Exam 2: Culture

In the course of participant observation, anthropologists are often called on to do things that they might not ordinarily do. What allows them to develop a keen understanding of beliefs and practices of others as they conduct fieldwork?

Chapter 2 begins with a brief discussion of how something as simple as a Happy Meal can illuminate many aspects of culture. Describe an example of a cultural encounter that you have experienced in your own life and discuss the ways in which it may have expanded or challenged your own ideas about cultural norms, values, symbols, and mental maps of reality. Conclude by discussing what you might have done or learned from that encounter.

Define human agency and how it relates to culture and power. Provide examples of how individuals engage in human agency. Next, discuss how human agency may be used to challenge various aspects of culture and power, providing a minimum of two examples for each. What do you believe are some of the implications of human agency on culture and society in general?

Which of the following processes is intensifying the exchange and diffusion of people, ideas, and goods worldwide, creating more interaction and engagement among cultures?

Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917) is credited with crafting the first definition of which of the following concepts utilized in anthropology?

Which of the following is one of the four elements that an anthropologist considers in attempting to understand the complex workings of a culture?

Many early anthropologists drew from biology to support their work. They believed that society, like the human body, was composed of interconnected parts, with each part having a:

Social scientists are increasingly attempting to understand how, when, and why mass murders occur. Which area of study would allow researchers to understand which environmental factors activate genetic predispositions toward violent behavior?

Culture is more than a set of ideas or patterns of behavior shared by a group of people because it also includes general mechanisms created by people to promote and maintain their core values. The recent changes in same-sex marriage laws reflect what kind of mechanism?

What is one key aspect in how we understand the idea of culture?

The advertising industry is key in igniting human desires for goods and services, which fuels the culture of consumerism. How does the power of advertising compare to the power of hegemony in influencing what people consider to be the "norm" in their cultural experiences? Are there any interconnections between the culture of consumerism and political organization in society today? Is there any evidence that suggests advertising is also used as a tool in politics to support and to institute hegemonic ideologies of certain groups who hold power within societies? Please provide concrete examples with each of your answers.

Rather than studying changes in organisms caused by alterations of the genetic code itself, epigenetics examines changes caused by:

Clifford Geertz argued that every cultural action is more than the action itself. It is also a symbol of deeper meaning, subject to interpretation. What key idea in anthropology did this important theoretical idea help promote?

Which of the following individuals was among the earliest anthropologists who sought to organize vast quantities of data about the diversity of world cultures that were being accumulated via colonial and missionary enterprises?

Which of the following is defined as the ability to create consent and agreement within a population, sometimes unconsciously, by shaping what people think is normal, natural, and possible?

The export of television shows worldwide and the knowledge of other cultures that is subsequently disseminated to even remote areas of the world are examples of which of the following concepts?

Clifford Geertz (1926-2006), who urged anthropologists to explore culture primarily as a symbolic system, felt that symbols were largely responsible for meaning. This meant that symbols and their meanings required a great deal of ________.

The description of the McDonald's Happy Meal in the text provides an example of how cultural norms and attitudes are found in everyday life. In deconstructing the Happy Meal, which of these facets of culture and human life would an anthropologist be likely to view as ethnocentric?

Former Harvard University president and economist Lawrence Summers commented in a 2005 speech that his school and others similar to it likely had more men in science and math faculties than women because men's brains were better suited for success in these areas. Do Summers's beliefs reflect a nature or nurture perspective of human experience? Based on what you have read in Chapter 2, what may be some of the reasons why there is a gender discrepancy in science and math faculties in U.S. colleges and universities? What role does culture play in such gender discrepancies?

Sitting in your anthropology class helps you learn about culture through formal instruction. What informal learning process helps you learn culture from family, friends, and the media?