Deck 9: Politics: Cooperation, Conflict, and Power Relations

Question 1

Laws

A) entail a third party who intervenes in a dispute to aid the parties in reaching an agreement.
B) are sets of rules established by some formal authority.
C) are when parties themselves reach a decision jointly.
D) are the legal process by which an individual or council with socially recognized authority intervenes in a dispute and unilaterally makes a decision.

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Lineage or clan ownership of land and livestock, with little sense of private property, characterizes the

A) band.
B) tribe.
C) chiefdom.
D) state.

Answer 2

B

Question 3

A band is a

A) centralized group of people who have a high population density and participate in intensive agriculture.
B) centralized group of people who have a medium population density and participate in extensive agriculture.
C) noncentralized group of people who have a low to medium population density and participate in pastoralism or horticulture.
D) noncentralized group of people who have a low population density and participate in foraging.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Independent states recognized by other states, and composed of people who share a single national identity, are referred to as

A) governments.
B) tribes.
C) chiefdoms.
D) nation-states.

Question 5

Which of the following social structures was identified as a way that African societies maintained order?

A) Educational systems
B) Presidential authority
C) Religious practices and beliefs
D) Parliamentary systems

Question 6

Age-grades

A) organize women in Maasai society.
B) organize food sharing among the !Kung.
C) organize men into generational groups among the Maasai.
D) organize hunting parties among the Nuer.

Question 7

What form of lineage is flexible, noncentralized, and quickly created and dismantled?

A) Reciprocity
B) Age-grade
C) Centralized
D) Segmentary

Question 8

For a big man in a nonstate society, what is the most powerful and valuable tool?

A) Force
B) Formal authority
C) Corruption
D) Persuasion

Question 9

Negotiation

A) entails a third party who intervenes in a dispute to aid the parties in reaching an agreement.
B) is a set of rules established by some formal authority.
C) is when parties themselves reach a decision jointly.
D) is the legal process by which an individual or council with socially recognized authority intervenes in a dispute and unilaterally makes a decision.

Question 10

To follow political action one must be familiar with society's rules and codes about who gets to exercise power and under what conditions.

Question 11

Big men can transfer their power and status through inheritance when they die.

Question 12

In some hunter-gatherer groups relations are egalitarian and women can become leaders of a band.

Question 13

Political acts include all of the following except

A) running for election.
B) protesting against police brutality.
C) gossiping about a neighbor to shame them for not fulfilling their obligations.
D) serving as treasurer during a game of Monopoly.

Question 14

Identification cards are an example of

A) structural power.
B) violence.
C) surveillance.
D) politics.

Question 15

How do religious rituals function politically?

A) By legitimating community authority
B) By reducing fear
C) By fostering disputes
D) They do not function politically

Question 16

The exercise of political power in state and nonstate societies is different in all of the following respects except

A) the ways in which power is gained.
B) the uses of violence and coercion toward political ends.
C) the importance of personal connections.
D) the ways in which power is transmitted to others.

Question 17

The exercise of political power requires

A) force.
B) violence.
C) authority.
D) legitimacy.

Question 18

Control over symbolic, material, and human resources are important dimensions of

A) age-grades.
B) adjudication.
C) mediation.
D) political power.

Question 19

When people describe violence as meaningless they

A) are correct.
B) interpret violence as something without reason.
C) humanize the perpetrators.
D) fail to justify violence as a necessary part of society.

Question 20

Violence between ethnic groups is not inevitable, but the idea that it is persists. Which of the following is not a reason for its persistence?

A) It offers a tidy narrative that seems to explain the world.
B) Mass media repeat the idea regularly.
C) Ethnic leaders promote the idea to gain power.
D) Ethnic groups actually do fight with each other all the time.

Question 21

The importance of a phenomenon like "revenge suicide" in Papua New Guinea is that it

A) demonstrates why women are irrational.
B) demonstrates why men are controlling and mean toward women.
C) demonstrates that the nonpowerful have ways of exercising political power.
D) demonstrates the difficulty of locating structural power.

Question 22

In some societies witchcraft accusations can work as an informal method of social control.

Question 23

A key feature of political anthropologist Maxwell Owusu's perspective on democracy in Ghana is that the state will work better if village chiefs play a role in decision-making.

Question 24

The central idea of Evans-Pritchard's concept of segmentary lineages is that the Nuer people have organized themselves politically into stable lineages, or segments.

Question 25

The neo-evolutionary typology of political systems would classify the role of president of the city council in your hometown as

A) headman of a tribe.
B) a big man.
C) a bureaucrat in a centralized state.
D) a chief.

Question 26

An action theorist studying political power in the US Senate would be especially interested in

A) the normative rules of conduct that senators are supposed to follow.
B) the way the field of social relations structures senators' interactions.
C) the ways female senators exercise power in a male-dominated institution.
D) the delegation of political power from one individual to another.

Question 27

Which of the following is NOT a research agenda that focuses on structural power?

A) An examination of the U.S. census office and how people shape their actions when asked census questions
B) A study of children bullying each other on the playground in Brazil
C) A study about policies related to hygiene and family management and the result on reproductive practices among Italian families after World War I
D) An examination of laborers on banana plantations in Costa Rica, where workers have limited potential for wealth accumulation due to foreign ownership of plantations

Question 28

Which of the following explanations of political relationships among the !Kung would be least likely to come from a traditional political anthropologist?

A) The !Kung make decisions as a group.
B) The !Kung use food-sharing as a way to equalize relationships.
C) The !Kung have to navigate complex politics as ethnic minorities in states that don't want them.
D) The way politics works among the !Kung is the most basic form of human politics.

Question 29

How might an advocate of structural power explain the use of a census by the US government?

Question 30

Is action theory applicable to a study of a sports team? Explain your answer.

Question 31

What are the primary strengths of the gendered approach to political power? Give an example of a project in which you might use it.

Question 32

How would you use structural-functionalism in a study of how order in your university is maintained?

Question 33

What role do you think perspectives drawn from political anthropology could play in governing a country?

Question 34

Is there structural power in the United States? If not, why? If so, give an example and use the discussion of structural power from the book to make your case.

Question 35

How do societies that do not have central governments maintain order?

Question 36

How does political power work in both state and nonstate societies?

Question 37

How is violence culturally constructed?