ANTH 2351: Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology
EXAM 2 REVIEW
Additional Readings & Vidoes
Make sure to be familiar with the main issues discussed in the additional readings and what each
video is an example of. Many of these themes are present in the Essay options, so even if you
choose not to do certain Essays, it is good to consider those that do deal w ith the assinged
additional readings and videos as "reviews".
Social Inequalities: Class & Caste
How does the American Dream relate to social stratification?
What does it mean to say a society is egalitarian, ranked, or stratified?
How do functionalist and conflict (or Neo-Marxist) theories explain social stratification?
What do power, wealth, and prestige refer to in terms of social stratification?
Understand the difference between ascribed and achieved statuses. What are some examples of
each? How do these relate to closed or open stratification systems?
What is a caste system? What are the Hindu and Edo Japanese caste systems and how do they
demonstrate ascribed status?
How do class systems differ from caste systems?
Social Inequalities: Race & Ethnicity
How is race understood by anthropologists and how does that differ from how it is understood
by the average American public? What is the basic American Anthropological Association’s
(AAA) statement on “race”?
How many subspecies of human exist today?
Are there more genetic differences between or within culturally constructed racial groups?
What are the differences in how racial categories are currently constructed in the U.S., Brazil,
and Japan? What does the case of the Burakumin demonstrate?
What does the history of the U.S. Census tell us about the construction of race?
What is hypodescent?
Be able to define and distinguish between ethnicity and race.
What role does endogamy play in the development of racial and ethnic social stratification?
What do anthropologists mean when they refer to ethnic identity, ethnic boundaries, and ethnic
marking?
What is relational ethnogenesis?
How do current nation-states typically relate to indigenous populations or ethnic groups? What
does it mean to say that nation-states are imagined communities?
Be able to define ethnocide (which includes forced assimilation), genocide/ethnic cleansing,
ethnic expulsion, and colonialism. What are examples from the text and/or lecture, including
the situation in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda?
What are the assimilation and multicultural models? Where does the U.S. currently fall along
this continuum?
What is a diaspora? Examples?
What is transnationalism?
Making a Living:
How does myth relate to subsistence? What are examples from the readings?
How do adaptive strategies relate to subsistence strategies as proposed by Cohen?
How did the rise of domestication and agriculture and then industrialization change subsistence
strategies?
What does foraging entail and what cultural correlates are commonly found in foraging
societies? What is an example of a foraging society?
Understand what horticulture and pastoralism entail and what cultural correlates are commonly
found in each type of society.
Differentiate transhumant and nomadic pastoralism. What are examples of each?
What is horticulture and how does it differ from agriculture? What techniques are often used in
horticulture?
Know what agriculture entails and what cultural correlates are commonly found in agricultural
societies. What are irrigation and terracing, and how do they relate to political centralization?
How do the amount of leisure time, the amount of labor, the intensity of land use, the reliance of
wild plants and animals, the degree of social equality, the degree of population density and
urbanism, and the degree of craft specialization change as one moves along the continuum from
foraging to agriculture (i.e., along the cultivation continuum from least to most intensive)?
You should understand the process of the agricultural transition (see the table in the lecture).
How do agriculture and health correlate?
What correlates with the transition to industrialization?
Economic Systems:
What is economics and what is an economic system? What is economic behavior?
What are productive resources and how are they allocated in foraging, pastoral, horticultural,
and agricultural societies?
What is craft specialization and how does it vary based on subsistence strategy?
What are the different ways labor can be organized?
How is labor typically divided by gender based on subsistence strategy?
Understand the Marx’s concept of the mode of production.
What is the market principle and what are the cultural associations?
You should understand the different forms of reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange as
they relate to different subsistence strategies. What does the Trobriand Island kula ring
demonstrate?
You need to be familiar with chiefly redistribution and the idea of the potlatch. Specifically,
you need to know what it is and how it functions in terms of both the gaining of prestige and
leveling wealth in a society.
What is the market exchange system? How do workers relate to their own production in
capitalist societies?
Political Systems:
How does the historic Asante state demonstrate the relationship between power and other
aspects of social life?
What is political organization? How do power and authority differ? What are a political
ideology and a political process?
How do rebellion and revolution differ?
To what do social complexity and social differentiation refer?
How do egalitarian, rank, and stratified societies differ?
Know the four basic types of political systems (band, tribe, chiefdom, and state) and the social
and cultural features that are correlated with each type. In particular, what roles do ascribed
and/or achieved status play in each type of system? How is prestige, rank, and/or status
achieved or negotiated in each type? How egalitarian or socially stratified is each type
typically? How is conflict managed or controlled in each type? What kind of leadership is
associated with each type? How is How and to what degree is labor divided by gender in each?
To what degree (if at all) are economic exchange relationships connected to kin and/or fictive
kin relationships in each type?
Know the kinds of integrating forces that are found in tribes. Specifically, you should be
familiar with age sets.
What are the defining features of states?