Midterm Practice Exam

Looking at an illustrative teaching model, a student notices that the community farming permanent fields also has the most people per square kilometre, the fewest moves, and the largest local groups, and asks how these features connect. Which habit of the anthropological perspective is the student using?

Select one.

• Ethnocentrism, judging the communities by the student's standards
• Enculturation, learning the ways of one's own culture growing up
• Holism, seeing how the parts of a way of life fit together
• Moral relativism, refusing to make any judgment across cultures

True or false: in two-column field notes from an illustrative market, "generalized reciprocity among neighboring vendors" belongs in the observed column, and "a vendor pours coffee for the vendors on both sides and no one pays" belongs in the column for what it might mean.

True or false.

• True
• False

An illustrative coworker brings a cake to the office for a colleague's birthday; the colleague accepts it and later brings one on the coworker's birthday. Which three obligations from Mauss's essay on the gift does this sequence follow?

Select one.

• To buy, to sell, and to bargain
• To offer, to refuse, and to forget
• To collect, to pool, and to hand out to all
• To give, to receive, and to return the gift

An illustrative crew maps the post holes, broken pottery, and food scraps left at a camp that people abandoned centuries ago, hoping to reconstruct daily life there. Which subfield does the crew's work belong to?

Select one.

• biological anthropology, since the crew studies how humans evolved
• paleontology, since the crew recovers its material from the soil
• cultural anthropology, since the crew wants to learn about daily life
• archaeology, since it studies past human life through what remains

An illustrative job applicant answers an interviewer in full, formal sentences, then texts a friend "omw, went ok" on the way out of the building. What does this shift show?

Select one.

• A change of dialect, as the speaker sounds like a different region
• Code-switching, as the speaker moves between two separate languages
• Linguistic relativity, as the words decide what each listener can see
• A change of register, as one speaker shifts style for a new setting

True or false: anthropologists can study their own society, such as a neighborhood market or a workplace, as well as societies far away.

True or false.

• True
• False

At an illustrative graduation, students move the tassels on their caps from one side to the other at the moment their degrees are conferred. In anthropological terms, what is the tassel move?

Select one.

• a norm, because it tells all of the graduates exactly how to behave
• a symbol, because by shared agreement it stands for finishing
• a value, because it shows what the graduates believe is good
• an ethnocentric habit that the ceremony ought to give up

An illustrative observer at a community center codes 25 exchanges by type and finds that 3 were redistribution, with donated goods collected at a central desk and handed out again. What percent of the coded exchanges was redistribution?

Select one.

• 3 percent, the count itself
• 22 percent, because 25 minus the 3 cases is 22
• 75 percent, because 3 times 25 is 75
• 12 percent, because 3 divided by 25 is 0.12

In the 1910s, as Malinowski recorded, Trobriand Islanders received kula armbands and necklaces from partners on other islands. What did a person usually do with such a valuable?

Select one.

• Sold it to a trader for as much profit as could be had
• Held it for a time, then passed it on for prestige and partnership
• Kept it for good as a family heirloom that would never leave the home
• Handed it to a chief who then gave it out to everyone

In an illustrative household, an older sibling covers a younger sibling's bus fare for months, and neither of them keeps track or expects it to be paid back. Which kind of exchange is this?

Select one.

• Balanced reciprocity, because the fare will be repaid soon
• Generalized reciprocity, because no one keeps a count
• Market exchange, because a bus fare has a set price
• Negative reciprocity, because one sibling gives more

At an illustrative farmers' market, an observer coded 50 exchanges by type, and 5 of them were vendor-to-vendor swaps of matched value, which is balanced reciprocity. What percent of the coded exchanges was balanced reciprocity?

Select one.

• 5 percent, the count itself
• 45 percent, because 50 minus 5 is 45
• 1,000 percent, because 50 divided by 5 is 10, times 100
• 10 percent, because 5 divided by 50 is 0.1, times 100

A friend asks what anthropologists study. Which answer matches the discipline's own definition of anthropology?

Select one.

• The study of buried fossils and the animals of the very distant past
• The study of faraway peoples whose ways seem strange to outsiders
• The study of human beings in all societies, past and present
• The study of the museums, paintings, and music a society prizes

An illustrative shopper agrees to an interview after hearing a student's consent script, answers 3 questions, and then says they would rather not go on. Under the American Anthropological Association's Principles of Professional Responsibility (2012), what should the student do?

