Exam 3: Culture

Ethnocentrism is the practice of judging another society by the standards and values of one's own society.

According to Dan Sperber, the way culture is shared can be understood by analogy to which of the following?

One example of an ideology would be __________.

What do anthropologists mean when they say that culture is shared? Illustrate this concept with examples from your own sociocultural group.

The unique capacity for culture in the human species depends on learning since we do not inherit our culture through our genes.

Culture consists of both material and nonmaterial components.

Social learning is a process that can be observed in nonhuman creatures.

There are many definitions of culture; however, there are a number of aspects that are common to most definitions. One such aspect is that __________.

A worldview consists of various beliefs about the nature of reality that provide people with a means of interpreting and understanding the world around them.

__________ is credited with providing us with the first detailed definition of culture, ". . . that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."

Which of the following would be considered a form of nonmaterial culture?

Ethnicity is based on perceived differences in ancestral origins or descent and shared history and cultural heritage.

Discuss the relationship between the way people dress, ethnicity, and symbolism. Pick an example of dress codes and/or hairstyles that you have encountered and explain what the symbols mean to the individuals involved.

Anthropologists have determined that specific food preferences are biologically based and not culturally influenced.

Ways of enforcing social mores in hunter-gatherer societies generally involve the use of __________.

The striking feature of cultural universals is the fact that the specific content and practice do not vary from society to society.

Minority groups are often forced to accept the ideologies of the economically and politically dominant groups through the process of cultural hegemony.

Symbols are directly associated with concrete physical objects or activities, while signs are arbitrary units of meaning.

Anthropologist Marvin Harris has suggested that the Jewish and Islamic prohibitions of eating pork developed because pigs __________.

__________ may occur when one dominant group in a complex society imposes its cultural beliefs on subordinate ethnic groups. For example, the dominant ethnic group in the United States during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants) was able to impose its language, cultural beliefs, and practices on other minority groups in U.S. society.