Deck 8: Death, Ancestors, Ghosts, and Souls

Question 1

Haitians refer to their religion as

A) Voodoo.
B) Vodou.
C) "serving the spirits."
D) Bondye.

Answer 1

"serving the spirits."

Question 2

Haitian voodoo rituals

A) are fairly institutionalized, according to Catholic tradition.
B) fall into three major categories.
C) are held in temples, or ounfò s, that dot the countryside all over the island.
D) vary widely, especially from the rural to the urban setting.

Answer 2

vary widely, especially from the rural to the urban setting.

Question 3

While the urban practice of voodoo centers around temples and the formation of extensive surrogate family units, rural voodoo practices

A) revolve around the village church that is usually located in the central plaza, emphasizing community cohesiveness.
B) are highly personal and private affairs, with worship taking place in the home with the immediate family.
C) are intimately connected to land tenure, ancestral inheritance, and the family unit.
D) are generally more institutionalized and elaborate, and happen less often because of the long distances people must travel in order to come together.

Answer 3

are intimately connected to land tenure, ancestral inheritance, and the family unit.

Question 4

McCarthy Brown notes that Africa is a powerful concept in Voodoo-to say that a spirit is frangine is to say that

A) the spirit has risen up from the heathenism of African traditions.
B) the spirit is dark and malicious with tremendous force.
C) the spirit has departed to go back to Africa.
D) the spirit is "truly African" and, therefore, is good, ancient, and proper.

Question 5

Metcalf asserts that the anthropological focus on the "exotic"

A) is precariously close to the sensational, and is therefore a threat to the respectability of the discipline.
B) is still an important part of anthropology, and for good reason.
C) is merely a popular image of the discipline, having little to do with the actual practice.
D) assumes an evolutionary hierarchy of civilization.

Question 6

According to Metcalf, an essential, and somewhat overlooked effect of the anthropological modus operandi is

A) how it can turn the anthropologist's gaze back toward his own practices as strange and "exotic."
B) the extreme ethnocentrism that it encourages.
C) the change that the anthropologist's presence brings about in the community she is studying.
D) the resulting amplification of the exoticism of the practices and/or the group being observed.

Question 7

Full funeral rites among the Berawan usually last

A) about four days.
B) anywhere from 10 days to 28 days, but rarely exceed a lunar cycle.
C) about a "season," based on the growing cycles of rice-approximately three and a half months.
D) at least eight to nine months, though they could continue for years depending upon the circumstances.

Question 8

In the early part of the century, Robert Hertz, relying upon traveler's accounts of the peoples of central Borneo, hypothesized that people who practice secondary burial

A) believe that the fate of the body provides a model for the fate of the soul.
B) are more concerned with safeguarding the living from "death pollution" than with the fate of the
dead person's soul.
C) believe that the soul is forever bonded to the body of the deceased, and therefore the remains must be placed in a suitable "eternal home."
D) believe that the second burial is akin to a the "birth" of the deceased person's soul as it is now free to animate a new life.

Question 9

After having explored the "exotic"Berawan death ways, Metcalf turned his focus back toward American death ways, and found

A) that the seemingly arbitrary approach toward death in the United States is much more comprehensible in light of Berawan theories of death.
B) he was left with a feeling of estrangement when he tried to find a correlation between popular ideas about death and American funerary practices.
C) them to be extremely mild and conservative in comparison.
D) that the two different approaches are actually very similar when the observer is able to see through the details.

Question 10

Cannibalism is linked to which if the following historical events discussed in Conklin's article:

A) Spanish conquest and killing of natives in the New World
B) "otherizing" to justify enslavement of Africans
C) Both of the above
D) None of the above

Question 11

All of the following forms of cannibalism were practiced in Europe EXCEPT:

A) Funerary or mourning rites
B) Drinking of blood a s a remedy for epileptics
C) Eating the smoked flesh of criminals
D) Importing exotic corpses from Egypt to eat

Question 12

What is the main evidence that supports the notion that the Wari practiced cannibalism?

A) Numerous observations and accounts from Anthropologists
B) Documented fossil evidence of instruments used in cannibalistic rituals
C) Unconfirmed rumor
D) Self-reported oral history from the Wari

Question 13

All of the following are issues that anthropologists must consider when studying and analyzing cannibalism EXCEPT:

A) Issues of ethnocentrism and cultural relativity in their perspective
B) The specifics of different cannibalistic acts to discern whether or not these acts qualify as cannibalism
C) The social and political symbolic power that cannibalism holds as a taboo
D) Tension between physical evidence, or lack thereof, versus oral account

Question 14

All of the following can be part of different families' Day of the Dead celebrations in Oaxaca EXCEPT:

A) Construction of altars
B) Children going dor to door asking for additions to altars
C) Sad or heavy hearted mourning
D) Preparation of food that is delivered to the graveyard and to relatives and friends

Question 15

Prominent attitudes towards death that are displayed in Day of the Dead practices include.