Select one.

• finish the remaining questions, since consent was given at the start
• continue, but leave the shopper's name out of the written notes
• ask a different shopper to answer the remaining questions instead
• stop, since consent is ongoing and can be withdrawn at any time

An illustrative student is asked how anthropologists use cultural relativism. Which answers are accurate? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• It means every practice must be accepted and none may ever be criticized.
• It is a research method: understand a practice in its own terms first.
• It is distinct from moral relativism, which is a philosophical position.
• Only people from other cultures need it, since one's own ways are normal.
• It fits with a discipline that takes public positions on ethics and race.

A friend says that culture is what you find in opera houses and art galleries. Which statement gives anthropology's definition of culture instead?

Select one.

• the paintings, music, and literature that a society ranks highest
• the whole learned, shared way of life of members of a society
• the set of traits that children inherit through their parents' genes
• a single set of beliefs held identically by every member of a group

In which decade was Canada's ban on the potlatch removed from the Indian Act?

Select one.

• the 1880s
• the 1920s
• the 1950s
• the 1990s

An illustrative student studies a family holiday dinner by asking how the seating, the recipes handed down, who cooks and who cleans up, the toasts, and the timing of the meal all connect to one another. Which habit of the anthropological perspective is the student using?

Select one.

• comparison, because the dinner is set beside other families' meals
• holism, because it asks how the parts of one event fit together
• fieldwork, because the student attends the dinner in person
• ranking, because some parts of the dinner matter more than others

In an illustrative office, coworkers stop inviting a colleague to lunch after the colleague keeps taking credit for others' work. Which form of social control is that?

Select one.

• Law, since a workplace rule was broken
• Shunning, an informal means of social control
• Negotiation, since the coworkers settle it themselves
• Gossip, since the coworkers talk about the colleague

A classmate claims that culture means only art and custom. Tylor's 1871 definition of culture names 6 items before "any other capabilities and habits": knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, and custom. How many of those 6 named items does the classmate's reading leave out?

Select one.

• 4, because knowledge, belief, morals, and law are missing
• 2, because the classmate names art and custom from the list
• 6, because the classmate's reading includes none of the items
• 3, because only belief, morals, and law are missing from it

True or false: an observer who calls an illustrative club's initiation song "silly" before asking members what it means to them is using cultural relativism as a method.

True or false.

• True
• False

An illustrative market tally shows market exchange at 66 percent and balanced reciprocity at 10 percent of coded exchanges. How should the gap between the two shares be stated?

Select one.

• 56 percentage points, because 66 minus 10 is 56
• 56 percent, because 66 minus 10 is 56
• 76 percentage points, because 66 plus 10 is 76
• 10 percentage points, the smaller of the two shares

An illustrative researcher studies how members of a teenage friend group use slang and abbreviations in their group chat to signal who belongs. Which subfield does this research fall under?

Select one.

• linguistic anthropology, which studies language as part of social life
• archaeology, which studies past lives through what people left behind
• biological anthropology, which studies the human body and its evolution
• paleontology, which studies very old forms of life through their fossils

An illustrative student plans to take notes on the sideline of a youth soccer game. Which planned steps follow the fieldwork rules for student projects? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• Write down a parent's first name overheard on the sideline.
• Observe from the sideline of a game at a public park.
• Describe someone as "a coach holding a clipboard" in the notes.
• Record a short video of the crowd to check the notes later.
• Interview one consenting adult about how they pick a sideline spot.

Which statements fit how anthropologists teach the subsistence model of foraging, pastoralism, horticulture, intensive agriculture, and industrial economies? Select every statement that applies.

Select every option that applies.

• Every society passes through the strategies in a fixed order toward industry.
• Real communities often combine more than one way of getting food.
• Tidy whole numbers in a teaching model are chosen for teaching, not measured.
• A foraging community is an earlier stage of an industrial society.

In an illustrative office, every staff member pays into a snack jar and the office manager uses the money to buy snacks for everyone. Why does this count as redistribution rather than reciprocity?

Select one.

• Each person trades snacks of matched value with one coworker
• Contributions pool at a center and one person hands them out
• Staff buy their own snacks at the store's posted prices
• No one keeps any count of what goes into the jar