Study Questions for Quiz on Monday, April 25
Be sure to look over the key terms at the back of chapters 1, 2, 3 and 11 in Culture
Counts.
What does it mean that anthropology is ‘holistic’? (Culture Counts)
What are the four main subfields of anthropology? (Lecture and Culture Counts)
Give examples of how culture can change human biology in individuals. (Lecture)
What is the underlying method and foundation of cultural anthropological fieldwork
and what is its value to better understanding culture? (What do the authors of
Culture Counts say in Ch. 2 about anthropology’s role in bringing the concept of
‘culture’ to other disciplines and to the general population?)
5. What is an ethnography? (See Culture Counts)
6. What is ethnology? (Culture Counts)
7. What is culture, and what are the elements of culture that we talked about the first
week of class and that are described in Culture Counts?
8. What do anthropologists mean when they say that culture is moral?
9. What do anthropologists mean when they say that culture is ‘arbitrary’ and
‘symbolic’?
10. What do anthropologists mean when they say that culture is limit setting?
11. What does embarrassment indicate in a social/cultural situation?
12. What is enculturation?
13. How would most anthropologists define ‘race,’ according to your text book and the
film Race: the Power of an Illusion? Why?
14. Why is ‘race’ a cultural construction which cannot be mapped onto biology? How do
the concepts genetic concordance and non-concordance help answer this question?
15. What does Dr. Stuart Hall have to say about human categories, meanings and
associations connected with ‘race’? Why is race a ‘floating signifier’?
16. What is stereotype/identity threat, according to Dr. Claude Steele?
17. Explain some of the social/political reasons Europeans and EuroAmericans
historically defined and constructed race in the ways that they did? (Culture Counts
and Race: the Power of an Illusion)
18. What were the main points of the article Pocahontas Goes to the Clinic?
19. What is ethnocentrism? What are some extremes of ethnocentrism? (Lecture and
text book)
20. What is cultural relativism and its importance in anthropology? What are some
extremes of relativism?
21. Explain the fieldwork methodology participant observation. What information can you
gain from participant observation that would likely be difficult to gather with other
methods such as surveys, experiments, and structured interviews? What are other
anthropological techniques? (Lecture and text book)
22. What did researchers discover about sleeping habits and practices cross culturally,
according to authors of the article Slumber’s Unexplored Landscapes?
23. Was Claire Sterk’s approach to studying prostitution in Tricking and Tripping a
more etic or emic approach? Why? What did she learn?
24. What are ethical considerations for the ethnographer? (Culture Counts and Lecture)
1.
2.
3.
4.
25. What did Richard Borshay Lee learn about himself and his own ethnocentrisms
through his fieldwork experiences with the !Kung San in the article Eating
Christmas in the Kalahari?
26. How does etic differ from emic? (Lecture and Culture Counts)
27. What did Michael Wesch and his students discover about the significance of
community or lack of community in relation to networked individualism as described
in the film Anthropology of Youtube?
28. What is context collapse and aesthetic arrest, and why are these concepts significant in
the Youtube experience, according to Wesch and his students?
29. What are cultural and social restraints connected with Youtube and the internet that differ
in face to face circumstances? Why might people communicate with ‘hate’ comments or
with ‘flaming’ in one context and less often in other contexts, according to Wesch and his
students?
30. What does Wesch have to say about law, piracy, and Youtube?
31. Be prepared to define ‘behavioral setting.’ What is an example of a behavioral
setting and the expected behaviors in that setting? What do behavioral settings tell
us about enculturation? (Lecture)
32. How are habit and memory linked to places, culturally and biologically? (Lecture)
33. According to anthropologist Deborah Pellow, how was privacy understood in
Shanghai, China in the 1980s and 1990s compared with ‘mainstream’ U.S.A? Why?
(Lecture)
34. What is a liminal space? What is a liminal experience? How do liminal places and
experiences create a sense of vulnerability in individuals that could result in possible
worldview or ideological changes? Example? (Lecture)
35. Explain how the architectural design ‘panopticon’ has become a part of our spatial,
as well as our social and cultural experiences, according to Michel Foucault?
(Lecture)
36. What is a contact culture? Give some examples. (Film Personal Space)
37. What is a non-contact culture? Give some examples. (Film Personal Space)