Deck 4: Culture

Question 1

Which of the following examples does not illustrate a conflict over culture?

A) Different states have different speed limits on their state highways.
B) In the 1990s, watchdog groups required albums with lyrics deemed offensive to be labeled with a parental warning.
C) In the 1950s, a Senate subcommittee investigated the dangers of comic books.
D) At the heart of many debates over public school dress codes is the claim that some clothes-such as leggings, or tops with narrow straps-sexualize girls. Some people argue that they do, while others argue that it is not clothing itself but the policies about them that sexualize girls.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

One general trend about culture, especially pop culture, is that

A) young people tend to discard cultural practices as their elders adopt them
B) young people often create the laws that govern culture
C) distinct cultures for youth and adults have only been around for about 25 years
D) adults tend to welcome warmly cultural innovations introduced by youth

Answer 2

A

Question 3

What term describes the entire set of beliefs, knowledge, practices, and material objects that a society defines as meaningful and that it seeks to pass from one generation to the next?

A) Culture
B) Society
C) Art and craft
D) Meaning

Answer 3

A

Question 4

The work of society is to teach its people the social meaning of its culture. This process is termed

A) encoding
B) socialization
C) cultural imperialism
D) cultural hierarchy

Question 5

In American culture, closing one eye quickly but not the other ("winking") can indicate a joke, flirtation, or a lie. The ambiguity of this gesture illustrates that

A) symbolic meanings are so unstable as to be nearly impossible to understand
B) symbolic meanings vary from culture to culture
C) symbolic meanings must be understood in the context of interactions and relationships
D) symbolic meanings change over time

Question 6

Which of the following examples illustrates how fashion has symbolic meaning?

A) Making clothes using sweatshop labor often keeps prices low for consumers.
B) Many young children are sensitive to uncomfortable clothes, including tags, seams, and rough fabrics.
C) Clothing that is produced using traditional techniques and that rejects, in its production, the exploitation of workers is often termed "slow clothing."
D) In the past, high-heeled shoes were worn by the wealthy, regardless of gender, but now they are seen as a signal of femininity.

Question 7

You can signal your expertise over an area of culture such as wine by

A) demonstrating your knowledge of the smallest kinds of differences between elements of it-for example, by detecting the differences in kinds of closely related wine
B) including stocks in your stock portfolio that relate to vineyards
C) purchasing credentials, even though you didn't earn them, such as bribing a judge in a wine competition
D) appointing yourself with a title that indicates your expertise, even if others do not recognize it

Question 8

Culture is always changing because

A) people generally prefer to recover old cultural practices and return to them in order to preserve tradition
B) technological innovation generally fails, so we are frequently testing out and then rejecting new technologies
C) individuals and groups are constantly trying to distinguish themselves by using culture in new ways
D) culture is a by-product of the natural world; therefore, as the natural world changes, so too will culture

Question 9

Which of the following is an example of ideal culture?

A) A teacher's whistle
B) A playground
C) a red rubber playground ball
D) The rules of kickball

Question 10

Which of the following is an example of material culture?

A) Doing the "wave" at a baseball game as an expression of solidarity with other fans
B) Booing an umpire to express disapproval of a decision to call a ball a strike in baseball
C) Popcorn and crackerjacks
D) Singing the national anthem at a baseball game as an expression of patriotism

Question 11

Ideal culture is based on

A) technology
B) arts and crafts
C) fiction and storytelling
D) language

Question 12

What is the thesis of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America?

A) All nations that developed from former British settler colonies (Canada, the U.S., Australia) share a common culture.
B) Democracy was more likely to develop in cultures that are Protestant.
C) English-speaking nations are more likely to develop capitalism.
D) American values include individualism, hard work, economic success, and religious and political freedom.

Question 13

What are "traditional values"?

A) Religion, no matter what form it takes, and family, no matter what form it takes
B) Religious tolerance, multiculturalism, cooperation
C) Violence ("might makes right"), questioning of authority
D) Traditional religion, family, national pride

Question 14

What are "survival values"?

A) Respect for nature and environmental protections
B) Rugged individualism and self-sustainability, such as the ability to hunt and fish
C) Economic and physical security
D) Pessimism and resignation to the difficulties of life

Question 15

What are "secular-rational values"?

A) Individualism, science, and critique
B) Kindness, "saving face," and protecting the dignity of others
C) Competition, economic striving, and relentless commitment to work
D) Art, creativity, and intuition

Question 16

What are "self-expression values"?

