Deck 13: Method and Theory in Cultural Anthropology

Question 1

In the field,ethnographers strive to establish rapport: a good,friendly working relationship based on personal contact

A) that is necessary in conducting any valuable research in the social sciences, not just anthropology.
B) that, if done properly, ensures the ethnographer's ability to conduct detached, unbiased research.
C) achieved in large part by engaging in participant observation.
D) and if that fails, the next option is to pay people so they will talk about their culture.
E) as well as on payment, based on local standards, for people's time spent with the researcher.

Answer 1

achieved in large part by engaging in participant observation.

Question 2

The research technique that uses diagrams and symbols to record kin connections is called

A) kin-based interviewing.
B) genealogical participant observation.
C) interpretive anthropology.
D) DNA testing.
E) the genealogical method.

Answer 2

the genealogical method.

Question 3

The relatively recent creation of virtual worlds has attracted contemporary ethnographers to venture into online communities.Of the various techniques used to study these virtual worlds,which has been most important?

A) participant observation
B) interviews
C) genealogical method
D) key consultants
E) life histories

Answer 3

participant observation

Question 4

This chapter's survey of the major theoretical perspectives that have characterized anthropology highlights all of the following EXCEPT

A) a continuous concern with how to define and study culture.
B) the theoretical and methodological shift from complexity to models that simplify human diversity.
C) a continuous concern with scientific fundamentals and whether or not anthropology's research subject is best studied scientifically.
D) attention to whether or not anthropological data ought to be comparative across time and space.
E) the discipline's profound commitment to understanding human diversity.

Question 5

Traditional ethnographic research focused on the single community or culture,which was treated as more or less isolated and unique in time and space; however,

A) all such single communities have already been studied, so anthropologists have very limited project choices.
B) there has been a shift within the discipline toward a recognition of ongoing and inescapable flows of people, technology, images, and information.
C) the American Anthropological Association still requires its members to strive toward research focused on one single community.
D) this is no longer true, nor has it ever really been true, a fact that renders classic ethnographies historical curiosities and not serious academic works.
E) there has been a shift within the discipline against the concept of culture and toward the individual as the only true, reliable unit of analysis.

Question 6

Lewis Henry Morgan is well known for his work The League of the Iroquois,considered anthropology's earliest ethnography.This and others of his works illustrate his view of unilinear evolutionism,which is that

A) cultural diversity was actually a sign of the slowing down of cultural evolution.
B) only the better and more civilized societies could survive.
C) all societies are on some path toward civilization, but the exact paths vary.
D) natural selection acts simultaneously on the biological and cultural aspects of human life.
E) there is one line or path through which all societies have to evolve, and this path involves specific stages that cannot be skipped, ending at the final stage of civilization.

Question 7

What is the term for an expert on a particular aspect of native life?

A) representative sample
B) etic informant
C) key cultural consultant
D) biased informant
E) life-history approach specialist

Question 8

All of the following are characteristic field techniques of the ethnographer EXCEPT

A) detailed work with key consultants.
B) direct, firsthand observation of behavior, including participant observation.
C) in-depth interviewing, often leading to the collection of life histories.
D) problem-oriented research.
E) longitudinal analysis of data sets gathered from state-sponsored statistical agencies.

Question 9

Ethnographers typically combine emic and etic research strategies in their fieldwork.This means they are interested in applying both

A) local- and scientist-oriented research approaches.
B) local and bifocal research approaches.
C) reflexive and salvage approaches.
D) personal and impersonal research approaches.
E) the genealogical and survey methods.

Question 10

An anthropologist has just arrived at a new field site and feels overwhelmed with a creepy,profound feeling of alienation,of being without some of the most ordinary,trivial (and therefore basic)cues of his culture of origin.What term best describes what he is experiencing?

A) culture shock
B) diachrony
C) synchrony
D) configurationalism
E) agency paralysis

Question 11

In survey research,what is sampling?

A) the collection of a study group from a larger population
B) the interviewing of a small number of key cultural consultants
C) a form of participant observation
D) the collection of life histories of every member in a community
E) a collection reflecting the emic perspective

Question 12

Which of the following is NOT a characteristic field technique of the ethnographer?

A) structured interviewing
B) life histories
C) random sampling
D) working with informants
E) the genealogical method

Question 13

In survey research,a sample should

A) include the entire population in question.
B) include anyone who will be interviewed by the ethnographer.
C) target only one social, cultural, or environmental factor that influences behavior.
D) be constituted so as to allow inferences about the larger population.
E) be invariant.

