Anthropology - Part I
Part One – Anthropology, Culture, Society, and the Individual
Chapter 1. Anthropology: A Definition
1. What is anthropology?
2. What are the main areas in the field of anthropology and what are the differences
between them?
3. What is meant by a holistic perspective?
4. What are the 2 main settings in which anthropologists work?
5. In the history of anthropology, there have been several different periods. Briefly define
each of these.
Prescientific, evolutionary, empiricist, functionalist, and specialist)
6. Briefly describe the contributions of each of the following: Edward Burnett Taylor, Franz
Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead.
7. What is meant by fieldwork?
8. Briefly describe why it is important that there be both male and female field researchers
in anthropology.
9. What is meant by participant observation in field work?
10. What is the geanological method and why is it important?
11. Explain the anthropological approaches to explaining culture.
Chapter 2. Culture
1. Describe society and culture.
2. Breifly define the following according to the text: ideology, beliefs, feelings, emotions,
attitudes.
3. In defining the components of values, briefly describe morality, etiquette, piety, and
aesthetics.
4. What are drives?
5. What is enculturation or socialization?
6. What is the difference between informal and formal learning?
7. What is the difference between ideal and real culture?
8. In terms of intercultural influences, what is acculturation?
9. What is assimilation?
10. Define ethnocentrism.
11. What is cultural relativism?
12. In terms of cultural diversity, what is meant by the terms superorganic, material culture,
and non-material culture?
13. What is culture shock?
14. What are cultural universals?
Chapter 3. Biology and Culture: Evolution, Race, Gender, and Sexuality
1. What are instincts, and do humans have them?
2. Define species?
3. Define boilogical evolution.
4. Briefly define natural selection.
5. What is meant by biological adaptation?
6. What is meant by archaic Homo sapiens?
7. When did the earliest anatomically modern Homo sapiens live?
8. What are primates and which groups do they include?
9. Define opposable thumb?
10. What is the difference between the power grip and the precision grip?
11. Why is stereoscopic vision important to humans?
12. When ded bipedalism develop among primates?
13. What are some positive and negative aspects of increased brain size in humans?
14. What is meant by the term race, and do humas have them?
15. What is racialism?
16. What is racial discrimination?
17. What are racist beliefs?
18. Why are IQ test scores considered to be unstable?
19. What is the effect of language on IQ scores?
20. What is cultural bias in IQ tests?
21. What is a culture-free intelligence test?
22. What is a gender stereotype?
23. What is sexism?
24. What is gender stratification?
25. What is patriarchy?
26. What is sexual terrorism?
27. Define rape as social control?
28. What was Chinese footbinding?
29. What was suttee?
30. What is purdah?
31. What are the major differences between male and female circumcision (sometimes called
FMG, or female genital mutilation)?
32. What are infibulation and excision?
33. What is meant by gender symbolism?
34. Define and describe socialization of gender differences?
35. What are common gender patterns in the division of labor?
36. What is meant by supernumerary, or third and forth genders?
37. What are Two Spirits and The Hijra?
Chapter 4. Culture, Personality, and Psychological Process
1. What is the study of culture and personality?
2. What is meant by cunfigurationalism as described by Rugh Benedict?
3. What is basic personality structure?
4. What is a modal personality type?
5. What are primary and secondary institutions?
6. What is psychological anthropology?
7. What is personality?
8. What is a Contrary Warrior among the Cheyenne?
9. What is meant by face?
10. What is meant by face work?
11. Explan the terms deviance and stigma.
12. What is meant by a trance state, or altered states of consciousness?
13. What is a hallucination?
14. What role does serotonin play in trance states?
15. What is a eureka, or ah ha experience?
16. What is a spirit travel trance?
17. What is a spirit possession trance?
18. What is the role of ritual in controlling anxiety?
19. What is a deviant status?
20. What are residual rules?
21. What is insanity?
22. What are dissociative disorders, or hysteria?
23. Describe the social roots of dissociative disorders.
24. What is schizophrenia?
25. Describe anorexia nervosa as a culture-specific disorder.