Asking Questions about Cultural
Anthropology Ch 1-7. Questions With
Correct Answers.
What is anthropology? - answer✔✔A comparative study of humankind. The study of human
societies and cultures and their development
What does it mean to say that anthropology is holistic? - answer✔✔Anthropologists study the
entire range of humans' biological, social, political, economic, and religious behavior as well as
the relationships among the different aspects of human behavior in the past and present.
What are the main subfields of anthropology? - answer✔✔Cultural anthropology, linguistic
anthropology, archaeology, biological (physical) anthropology, and applied anthropology.
How did anthropology begin? - answer✔✔During the nineteenth century, the rise of
industrialization, the influence of evolutionary theory, and colonial contact with less-
industrialized cultures led to the discipline of understanding how cultures operate and interact
What is the anthropological position on race? - answer✔✔Race is not a valid scientific category
but rather is a social and cultural construct.
Give a definition of culture. - answer✔✔The learned, symbolic, at least partially adaptive, and
ever-changing patterns of behavior and meaning shared by members of a group. Human are
vitally dependent on culture for their existence.
Describe the importance of symbols in culture. - answer✔✔Humans understand the world by
classifying it and using symbols to give it meaning. Different cultures use different systems of
classification. People use symbols to give meaning to their lives. Anthropologists analyze and
interpret symbols and rituals to understand cultural meanings.
In what ways are cultures like biological organisms, and what are the problems with this organic
analogy? - answer✔✔Cultures are systems of related elements working together. However,
unlike biological organisms, cultural systems include contradictions that lead to conflict.
What are norms and values? Do people within a culture agrees on them? - answer✔✔Shared
ideas about the way things ought to be done. Values are shared ideas about what is true, right,
and beautiful. Typically, people within a culture do not fully agree on norms and values. Some
amount of conflict is the rule, not the exception.
Are cultures typically static, or do they change? - answer✔✔All cultures change. Many factors
determine the acceptance or rejection of a culture change.
What role does anthropology play in coping with cultural differences? - answer✔✔Culture
makes humans unique, but the vast differences between human cultures make cultural
understandings a challenge. Anthropology supplies tools to meet that challenge.
Ethnocentrism - answer✔✔Judging other cultures from the perspective on one's own culture.
The notion that one's own culture is more beautiful, rational, and nearer to perfection than any
other.
Racism - answer✔✔The belief that some human populations are superior to others because of
inherited, genetically transmitted characteristics.
Cultural Realitivsm - answer✔✔The idea that cultures should be analysed with reference to their
own histories and values rather than according to the values of another culture.
Ethnography - answer✔✔The major research tools of cultural anthropology, including both
fieldwork among people in a society and the written results of such fieldwork.
Participant Observations - answer✔✔The fieldwork technique that involves gathering cultural
data by observing people's behavior and participating in their lives.
Consultant/Informant/Interlocutor/Respondent/Partner - answer✔✔A person from whom
anthropologists gather data.
Ethnology - answer✔✔The attempt to find general principles or laws that govern cultural
phenomena through the comparison of cultures.
Human Relations Area Files - answer✔✔An ethnographic datatbase that includes cultural
descriptions of more than 300 societies
Postmodernism - answer✔✔A theoretical position in anthropology that focuses on issues of
power and voice. They hold that anthropological accounts are partial truths reflecting the
backgrounds, training, and social positions of their authors.
Collabroative Ethnography - answer✔✔pulls together threads of collaboration between
ethnographers and their consultants that have found their way into ethnographic field methods
and writing - pulls together threads of collaboration between ethnographers and their consultants
that have found their way into ethnographic field methods and writing
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