A) Tolerance, political participation, and personal happiness
B) Tribalism, respect for hierarchy, and pride in tradition
C) Collaboration, gratitude, and accountability to one's community
D) Artistic performance, public funding for the common good, and anarchy

Question 17

When Durkheim argued that beliefs are primarily social, he meant that

A) each generation must create its beliefs on its own, apart from the influence of previous generations
B) individuals have tremendous power in changing ideology
C) what we believe is shaped by the groups to which we belong
D) most of the time, most people resist believing what they are taught; they must be coerced into it

Question 18

A profound, society-threatening conflict over values is called

A) a culture war
B) discourse
C) cultural imperialism
D) cultural hierarchy

Question 19

Systems of shared meaning that justify existing relationships of power and privilege are

A) cultural hierarchies
B) ideologies
C) forms of cultural imperialism
D) stereotypes

Question 20

Scholars influenced by the work of Karl Marx are particularly concerned about what two sources of ideological social control?

A) Race and ethnicity
B) Religion and national patriotism
C) Ethnic identity and national identity
D) Religion and race

Question 21

Which of the following statements is a Marxist analysis of contemporary politics in the U.S.?

A) The Green Party tries to rally people around concerns about climate change and environmental disaster, which scientists broadly agree is an existential threat to human survival.
B) The Democratic Party cites state-level restrictions on abortion rights as evidence of a larger effort to end or curtail abortion rights and encourages people to vote for pro-choice candidates, who are disproportionately Democratic.
C) The Republican Party tries to mobilize white voters with the threat of undocumented immigrants taking jobs from them, though the social science research is clear that, in general, low-wage immigrant workers are a net benefit to the U.S. economy and that automation, outsourcing, and low corporate taxes are much more financially damaging to the average American worker.
D) States with fewer people actually have proportionately more power in the electoral college.

Question 22

Karl Marx is the sociologist who articulated the concept(s) of

A) discourse
B) ideology
C) encoding and decoding
D) active audiences

Question 23

Stereotypes

A) are always directed from less powerful to more powerful people
B) are always negative
C) are always rooted in some germ of fact
D) can be positive or negative, though both positive and negative stereotypes cause harm

Question 24

Anti-Semitism is hostility, stereotypes, and discrimination that target people who are

A) LGBTQ
B) Jewish
C) Muslim
D) Asian

Question 25

Which American industrialist contributed to the production and circulation of anti-Semitic literature in the years leading up to the Holocaust?

A) Andrew Carnegie
B) Henry Clay Frick
C) Henry Ford
D) Arianna Huffington

Question 26

Foucault's insights about power, self-control, and surveillance emerged from his observations in

A) weight loss spas
B) mental hospitals
C) military barracks
D) strip clubs

Question 27

We rely on ____________________ to tell us what cultural practices and objects are better and worse than others.

A) multiculturalism
B) discourse
C) subcultures
D) cultural hierarchies

Question 28

Cultural hierarchies can be a way to enforce

A) surveillance in the educational system
B) exclusion in social life based on class
C) feelings of insecurity among those who are wealthy
D) legal protections for people with minority status in a society

Question 29

When sociologist Harold Garfinkel said in 1967 that people are not "cultural dopes," he meant that

A) people are unable to see themselves as victims of cultural power
B) people unthinkingly accept the messages encoded in cultural symbols
C) people can resist the messages that their culture sends
D) it takes a strong, innovative leader to point out when cultural messages are harmful

Question 30

The processes through which powerful people try to create forms of material and ideal culture and by which everyday people interpret that culture are called

A) encoding and decoding
B) cultural imperialism and globalization
C) activation and resistance
D) xenophobia and multiculturalism

Question 31

A federal agency that studies health has just released a major report that provides further evidence that vaccinations present a much lower risk of injury, illness, or disease for individuals and communities than does not getting vaccinated. Which audience is most likely to reject the meaning that the government agency has tried to encode?

A) An anti-government blogger
B) A nurse who blogs about her frustrations with anti-vaxxing families
C) A CEO of a company that produces vaccinations
D) A teenager whose parents refused to vaccinate him and who is now seeking judicial permission to be vaccinated, even though he is still a minor

Question 32

When ethnocentrism remains unchallenged, it can lead to

A) xenophobia
B) globalization
C) multiculturalism
D) cultural relativism

Question 33

Dr. Jong is studying a group of teenagers who enjoy playing fantasy tabletop games such as Dungeons and Dragons. She observes that this game is deeply meaningful to the teens but that their parents are frustrated with their interest in the game, arguing that it is a meaningless waste of time. Dr. Jong encourages the parents to try to understand how the game can be meaningful to their teenage children at the stage of life and in the social situation they are currently in. In this way, Dr. Jong is encouraging the parents to adopt a perspective that values

A) cultural relativism
B) cultural hierarchies
C) multiculturalism
D) encoding and decoding

Question 34

A society's commitment to the celebration and protection of all the different cultural practices and traditions of its people is termed

A) globalization
B) cultural relativism
C) multiculturalism
D) tolerance

Question 35

In the U.S., undocumented immigrants who are not white and Canadian, European, or Australian are targeted by anti-immigrant activists and Immigration and Custom Enforcement officers at a much higher rate than undocumented immigrants who are white and from European nations or nations with a shared history of British colonization. This is evidence of _____________ in the treatment of undocumented immigrants.