A) honoring of the dead through altars and visitations shows respect and keeps the dead happy so they do not come back and haunt.
B) showing care and respect to the dead implies that you show care and respect for yourself as well as for your living friends and relatives.
C) take comfort in death because it is inevitable; and it is important to keep the dead alive through memories.
D) All of the above.

Question 16

All of the following are components of both the Mexican All Soul's Day and the official Catholic festival EXCEPT:

A) Food offerings to the dead and living
B) Altars
C) Visits to graveyards with family
D) Religion

Question 17

All of the following are ways community and foods are symbolically linked during days of the dead discussed in Norget's article EXCEPT:

A) Refreshments are offered as "con conjianza" or offerings of trust.
B) Food represents shared plenty, but also shared responsibility of providing food; there are rigid guidelines that mandate that all family members regardless of age or ability must participate in communal making of food.
C) Offering food reaffirms that both the living and the dead belong to a single existential and moral universe, as supernatural and mortal beings are both sharing from the same pot.
D) Food propitiates visitors and ghosts, functioning as a sort of communion between the sacred and the profane, among friend, family member, and neighbor.

Question 18

What are ways that the traditional Oaxacan Days of the Dead festivities have evolved over time?

A) The Catholic church has tried to endorse the non-religious traditions associated with Days of the Dead
B) The reciprocal economy associated with the holiday has evolved to become slightly more amenable to consumer capitalism, though this evolution is very slight.
C) Rapid population growth
D) All of the above

Question 19

According to Lock's article on determining brain death, tests run in ICU units to determine and diagnose brain death include:

A) Physical tests of reflexes such as pin pricks to the hands and feet, pressure applied to finger/toenails, . touching of the eye with a swab, or inducing coughing.
B) In some cases, EEG monitoring
C) In some cases, MRI and/or blood flow monitoring
D) All of the above

Question 20

All of the following are activities that can occur in patients after brain death has been diagnosed EXCEPT:

A) Body warmth and metabolic function
B) Sudden return to a fully functioning state
C) Physiologic responses like yawning or crying
D) Endocrine activities

Question 21

All of the following are socio-ethical ways that intensivists interviewed in Lock's study cope with feelings of doubt about circumstances centered around diagnosis of brain death EXCEPT:

A) Belief that the spirit or soul leaves the body in the event of brain death
B) Rationalization that the body wants to die along with the brain
C) Belief that brain death is essentially death
D) Rationalization that the brain death state prevents the body from experiencing pain regardless of ongoing metabolic and endocrine activity

Question 22

All of the following are ways that Japanese diagnosis of brain death and the decision to harvest organs differ from North America and Western Europe EXCEPT:

A) The wishes of family can override the wishes of the brain dead individual
B) Organ donation is less widely accepted and is not assumed as a norm or the right thing to do
C) The family of the brain dead individual is not bothered as much
D) Physicians are not required to bring up the issue of organ donation

Question 23

Attitudes towards the dead and practices of morning are often strongly indicative of social customs in societies.

Question 24

Haitians who "serve the spirits" refer to themselves as Catholics.

Question 25

The various lwa, or spirits, have essentially been fitted into Haitian Catholicism as a replacement of the holy trinity.

Question 26

"Magic" is a derogative term used by Voodoo practitioners to refer to others whom they feel are "serving the spirits" in a defiled manner.

Question 27

The Berawan people of north-central Borneo are terrified by the American practice of keeping a massive standing army of potential zombies in our midst.

Question 28

The Berawan people practice secondary burial, but they don't actually bury the dead at all.

Question 29

The four stages of funerary rites among the Berawan gradually move the body farther and farther from the settlement, until finally the corpse is laid to rest in a far-removed area of the mountains where it won't be able to pollute the community of the living.

Question 30

Cannibalism is a taboo that has historically been socially tied to racism and exploitation.

Question 31

Conklin describes European cannibalism as social and cannibalism in South America and the New World as a social

Question 32

In Oaxaca, visitors and outsider to the Days of the Dead celebrations are often somewhat off put by the celebratory, jovial nature with which death is treated thinking that celebrations are dangerous or sacrilegious.

Question 33

In Oaxaca, people spare no expense when it comes to honoring the dead; this is evidenced in an upsurge in use of pawn shops in the month of October.

Question 34

Components of Day of the Dead altars can come only from family and altars are constructed privately in the home before being presented publically at the graveyard the night of the celebrations.

Question 35

Certain foods are linked to particular religious holidays in Oaxaca. Mole is associated with Days of the Dead while King cake is associated with Epiphany,

Question 36

Most healthcare practitioners in Lock's research viewed drain death as death for all purposes.

Question 37

The Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) mandates that "all functions of the entire brain" should have ceased functioning before brain death is declared, and that "imminent" biological death is a sufficient criterion for organ donation.