Question 14

Franz Boas is the undisputed father of four-field U.S.anthropology.One of his most important and enduring contributions to anthropology was

A) the field's earliest example of multitimed and multisited ethnography.
B) providing evidence that both biology and culture are susceptible to evolutionary forces, thus providing a framework for the comparative method.
C) stressing the relevance of independent invention in human cultural history.
D) showing that human biology is plastic, and that biology (including race) does not determine culture.
E) expanding the local ethnographic focus to include a regional perspective.

Question 15

Which of the following research methods is a distinctive strategy within anthropology?

A) its practice of cross-cultural comparison
B) the biological perspective
C) ethnography
D) the evolutionary perspective
E) working with skilled respondents

Question 16

Which of the following is NOT an example of participant observation?

A) administering interviews according to an interview schedule over the phone
B) helping out at harvest time
C) dancing at a ceremony
D) buying a shroud for a village ancestor
E) engaging in informal chit-chat

Question 17

What did Bronislaw Malinowski mean when he referred to everyday cultural patterns as "the imponderabilia of native life and of typical behavior?"

A) Features of culture such as distinctive smells, noises people make, how they cover their mouths when they eat, and how they gaze at each other are so fundamental that natives take them for granted but are there for the ethnographer to describe and make sense of.
B) Everyday cultural patterns are full of senseless cultural "noise," and it is the anthropologist's job to get at the truly valuable behaviors that distinguish one culture from another.
C) Everyday cultural patterns of native life can best be studied by asking key informants to explain them.
D) Features of everyday culture are, at first, imponderable, but as the ethnographer builds rapport, their logic and functional value in society become clear.
E) Everyday cultural patterns are important but so numerous that their detailed description should not be included in the main body of an ethnographic study.

Question 18

In survey research,what term is used to refer to the attributes that vary among the members of a population?

A) unknowns
B) questionnaires
C) interviews
D) variables
E) random samples

Question 19

Reflecting today's world in which people,images,and information move about as never before,fieldwork must be more flexible and done on a larger scale.The result of such fieldwork is often an ethnography that

A) challenges anthropologists concerned with salvaging isolated and untouched cultures around the world.
B) becomes less useful and valuable to understanding culture.
C) is increasingly multisited and multitimed, integrating analyses of external organizations and forces to understand local phenomena.
D) is more traditional, negating anthropologists' concerns about defending their field's roots.
E) requires researchers to stay at the same site for more than three years.

Question 20

Despite the variety of research techniques the ethnographer may utilize in the field,in the best studies the hallmark of ethnography remains

A) collaborating with the community to construct a cohesive image of local culture.
B) entering the community and getting to know its people.
C) gathering large quantities of data on a limited budget.
D) defining the local culture in such a way as to highlight what makes the particular culture so unlike any other.
E) providing detailed descriptions of "the imponderabilia of native life and of typical behavior."

Question 21

The actions individuals take,both alone and in groups,in forming and transforming cultural identities are referred to as

A) psychological individualism.
B) dynamic structuralism.
C) free will.
D) agency.
E) volition.

Question 22

Émile Durkheim's focus on social facts illustrates what assumption shared by many anthropologists?

A) Social fact, just like any other fact, can be studied objectively.
B) Culture is more of an idea in people's heads than a social reality.
C) Culture is primarily a psychological and individual phenomenon.
D) Social phenomena studied by anthropologists require study methods that are different from those used by other social scientists.
E) Psychologists study individuals, but anthropologists study individuals as representative of something more: a collective phenomenon that is more than the sum of its parts.

Question 23

The characteristic field techniques of the ethnographer are participant observation,the genealogical method,and in-depth interviewing.

Question 24

"What right do ethnographers have to represent a people or culture to which they don't belong?" This question illustrates

A) anthropology's crisis in representation-questions about the role of the ethnographer and the nature of ethnographic authority.
B) the threat that the World Wide Web poses to anthropologists who are less and less needed to write about and publish accounts of cultural diversity.
C) the fact that anthropologists are, after all, colonial agents of the industrialized West.
D) a lack of leadership in the American Anthropological Association.
E) the problem inherent in anthropology's overspecialization.

Question 25

Practice theory

A) focuses on how individuals, through their actions and practices, influence and transform the world they live in.
B) was popularized by Margaret Mead in the 1940s.
C) is the only theoretical paradigm to effectively solve the "culture-individual" problem.
D) actually shares the same deterministic assumptions of earlier theoretical paradigms.
E) explains social phenomena only in nonindustrial societies.

