Week 2 Quiz

Tylor's 1871 definition of culture names knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, and custom before "any other capabilities and habits." How many of those six named items are not the arts?

Select one.

• 6, because every item in the list is a kind of art
• 5, because only one of the six named items is art
• 1, because only art counts as culture in the definition
• 4, because art and custom are both kinds of the arts

Which statement matches this course's definition of culture?

Select one.

• the fine arts and high culture a society treasures most
• the traits a group inherits biologically from its ancestors
• a group's whole learned, shared way of life, acquired as a member of society
• one set of beliefs that every member of a group holds in exactly the same way

An illustrative baby adopted at birth into a family on another continent grows up speaking that family's language and using its greetings. Which characteristic of culture does this show most directly?

Select one.

• culture is learned, not inherited biologically
• culture is integrated, so one change ripples outward
• culture is symbolic, so its meanings are arbitrary
• culture is unchanging once a person is born

Which statement correctly separates culture from society?

Select one.

• culture is the people in a group; society is their art and music
• culture and society are two words for the same thing
• society is learned, while culture is inherited at birth
• culture is the learned way of life; society is the people who share it

Over many years, two illustrative neighboring towns trade festival songs and recipes, and each changes some of its own ways. Which term names this?

Select one.

• enculturation, because people are learning culture
• acculturation, the change that follows sustained contact
• ethnocentrism, because each town judges the other
• cultural relativism, because both towns are described

At the running fieldwork site (an illustrative weekly farmers' market of 24 stalls), the market manager rings a hand bell at 8:00 a.m., and the first sales begin within a minute. In this week's terms, what is the bell itself?

Select one.

• a norm, because it tells vendors exactly how to behave
• a value, because it shows what the vendors think is good
• an ethnocentric habit that the market should drop
• a symbol, because it stands for "selling may begin" by agreement

At the same illustrative market, two vendors disagreed about whether bagging a regular's order before the bell counts as selling early: one said a regular is the exception, and the other said the rule is the rule. What does the disagreement show?

Select one.

• that the market has no culture, since its rules are unclear
• that one vendor is right and the other is ethnocentric
• that culture is shared but never uniform within a group
• that the bell rule is about to disappear from the market

A traveler eats dinner with a family who take their shoes off at the door and says, "That's a fussy, backward habit." Which concept best names the traveler's reaction?

Select one.

• ethnocentrism, judging by the standards of one's own culture
• cultural relativism, describing the family's practice in its own terms
• moral relativism, the claim that no judgment holds anywhere
• enculturation, learning the family's habits while growing up

Which statements describe cultural relativism as this course defines it? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• It is a method for describing a practice in its own terms before judging it.
• It means that anything goes and no practice may ever be judged.
• It is a different idea from moral relativism, a philosophical claim.
• It is something only other people need, since our own ways are normal.
• It fits a discipline that takes public positions on race and on research ethics.

True or false: the Nacirema described in Miner's 1956 article are a real people living somewhere in the world.

True or false.

• True
• False