A) globalization
B) xenophobia
C) cultural relativism
D) cultural imperialism

Question 36

When people assume that their society is superior to others, they are demonstrating

A) cultural imperialism
B) anti-Semitism
C) ethnocentrism
D) cultural relativism

Question 37

In recent years, street artists in Bulgaria, a former communist state, have taken to painting statues of Soviet leaders from the communist era to look like icons from American popular culture. Thus, statues that were intended to represent pride in the Soviet domination of Bulgaria now look like Ronald McDonald and Captain America. What practice of cultural resistance are these artists enacting?

A) Cultural imperialism
B) Multiculturalism
C) Ethnocentrism
D) Culture jamming

Question 38

Which of the following is an example of ethnocentrism?

A) Each year, the town of Neu Braunfels, Texas, which was a historic destination for German immigrants to America, hosts Wurstfest, a celebration of German and German-Texan heritage. People of all ethnic backgrounds are invited to enjoy traditions such as eating wurst (various meats), drinking beer, and folk dancing.
B) It is "Spirit Week" at Roosevelt High School, and the different grades of students compete against each other every day to demonstrate who has the most enthusiasm for school. They do things like wear the school colors on Monday, bring canned goods for the food pantry on Tuesday, wear their hair in wacky ways on Wednesday, etc. At the school assembly on Friday, cheerleaders for each grade lead students from their grade in a cheer mocking the other classes and arguing for why they are the best class.
C) Linda and Carla, two elderly African American sisters, go on a cross-country trip together to see sites important to African American history, including the National Peace and Justice Museum (sometimes called the Lynching Museum), the Lorraine Hotel (where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated), and the high school at the center of the national desegregation court case Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Together, they learn a lot about African American history that connects them to their families, communities, and the larger struggle for civil rights.
D) In the early 1990s, the city of Hialeah, Florida attempted to ban the slaughter of chickens for religious rituals, even though it permitted the slaughter of chicken for food consumption, because many of the residents felt that sanitaria, a religion popular among Caribbean immigrants, was an invalid religion. (In 1993, the Supreme Court ruled that a city could not prohibit a practice that was otherwise legal simply because it did not like the religion associated with that practice.)

Question 39

Which of the following can combat xenophobia and ethnocentrism?

A) Cultural relativism and multiculturalism
B) Cultural imperialism and globalization
C) Culture jamming and cultural gatekeeping
D) Encoding and decoding

Question 40

Which discipline contributed the concept of cultural relativism to the social sciences?

A) Anthropology
B) Sociology
C) Psychology
D) Marketing

Question 41

Which of the following statements is an example of global material culture?

A) Democracy is valued in many different societies.
B) Some of the same inventions emerged in different places at the same time, even though the peoples from those places had no contact with each other.
C) People around the globe are able to buy the same products from multinational corporations, such as iPhones and Nike athletic shoes.
D) English, Mandarin, Spanish, and Arabic have spread far beyond the places where these languages originated.

Question 42

Which of the following statements about global culture in local contexts is true?

A) Most people in the U.S. prioritize shopping for products made in the U.S., which is why it is so hard to locate affordable consumer goods made in other nations.
B) Most companies that are global in scope do not market directly to local cultures; instead, they rely on local people to access and make sense of the marketing they created for their home culture.
C) By the time a cultural product reaches the local market, it has changed so much from its form in its original market that it is unrecognizable.
D) Global marketers craft messages about their products that make sense of the local markets where they are selling them.

Question 43

Historically, companies from what nation have been most successful at creating global culture?

A) Russia
B) France
C) North Korea
D) The U.S.

Question 44

What did media critic Herbert Schiller mean when he said, in 1991, that American television is a "cultural bomb"?

A) American TV is particularly risqué and sexually offensive.
B) American television programming shows the worst excesses of American culture, not Americans as they really are, which creates stereotypes of Americans.
C) American media is particularly violent, but because the U.S. is far more violent that most other nations, American viewers do not notice it.
D) American programming, once introduced to a local culture, replaces programming that tells local stories and uses art forms familiar to that culture.

Question 45

How does McDonald's seek to reach an Indian market, given that many people in India do not eat beef for religious reasons?

A) They call "beef" by another name there, though it is still the same product.
B) They sell a sandwich that features a slab of fried cheese for the many vegetarians in India.
C) They have tried to influence important Hindu leaders to change the religion's teachings about cows.
D) They are only open in the morning, when they sell breakfast items that include pork but not beef.

Question 46

Cultural domination hurts local cultures in all of the following ways EXCEPT which one?