Question 26

The Human Terrain System has sought to embed anthropologists and other social scientists within military teams in Iraq and Afghanistan.Which of the following is NOT a reason anthropologists and the AAA Executive Board object to the use of anthropologists in the military?

A) Anthropologists in war zones have an ethical dilemma where their responsibilities to their military units may conflict with their obligations to the local people they study.
B) It is difficult to give informed consent in an active war zone without feeling coerced, thereby compromising "voluntary informed consent" in the AAA Code of Ethics.
C) Anthropologists may not be able to identify themselves as anthropologists, distinct from military personnel.
D) Anthropologists, by the nature of their discipline, are not permitted to interact with any military personnel.
E) The Human Terrain System conflicts with the ethical responsibility of anthropologists to disclose who they are.

Question 27

Interpretive anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz approach the study of culture as

A) a diachronic phenomenon.
B) functional puzzles.
C) a system of meaning.
D) underlying sets of rules that must be deciphered through the analysis of cultural patterns.
E) distinct from human psychology.

Question 28

The work of which of the following anthropologists illustrated a renewed interest in cultural change and even evolution (although of a very different sort than Tylor and Morgan had in mind)?

A) Ruth Benedict
B) Max Gluckman
C) Victor Turner
D) Julian Steward
E) Margaret Mead

Question 29

Radcliffe-Brown advocated social anthropology as a synchronic rather than a diachronic science-that is,a study

A) of culture in motion (synchronic) rather than as a static entity (diachronic).
B) that compares cultural traits within the same society and not across societies.
C) of societies across time (synchronic) rather than across space (diachronic).
D) of societies as they exist today (synchronic, one at a time) rather than across time (diachronic).
E) of societies as made up of individuals, not as a sum greater than its parts.

Question 30

Really good key cultural consultants will actually end up recording most of the data needed to write an ethnography.

Question 31

Which of the following terms refers to the theoretical paradigm that holds that customs (social practices)function to preserve the social structure?

A) the Manchester school
B) synchronic functionalism
C) configurationalism, as illustrated in the works of Benedict and Mead
D) Panglossian structuralism
E) structural functionalism, as illustrated in the work of Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard

Question 32

This chapter mentions the work of Wolf and Mintz,both students of Julian Steward,as illustrations of approaches that

A) put human agency at the center of cultural analysis.
B) focus on the study of cultures as closed systems, untouched by regional and even global dynamics.
C) ignore the role of history in shaping culture as we know it.
D) consider the relevance of world-system theory and political economy to anthropology.
E) are just as deterministic as the old evolutionary models, but for different reasons.

Question 33

Despite the differences among theoretical paradigms of practitioners as varied as Harris (cultural materialism),White (neoevolutionism),Steward (cultural ecology),and Mead (configurationalism),all of them have what in common?

A) a strong sense of determinism, leaving very little (if any) room for the exercise of individual human agency
B) a well-founded suspicion of the claims of science
C) an embrace of reflexive anthropology
D) a sense of moral duty to help the people they studied to accelerate their path to civilization
E) a strong concern for the future of anthropological education

Question 34

As investigators who illustrated the functionalist approach in anthropology,both Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown performed ethnographic research focused on

A) myth and ritual and the ways these aspects of culture created social cohesion.
B) the evolutionary history of present-day cultural patterns.
C) the role of cultural traits and practices in contemporary society.
D) the symbolic value that cultural traits and practices held with members of contemporary society.
E) the role of cultural traits and practices aimed at conflict resolution.

Question 35

The view that each element of culture,such as the culture trait or trait complex,has its own distinctive history,and that social forms (such as totemism in different societies)that might look similar are not comparable because of their different histories,is known as

A) historical particularism.
B) cultural generalism.
C) the Boasian approach.
D) structural functionalism.
E) comparative functionalism.

Question 36

Which is the key assumption in Claude Lévi-Strauss's structuralism?

A) All myths can be classified as either good or evil.
B) The human propensity to classify phenomena in certain ways is acquired through enculturation.
C) There is a very specific role for human agency in culture, and the structure of cultural patterns determines that role.
D) Cultural patterns determine the human propensity to classify things in certain ways.
E) Human minds have certain universal characteristics that originate in common features of the Homo sapiens brain and lead people everywhere to think similarly regardless of their society or cultural background.

Question 37

When an ethnographer uses an interview schedule to gather information from the field,the researcher's capacity to ask and answer truly relevant questions is inevitably limited.

Question 38

Traditionally,ethnographers have tried to understand the whole of a particular culture.

