ANTH 210: Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology
EXAM 3 (Final) 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".
Marriage:
How do the Na (Mosuo) of China and the Khasi of India treat sexual activity and the raising of
children? What kind of kin system do they share?
What are the primary functions of marriage? How is it defined in the text and lecture?
According to Edmond Leach, what are the basic rights allocated by marriage? How do these
rights correspond to same-sex unions based on anthropological data?
How were same-sex marriages historically constructed in Nuer society and in some Native
American societies? How do these concepts of same-sex marriage differ from the recent
Western concept?
What do marriage rules determine?
You should understand the concept of incest taboos and their functions.
How do societies based on matrilineal and patrilineal descent differentiate between parallel and
cross cousins? For each kind of descent system, relations with which cousins are considered
incestuous?
What are the five explanations presented to explain the incest taboo, what are the weakness of
each (if any), and which one is most widely accepted and why?
What is “royal incest”? Why are such elites able to break the incest taboos of their own
societies? What are manifest and latent functions of ancient Egyptian royal incest?
What are exogamy, endogamy, and homogamy? What are the functions or advantages of each?
What are levirate and sororate marriages? What are their primary functions?
Be able to identify and distinguish between the different kinds of polygamy. In which cases is
polygyny or polyandry advantageous? With what kind of gender pattern is each associated?
What are examples of each? Which is more common?
What are bride service, bridewealth, and dowry? What is the purpose of each, and how does
each correlate with gender stratification?
How may marriage customs vary as a rite of passage?
What are neolocal, patrilocal, matrilocal, avunculocal, and bilocal residence patterns, and what
cultural correlates are associated with each?
What is divorce, and how does it relate to gender stratification? What forces may affect divorce
rates in foraging societies? What forces affect divorce rates in the U.S.?
Family and Kinship:
What is the broad definition of family provided in lecture? What are ways in which family may
vary in form in the U.S.? Be familiar with what the American Anthropological Association has
to say about family.
You should be able to distinguish between the family of orientation and the family of procreation
in terms of Ego.
What are the differences between nuclear and extended families? Which kind of societies
commonly centers on nuclear family? Which kind of societies tends to center on extended
families? What other cultural features tend to be associated with each type of family; and what
are the potential advantages and disadvantages of each? How do patrilineal and matrilineal
extended families differ in their organization?
What is a kinship system and what are its functions?
What are descent groups and what are their functions? Which types of societies are commonly
organized by descent groups?
What is unilineal descent, what two forms can it take, and what are its advantages?
What is a lineage? What is an apical ancestor? How are patrilineages (aka patrilineal descent
groups) and matrilineages (aka matrilineal descent groups) organized? How do they relate to
gender stratification in terms of status and inheritance? What are examples of each?
What are segmentary lineages? How do tribal and chiefdom-level societies use them to mobilize
relatives (usually for getting male relatives to help in inter-group raids)?
What other cultural characteristics correlate with patrilineality or matrilineality? (See the table in
the lecture for this).
You should understand what clans and totems are and how they organize unilineal descent
systems.
How do double descent and parallel descent systems differ from a unilineal one? What are the
advantages of both?
What is a bilateral descent system and how does it operate? What is a kindred?
Which kind of descent system is dominant in the U.S.?
What is an ambilineal descent system and how does it correlate with status?
What is a kinship classification system and what is its function? In general, how do they vary?
What is the difference between a kin type and a kin term? What are examples of each?
You need to be familiar with how specific (or “descriptive”) or broad (have few distinctions)
kinship terms are in the kinship terminology systems given in the lecture; however, the main
ones you particularly need to understand are the Eskimo/lineal system and the Irish kinship
system. You only need to understand the English translations of the terms and what they refer in
the Gaeltacht part of Ireland, not the actual Irish Gaelic terms.
Sex and Gender:
What is a third gender? What examples from non-Western cultures are given in the text and
lecture? What is an example in American culture?
You need to understand the differences among sex, gender, and sexual orientation and what are
examples of gender and sexual orientation Western culture?
What does that mean when anthropologists say that gender is a cultural construct? What did
Margaret Mead discover about gender through her ethnography? What does it mean that gender
is assigned? Is gender always assigned at birth?
What are gender stereotypes? What are some examples in American culture?
What is sexual orientation? What does it mean that sexual orientation “falls along a
continuum?” What are the four primary types of sexual orientation as proposed by science?
How is sexual orientation defined by the American Psychological Association?
Who are the Etoro (Sambia) of New Guinea and how are sexuality and gender expressed in their
culture?
What are some ways that sexual orientation is framed in the U.S.?