A) Global marketing brings consumer goods that may make life easier for people, especially women, since they do most of the work in family life, where many consumer goods are used, in local communities.
B) Global products are less likely to reflect traditions of the local culture and may eventually replace them.
C) The money generated by the sale of global products flows back to global headquarters, which is usually far away from where the product is sold.
D) Local techniques to produce material items may be lost if a product is made elsewhere.

Question 47

When it comes to a choice between a local brand and a global brand, in general, people

A) have no preference between them
B) have a preference for global brands
C) are unable to distinguish between them
D) have a preference for products more closely connected to their specific culture

Question 48

Which of the following is an example of a policy that seeks to privilege local and national culture?

A) A tariff on Mexican-grown avocados enacted right before the Super Bowl, when avocado sales spoke as many people make guacamole, which lawmakers hope will drive more sales of avocados grow in California and Florida
B) The firing of a Tennessee judge who tried to force parents to change their baby son's name from "Messiah" to "Martin" because the name "Messiah" could only, according to the judge, refer to Jesus, the central figure of the Christian faith
C) The prohibition against bringing soil from another country into the U.S., because that soil might contain aggressive non-native organisms that could hurt American ecosystems
D) The Smithsonian American History Museum selling knick-knacks celebrating material items from American popular culture, such as a coaster with a picture of Dorothy's ruby-red slippers from The Wizard of Oz

Question 49

What is the "great firewall"?

A) The Chinese border with Russia
B) The Chinese government's provision of free contraception in order to support its policies demanding small family sizes
C) The insularity of life for members of different ethnic minorities in China
D) The Chinese government's monitoring of all foreign internet material and frequent blocking of content it does not wish its citizens to be able to access

Question 50

Which of the following is evidence of the existence of a world culture?

A) Most national constitutions are relatively similar, regardless of the nation.
B) Regardless of which society they live in, when individuals become wealthier, they tend to spend more money on luxury items.
C) McDonald's now operates in most countries in the world.
D) Manga was created in Japan, but is now popular in the U.S.

Question 51

Which of the following is an example of a person, group, or government rejecting the norms and values of world culture?

A) The Saudi government regularly engages in harassment, violence, and even murder of journalists.
B) Costa Rica does not maintain a military but instead relies on its political allies for defense against hostility. It then invests the money that it might otherwise spend on the military into the public good, such as education.
C) The United Nation's Security Council consists of five permanent members and ten rotating ones, ensuring that the UK, France, the U.S., the Russian Federation, and China are always part of the Council.
D) The 1977 film Star Wars was banned in China.

Question 52

Which of these INGOs addresses the global problem of hunger?

A) Doctors without Borders
B) Habitat for Humanity
C) Oxfam
D) Transparency International

Question 53

"DIY culture" refers to

A) cultural practices that promote self-sustainability, reducing consumption, and reusing objects, often in innovative ways
B) rejecting subcultures in favor of dominant culture
C) cultural products accessible only to those with a lot of money
D) the way that people with cultural capital are able to gain more

Question 54

Manga is a kind of

A) music
B) board game
C) comic art
D) political parody

Question 55

Dominant culture consists of

A) the cultural practices that most push the boundary of what is acceptable in a society at that time
B) the cultural practices of younger generations, who will quickly come to control the market of what is "cool"
C) the ideas, values, beliefs, norms, and material culture of society's most powerful groups
D) the most long-lasting cultural practices, which explicitly seek to honor tradition

Question 56

What evidence do sociologists have for the claim that dominant culture is an ideology?

A) Subcultures do not survive for more than a generation.
B) Few people engage in subcultures.
C) Dominant cultures eliminate subcultures.
D) Dominant cultures suggest that their cultural practices are the practices of all people in a society.

Question 57

All of the following might be considered a subculture EXCEPT

A) members of the Southern Baptist Convention, who comprise the single largest Protestant group in the U.S.
B) the Amish, who do not use electricity
C) Hasidic Jews, who wear distinct hairstyles
D) Muslim women who choose to wear a hijab to cover their hair

Question 58

The genre of "conscious rap" is characterized by

A) politically charged commentary about social issues relevant to people living in American cities today
B) boasts about material possessions and economic success
C) laments about loss of conservative social values
D) complaints about individuals' struggles without placing them into a larger social context

Question 59

A commodity is

A) an object bought or sold in the market
B) an object you make for yourself to enjoy
C) a skill you pass on to a member of the next generation
D) a skill that is now extinct because of competition from global culture

Question 60

All of the companies of the list below are part of the concentrated ownership of commercial culture EXCEPT

A) Disney
B) your aunt's Etsy store, where she sells handmade earrings
C) Comcast, the cable company
D) Nestlé, which owns a variety of food brands and has even sought to privatize water

Question 61

The IWW is an organization promoting the interests of

A) athletes
B) laborers of all kinds
C) international business owners
D) people who work in the creative industries