Exam 6: Anthropological Explanations

An important premise of current Marxist anthropology is a rejection of the unilineal model of evolution.

Compare and contrast the perspectives of the symbolic anthropologists with the Marxists and the cultural materialists.

The methodology Lewis Henry Morgan used to investigate foreign cultures included __________.

Lewis Henry Morgan was primarily interested in the evolution of __________.

Symbolic anthropologists argue that human behavior cannot be explained through the use of the scientific method. Do you agree with their standpoint? Why or why not?

The concept of __________ maintains that societal change occurs when societies borrow cultural traits from one another.

The principal criticism of nineteenth-century theories of "unilineal evolution" is that __________.

Explain the major tenets of feminist anthropology. How does the feminist orientation developed in the 1960s and 1970s compare to the earlier work by female anthropologists? Support your answer with specific examples.

Edward B.Tylor, who published a major book entitled Primitive Culture in 1871, is recognized as the first __________.

According to Karl Marx, society has been divided into classes by the industrial mode of production; those who own the means of production-the capitalists-exploit those who sell their labor to the owners of factories-the proletariat-and this exploitation leads to harsh working conditions and extremely low wages.

Explanations for the differences and similarities among societies have been many and varied throughout the development of anthropology. What are the basic premises, strengths, and weaknesses of the following ideas: unilineal evolution, diffusionism, and historical particularism?

A major division in anthropology is between __________.

In the nineteenth century, Edward B. Tylor suggested that all societies progressed through three evolutionary stages: savagery, barbarism, and civilization.

Lewis Henry Morgan was a lawyer and banker of the late nineteenth century whose principal scholarship in anthropology was concerned with __________.

Discuss the principal effects that the writings of Karl Marx have had on anthropological theory. Support your answer with specific examples.

According to Julian Steward, the environment and the availability of resources has a definite influence on the form of social organization. This approach to studying cultural evolution, called __________, was exemplified nicely in his study of the social organization of the Shoshone during different seasons of the year.

It has been said that cultural ecology reduces human behavior to simple adaptations to the external environment, and that it does not take into consideration such things as history, political structure, and religious ideologies.

Feminist anthropologists have pointed out which of the following weaknesses in the ethnographic record?

Franz Boas criticized attempts to propose stages of cultural evolution, maintaining that each society must be understood as a product of its own unique history.

What are some of the criticisms that have been leveled at the cultural ecological approach? Do you think these criticisms are valid? If so, how would you modify the cultural ecological perspective to take into account the criticism?