How does culture limit sexuality and emic concepts of sexual orientation/sexual identity? Upon
what factors do sexual norms vary cross-culturally and how do they limit sexual behaviors and
beliefs about attractiveness? How was sexuality constructed in the traditional society of Innis
Beag, Ireland?
What are gendered initiation rites and what are their functions? What are the differences
between men and women’s initiation rites?
What are gender roles and what affects their variation? What are the recurrent gender role
patterns presented in the text and lecture?
What is gender stratification? How does it correlate with economic roles?
You should know what the private (domestic)/public dichotomy is and how it relates to
differences in status between genders. How does this dichotomy vary in terms of a society’s
subsistence strategy (agriculturalists, etc.)? What is the “Cult of Domesticity” in America?
How was gender stratified among the Tlingit and the Iroquois?
What are the cultural correlates associated with matrifocal and patrifocal societies?
How do gender relations correlate with subsistence strategies (from foraging to the current global
economy)?
What is Female Genital Operation (FGO) or Female Genital Mutilation (FMG)? Where is it
prominent? What are the different etic and emic perspectives of the practice?
Religion:
What are cargo cults? How is the recent Word of Faith or Prosperity Theology movement a
Western analogy of a cargo cult?
How did Wallace define religion? Is it a universality, generality, or particularity?
Why is the term supernatural not always applicable to the study of religion?
What are the primary characteristics of religion? As proposed by Tyler and then Wallace, how
do religious types correlate with politico-economic systems (egalitarian foragers, etc.)? While
Tyler’s taxonomy of religion is still considered useful, modern anthropologists consider his
concept of religious evolution to be ethnocentric. Why?
What are the main functions of religion?
What roles does religion often play in controlling society? What are some examples? What does
effervescence refer to, who coined the term, and how does it relate to religion?
What is a cosmology and how may it give order and meaning to people’s lives?
How may religion function to reduce or increase anxiety? How does it reinforce the social order
and promote social solidarity?
How is Ahimsa or the Hindu doctrine of nonviolence towards animals an example of how
religious beliefs and practices may be interpreted differently from emic and etic perspectives?
How does it demonstrate how religion may be adaptive?
What is a god or deity? How prevalent are supreme creator gods? How prevalent are supreme
creator gods that are concerned with human behavior?
What are ancestor spirits and what are some ways that they may be believed to affect living
people’s lives? How do the changes in Japanese ancestor worship demonstrate how culture is
integrated?
In general, what is the difference between an ancestral spirit and a ghost? Is there a difference in
Navaho religion?
What are demons and what are some examples in the text and lecture? How may ghosts and
demons be interpreted in a functionalist approach? What are some examples in the lecture?
What is folk religion and how does it differ from formally institutionalized religion?
You need to understand the two general kinds of mana, where they are found, and how they
function in society.
What are rituals and how may they function in society? Examples? What are the functions of
ritual or religious speech and dress?
Be familiar with the concept of a rite of passage, the three stages that make up a rite of passage,
and the function of such rites in society. In particular, you need to understand the liminal phase.
What are some examples?
What are rites of intensification and carnival or anti-structure rituals? How do they function in
society?
What are totems and what social purposes do they serve? How do totemic societies view nature
in relation to social order? What is an apical ancestor?
What are the main four forms of communication with the spiritual world found cross-culturally?
Be able to identify and distinguish between imitative and contagious magic, along with examples
of each. What function does magic serve following Malinowski’s Anxiety Theory of Magic?
What is divination and what are examples of it, including scapulomancy? How do mediums
differ from diviners in their general approach to obtaining hidden information?
Etically speaking, what role does magic play in religion? How may magic be perceived
emically?
In anthropological terms, what is witchcraft and how do witchcraft accusations and hunts
function in societies where they occur? Which groups of people are typically targets of
witchcraft accusations and why?
What are shamans and what services do they perform for the community? Are they part-time or
full-time specialists?
How does illness differ from disease? What roles may religious specialists play in curing
systems? What are some examples from the lecture?
What are priests and what functions do they serve? How are priesthoods associated with other
social institutions?
What are prophets and by what process may they bring about religious change? How are they
perceived by official religious institutions? What are some historic examples from the lecture?
What are nativistic and revitalization movements? How do they differ? What social functions
do they serve?
What are messianic and millenarian religious views?
How does religious syncretism operate? In what circumstances does it typically occur? What
are some examples of this process?
What are New Religious Movements (NRMS), and specifically, what is contemporary NeoPaganism? What are the broad subdivisions within this new religious movement? How do they
differ?