Question 39

More recent approaches in historical anthropology,while sharing an interest in power with world-system theorists,have focused more on

A) the structural causes of colonialism.
B) how anthropological theory can aid NGOs in writing an alternate history of oppressed peoples.
C) the role of colonial bureaucracies in shaping international culture.
D) local agency, the transformative actions of individuals and groups within colonized societies.
E) the state's role in denying some of its citizens a place in history.

Question 40

An agreement to take part in research after having the nature,procedures,and possible impacts of the research explained is known as

A) a research protocol briefing.
B) the do no harm directive.
C) informed consent.
D) etic and emic protocols.
E) implied consent.

Question 41

Survey research is usually conducted through intensive personal contact with the study subjects.

Question 42

Survey research studies a small sample of a larger population.

Question 43

The American Anthropological Association Code of Ethics prohibits anthropologists from working with governments on matters of national security.

Question 44

Briefly describe the nine characteristic field techniques of the ethnographer.How do they compare with the research techniques you have learned about in courses or readings in other academic disciplines?

Question 45

Ethnography is increasingly multitimed and multisited,the result of a shift toward a recognition of the ongoing and inescapable flows of people,technology,images,and information that characterizes much of the world today.

Question 46

Boas and his students were strong proponents of cross-cultural comparisons,without which they could not validate their findings.

Question 47

Despite the increasing popularity of team research among anthropologists,the best ethnographies are always the product of individual work.

Question 48

The emic perspective focuses on local explanations of criteria and significance.

Question 49

Longitudinal research is the long-term study of a community,region,society,culture,or other unit,usually based on repeated visits.

Question 50

Manchester anthropologists Max Gluckman and Victor Turner made conflict an important part of their analysis,distancing themselves somewhat from Panglossian functionalism,the tendency to see things as functioning not just to maintain the system but to do so in the most optimal way possible.

Question 51

This chapter's overview of the history of anthropological theory suggests that the discipline has made no important contributions to social theory in general.

Question 52

Among the classic works of processual approaches to culture is Edmund Leach's Political Systems of Highland Burma.This study made a tremendously important point by taking a regional rather than a local perspective.

Question 53

Beyond Morgan's and Tylor's early anthropological work,no major theoretical paradigm in anthropology has embraced the role of evolution in cultural change.

Question 54

Morgan and Tylor,both considered among the fathers of anthropology,worked within the paradigm of unilinear evolution.

Question 55

Franz Boas's famous biological studies of European immigrants to the United States revealed and measured phenotypical plasticity,showing that the environment and cultural forces could change human biology.

Question 56

The etic perspective refers to a non-scientific perspective.

Question 57

Given the realities of the contemporary world,anthropologists need to apply methods that protect their analyses from biases caused by external forces.

Question 58

The overall trend in anthropological theory has been from theories that put human agency at the center of cultural dynamics to paradigms that see evolution as the main force behind cultural change.

Question 59

Much of the history of anthropology has been about the roles and relative prominence of culture and the individual.

Question 60

Because there are so many anthropologists in the United States,the distinction between emic and etic does not apply to American culture.

Question 61

What is the genealogical method,and why did it develop in anthropology?

Question 62

Recalling Chapter 2,on culture,and after reading this brief historical account of anthropological theory,what do you think is the relationship between individuals and culture?

Question 63

What do you think is the relation between theory and methods in anthropology,if they relate at all?

Question 64

What advantages do you see in ethnographic research techniques? What are the advantages for survey techniques? Which one would you choose,and what would that choice depend upon?

Question 65

Provide a brief account of the history of theory in the discipline.Does this account support the view that much of the history of anthropology has been about the roles and relative prominence of culture?

Question 66

What is Project Minerva? What about the Human Terrain System? What concerns have these Pentagon programs raised among anthropologists? In your view,what role (if any)should academics play in national security?

Question 67

In today's world in which people,images,and information move as never before,people simultaneously experience the local and the global.Explain what this means and consider its implications for methods in cultural anthropology.

Question 68

Anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn (1944)saw a key public service role for anthropology.In his words,it could provide a "scientific basis for dealing with the crucial dilemma of the world today: how can peoples of different appearance,mutually unintelligible languages,and dissimilar ways of life get along peaceably together." Anthropologists also have made and continue to make a dramatic impact on people's welfare as they cope with crises such as the January 2010 Haiti earthquake.What are some examples of this?

Question 69

What advantages might a project that combines both quantitative and qualitative techniques have over one that utilizes only one or the other? What research situation might be best suited to such a combined strategy?

Question 70

How have anthropologists tried to bring evolution into the study of human culture? Have these approaches succeeded,or failed? Why? Do you see any way in which evolution and culture could be united into a broad and effective explanatory paradigm?