Deck 2: Culture

Question 1

Which of the following statements about cultural relativism is not true?

A)Cultural relativism argues that cultural values vary between cultures.
B)Cultural relativism argues that some cultures are relatively better than others.
C)Cultural relativism argues that we shouldn't use our own standards to judge conduct in other cultures.
D)Cultural relativism argues that no one culture is better than any other.
E)Cultural relativism argues that each culture is a unique, integrated whole.

Answer 1

Cultural relativism argues that some cultures are relatively better than others.

Question 2

Which of the following is not one of the ways in which individuals learn culture?

A)Genetic transmission
B)Unconscious acquisition
C)Through observation
D)Through direct instruction
E)Conscious acquisition

Answer 2

Genetic transmission

Question 3

Which of the following statements about culture is not true?

A)It is a distinctive possession of humanity.
B)It is acquired by all humans as members of society through enculturation.
C)It encompasses shared, symbol-based, learned behavior and beliefs transmitted across generations.
D)Everyone is cultured.
E)It is transmitted genetically.

Answer 3

It is transmitted genetically.

Question 4

Although rap music began in the United States, it is now popular all over the world.Which of the following mechanisms of cultural change is responsible for this?

A)Acculturation
B)Enculturation
C)Independent invention
D)Colonization
E)Diffusion

Question 5

The process by which children learn culture is known as

A)acculturation.
B)cultural transmission.
C)enculturation.
D)ethnoabsorption.
E)diffusion.

Question 6

Klein's "creative explosion" hypothesis states that modern human behaviors began in

A)Africa, 200,000 years ago.
B)Europe, 45,000 years ago.
C)Africa, 2.5 million years ago.
D)East Asia, 1.7 million years ago.
E)North America, 10,000 years ago.

Question 7

What kind of diffusion takes place when two cultures trade, intermarry, or wage war on one another?

A)Forced diffusion
B)Direct diffusion
C)Indirect diffusion
D)Enculturated diffusion
E)Bilateral diffusion

Question 8

What is ethnocentrism?

A)Viewing another culture by their own standards
B)Viewing another culture in terms of your own culture and values
C)Viewing another culture by government standards
D)Viewing a culture by the universal moral code that we all follow
E)Viewing a culture through rose-colored glasses

Question 9

How are cultural rights different from human rights?

A)Human rights are real, while cultural rights are just perceived.
B)The United Nations protects human rights but not cultural rights.
C)Cultural rights are vested in groups, not in individuals.
D)Cultural rights are more clear-cut than human rights.
E)The term cultural rights is a politically correct synonym for human rights.

Question 10

What is the term for a sign that has no necessary or natural connection to the thing it stands for or signifies?

A)Morpheme
B)Lexicon
C)Phoneme
D)Symbol
E)Collateral

Question 11

The emergence of agriculture in at least seven different regions of the world is an example of

A)acculturation.
B)enculturation.
C)independent invention.
D)colonization.
E)diffusion.

Question 12

Which of the following is a cultural universal?

A)Hypodescent
B)Hyperdescent
C)Bifurcate merging kinship terminologies
D)Transhumance
E)Some kind of family

Question 13

What is cultural relativism?

A)A cultural universal, based upon the human capacity to use symbols
B)The argument that behavior in a particular culture should not be judged by the standards of another culture
C)A cultural particular, based upon the interrelatedness of humans
D)The opposite of participant observation
E)The same thing as ethnocentrism, but it applies only to family structures

Question 14

Which of the following statements about culture is not true?

A)All human groups have culture.
B)Culture provides the particular way that groups of humans deal with biological needs.
C)Human groups differ in their capacities for culture.
D)The capacity for culture is shared by all humans.
E)Cultural learning is uniquely elaborated among humans.

Question 15

Which of the following is a cultural generality?

A)Life in groups
B)The use of fire
C)Incest taboo
D)Use of symbols
E)Nuclear family

Question 16

What anthropological approach focuses on how people with different motives, intentions, and degrees of power and influence manage to create and transform the society in which they live?

A)Cultural relativism
B)Experimental anthropology
C)Interpretive anthropology
D)Neoevolutionism
E)Practice theory

Question 17

What is the term for cultural change that results when two or more cultures have continuous firsthand contact?

A)Acculturation
B)Enculturation
C)Independent invention
D)Colonization
E)Imperialism

Question 18

What are cultural particulars?

A)Features of a culture that are isolated from other features in the same culture
B)Features unique to a given culture, not shared with any others
C)Different levels of culture
D)The most general aspect of culture patterns
E)Cultural features exhibited by individuals rather than groups.

Question 19

What do anthropologists mean when they say culture is shared?

A)Culture is an attribute of particular individuals.
B)Culture is an attribute of individuals as members of groups.
C)Culture is what ensures that all people raised in the same society have the same opinions.
D)Culture is universally regarded as more important than the concept of the individual.
E)Enculturation is accomplished by more than one person.

