, practices, and institutions-that are most actively involved in the maintenance of norms and the regulation of conflict.

Question 44

A fiscal system includes the judges, laws, and courts that resolve conflicts.

Question 45

Stratum endogamy is restricted to chiefdoms, wherein chiefs occupied a formal elite stratum in society.

Question 46

The efficacy of social control depends on how clearly people envision the sanctions that an antisocial act might trigger.

Question 47

In the Igbo women's war, women used song, dance, noise, and "in-your-face" behavior to attempt to subvert formal authority, but women did not gain any greater influence.

Question 48

The Qashqai and Basseri peoples are examples of nomadic foragers who live in modern-day Iran.

Question 49

According to Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault, it is easier and more effective to dominate people in their minds than to try to control their bodies.

Question 50

Population control in states refers to the police and military.

Question 51

The elites of archaic states restricted access to sumptuary goods.

Question 52

With the rise of states, kinship's role in society continued to grow and dominate daily activities.

Question 53

In chiefdoms, individuals are ranked according to seniority, but everyone is believed to be descended from a common set of ancestors.

Question 54

Status in chiefdoms and states is based primarily on differential access to resources.