Exam 3: Method and Theory in Cultural Anthropology

Despite the increasing popularity of team research among anthropologists, the best ethnographies are always the product of individual work.

In survey research, a sample should

Despite the differences among theoretical paradigms of practitioners as varied as Harris (cultural materialism), White (neoevolutionism), Steward (cultural ecology), and Mead (configurationalism), all of them have what in common?

Longitudinal research is the long-term study of a community, region, society, culture, or other unit, usually based on repeated visits.

In survey research, what term is used to refer to the attributes that vary among the members of a population?

In survey research, what is sampling?

As investigators who illustrated the functionalist approach in anthropology, both Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown performed ethnographic research focused on

The work of which of the following anthropologists illustrated a renewed interest in cultural change and even evolution (although of a very different sort than Tylor and Morgan had in mind)?

How have anthropologists tried to bring evolution into the study of human culture? Have these approaches succeeded, or failed? Why? Do you see any way in which evolution and culture could be united into a broad and effective explanatory paradigm?

The view that each element of culture, such as the culture trait or trait complex, has its own distinctive history, and that social forms (such as totemism in different societies) that might look similar are not comparable because of their different histories, is known as

This chapter's survey of the major theoretical perspectives that have characterized anthropology highlights all of the following EXCEPT

Traditionally, ethnographers have tried to understand the whole of a particular culture.

An agreement to take part in research after having the nature, procedures, and possible impacts of the research explained is known as

An anthropologist has just arrived at a new field site and feels overwhelmed with a creepy, profound feeling of alienation, of being without some of the most ordinary, trivial (and therefore basic) cues of his culture of origin.What term best describes what he is experiencing?

Briefly describe the nine characteristic field techniques of the ethnographer.How do they compare with the research techniques you have learned about in courses or readings in other academic disciplines?

Among the classic works of processual approaches to culture is Edmund Leach's Political Systems of Highland Burma.This study made a tremendously important point by taking a regional rather than a local perspective.

Which of the following is NOT an example of participant observation?

Really good key cultural consultants will actually end up recording most of the data needed to write an ethnography.

Which is the key assumption in Claude Lévi-Strauss's structuralism?

Given the realities of the contemporary world, anthropologists need to apply methods that protect their analyses from biases caused by external forces.