Question 20

What is the term for processes that are causing nations and people to be increasingly interlinked and mutually dependent?

A)Acculturation
B)Diffusion
C)Globalization
D)Enculturation
E)Independent invention

Question 21

What do studies of wild chimpanzees indicate about the nature of chimpanzee hunting behavior? What are some of the possible implications of this behavior for our understanding of early hominin social organization?

Question 22

Recent research on chimpanzee eating habits indicates that

A)chimps engage in both opportunistic and planned hunting.
B)male chimps are exclusive herbivores.
C)chimpanzees occasionally cook meat at volcanically heated springs.
D)while chimps do hunt a little, they get most of their meat by stealing it from predators.
E)chimpanzee hunting is the main reason New World monkeys are almost extinct.

Question 23

What kinds of people do anthropologists consider to be "cultured"?

A)Educated people
B)Key cultural consultants
C)Ethnocentric people
D)Culturally sensitive people
E)All people

Question 24

Which of the following features do humans not share with other primates?

A)Opposable thumbs
B)Enlarged brain to body ratio
C)Depth perception
D)Parental investment in offspring
E)Habitual, obligatory bipedalism

Question 25

How are human adaptability and culture related?

Question 26

How is culture adaptive? How may culture be maladaptive? Why is it important to understand that culture can be both adaptive and maladaptive?

Question 27

What mechanism of cultural change is responsible for pidgin English?

A)Enculturation
B)Acculturation
C)Independent invention
D)Migration
E)Diffusion

Question 28

What term refers to the process by which humans innovate, creatively finding solutions to problems?

A)Enculturation
B)Acculturation
C)Independent invention
D)Globalization
E)Diffusion

Question 29

Which of the following traits is not shared by humans and chimpanzees?

A)Tool use
B)Meat eating
C)Stereoscopic vision
D)High intelligence
E)Estrus

Question 30

What people say they do or should do (as opposed to what they actually do) is known as

A)imagined culture.
B)ethnocentrism.
C)agency.
D)ideal culture.
E)verbal culture.

Question 31

What are ethnocentrism and cultural relativism? How are they similar and/or different?

Question 32

To what extent is tool use unique to humans? Illustrate your answer with examples from studies of nonhuman animals, including other primates.

Question 33

Explain the differences between cultural universals, generalities, and particularities.Illustrate your answer with examples.

Question 34

Which of the following traits is unique to humans?

A)Social life
B)Tool use
C)Meat eating
D)Food sharing
E)Kinship

Question 35

Compare and contrast the various mechanisms of cultural change.

Question 36

What are the defining attributes of culture? What does it mean that culture is learned, shared, symbolic, all-encompassing, and integrated?

Question 37

Describe the biological features that humans share with primates and how they provide a biological basis for cultural attributes.How is human culture similar to and different from aspects of primate life?

Question 38

What are the different kinds of learning? On which kind of learning does culture depend?

Question 39

What term refers to the different symbol-based patterns and traditions associated with particular groups within the same complex society?

A)Subcultures
B)Globalization
C)Diffusion
D)Hypodescent
E)Pidgins

Question 40

What is globalization? What forces are driving it? How is globalization affecting local peoples, and how are they responding?

Question 41

Cultural relativists believe that a culture should be judged only according to the standards and traditions of that culture and not according to standards of other cultural traditions.

Question 42

Cultural relativism is a core value of American society.

Question 43

Although culture is one of the principle means by which humans adapt to their environment, some cultural traits may threaten a group's survival.

Question 44

The idea of universal, inalienable human rights that are superior to the laws and customs of particular cultures challenges the notion of cultural relativism.

Question 45

Because cultures are integrated, patterned systems, a change in one part of a culture often leads to changes in other parts.

Question 46

The nuclear family is a feature of all known cultures.

Question 47

Although there are many different levels of culture, an individual can participate in only one level at a time.

Question 48

Only people living in the industrialized, capitalist countries of western Europe and the United States are ethnocentric.

Question 49

Culture is transmitted in society.

Question 50

People in a given culture differ very little in terms of their ideas, values, goals, and beliefs.

Question 51

The word cat is a symbol.

Question 52

Acculturation is the process by which people lose the cultures that they learned as children.

Question 53

Culture is transmitted genetically.

Question 54

Culture is both public and individual, both in the world and in people's minds.

Question 55

Researchers have observed Japanese macaques making and using "termiting" sticks in the wild.

Question 56

Cultural generalities may arise through independent invention, when people in different societies devise similar solutions to comparable problems or challenges.

Question 57

Cultural learning is commonly found among nonhuman animals that live in groups.

Question 58

Diffusion plays an important role in spreading cultural traits around the world.

Question 59

By definition, a symbol has an intrinsic and natural link to the thing it signifies.

Question 60

Indigenous peoples can do nothing to counter threats to their cultural identity, autonomy, and livelihood posed by globalization.

Question 61

The Internet has hindered the process of globalization.

Question 62

According to anthropologists, cultures eventually become fixed traditions and stop changing.