Final Practice Exam

A student's essay uses gender and sex as if they meant the same thing. Which description of gender, in the course's terms, would correct the essay?

Select one.

• Chromosomes, hormones, anatomy, and other biological traits
• The roles, behaviors, and identities a culture builds around sex
• Patterns of attraction and the rules a culture sets around them
• A descent group's rule about whom its members are allowed to marry

Besides ego, the illustrative kinship set places B, Z, FBS, FZD, MBD, and MZS in ego's generation. If the family used lineal terminology, which of these people would ego call brother or sister?

Select one.

• B and Z only, with separate words for the cousins
• B, Z, FBS, and MZS, the siblings and parallel cousins
• All six of them, cousins included
• The four cousins only

A health worker separates a body's malfunction from what being unwell means to the person and the community. In the course's terms, which of these is illness?

Select one.

• The body's malfunction as a biomedical practitioner defines it
• A person's own account of what caused a problem and how it should be treated
• Harm that social arrangements place on some people more than others
• The experience and meaning of being unwell, for person and community

For 1990, which figures does the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs give for the worldwide count of international migrants and their share of all people on earth?

Select one.

• About 304 million, 3.7 percent of the world's population
• About 154 million, 2.9 percent of the world's population
• About 154 million, 29 percent of the world's population
• About 152 million, exactly half the count for 2024

A classmate claims that race is a set of natural groups fixed at birth. Which definition from the course replaces that claim?

Select one.

• A set of natural biological groups that every society recognizes in exactly the same way, fixed from birth
• A social classification a society makes, with categories that vary and inequality that has real effects
• A shared identity that people build on ancestry, language, religion, or their customs
• A trait that shifts gradually across geography instead of falling into separate boxes

In an illustrative society, a small group owns all the farmland, and everyone else must rent land or work for wages to make a living. In Fried's scheme, which kind of society is this?

Select one.

• A stratified society
• An egalitarian society
• A rank society
• A tribe

A student has a baker's consent for a short interview about wrist pain and may ask one more question. Which question best fits the course's guidance on open, ethical interviewing?

Select one.

• "It's from all the kneading, isn't it?"
• "What is your home address, so I can mail you a copy of my notes?"
• "How does the pain affect your work, and what might help?"
• "Your doctor must be wrong about the cause, right?"

A classmate argues, "Since race is socially made, its categories cannot affect anyone in a way that matters." Which reply keeps both halves of the course's definition of race?

Select one.

• Race is biological, and that is why it affects people
• Race is socially made, so the classmate is right
• Race is socially made, and inequality built on it is real
• Race and ethnicity are the same, so effects come from customs

Two illustrative delivery drivers catch the same flu. One has paid sick days and stays home; the other is paid only per delivery, has no sick pay, and keeps driving while ill. Which reading matches the course's idea of structural violence?

Select one.

• A dispatcher's rude phone call to the second driver is the structural violence here
• It does not apply, because nobody struck or attacked either one of the two drivers
• The way the jobs are set up, not any one person's act, leaves the second driver more exposed
• It applies only if someone made the second driver sick on purpose so that they keep on working

The course's exchange set lists a restaurant tip as a borderline case. Why does the course discuss the tip without keying it as one exchange type?

Select one.

• It can be read as a goodwill gift or as part of the price of service, and both readings have support
• It is negative reciprocity, because the diner always tries to pay much less than the meal is really worth
• It is generalized reciprocity in every case, since neither side keeps any count of it
• It is bridewealth, because the money passes between two families at a shared meal

True or false: people count as one household only when every member is related to the others by birth or marriage.

True or false.

• True
• False

An illustrative marriage joins one husband and three wives at the same time. Which term names this form?

Select one.

• Polyandry, because several spouses share the marriage
• Monogamy, because the husband has only one marriage
• Exogamy, because the wives come from other households
• Polygyny, a kind of polygamy with several wives

An illustrative state university museum that receives federal funds holds funerary objects, and a Native Hawaiian organization asks for their return. Which statement matches the course?

Select one.

• The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires repatriation, through consultation
• The museum may keep the objects if it can show that it is able to care for them better
• Returning the objects is optional goodwill that first needs the original donors' approval
• Only an international UNESCO convention can decide whether the objects are sent back

Mead (1935) argued that temperament linked to sex differs across societies, and later critics argued that her contrasts among the three societies were drawn too sharply. Why does the course teach this debate without keying a verdict?

Select one.

• Because the critics have already settled the matter against Mead
• Because each side has a strong case, so the course lays out both of them
• Because Mead's contrasts have been confirmed in every respect since then
• Because it is a matter of personal opinion with no evidence on either side

A classmate argues, "Speakers of a language with no separate word for a color cannot see that color at all." How do anthropologists classify that claim?

Select one.

• The weak form of linguistic relativity, which has limited support
• An example of arbitrariness, which explains why words need glosses
• The strong form of linguistic relativity, which is not supported
• The strong form of linguistic relativity, which is well supported

In an illustrative interview with a barista, 8 answers are recorded, and 6 of them use an emic term, an insider's word written in quotation marks, such as "the rush." What share of the answers use an emic term?

Select one.

• 6 percent, because 6 of the answers use one
• 25 percent, because 2 of the 8 answers lack one
• 48 percent, because 6 times 8 is 48
• 75 percent, because 6 divided by 8 is 0.75

True or false: Miner's article "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" describes familiar American habits as if they belonged to a foreign people.

True or false.

• True
• False

True or false: in Fried's scheme, an egalitarian society can still have differences among people, such as in age and skill, as long as people of the same age and gender have equal access to prestige and resources.

True or false.

• True
• False

In an illustrative case, a leader inherits office from a parent, holds authority over several villages, and collects harvest goods that are given out again at feasts. In Service's model, which type of political organization is this?

Select one.

• A band
• A tribe
• A chiefdom
• A state

The Office of Management and Budget's 2024 standard has 7 minimum race and ethnicity categories, among them Hispanic or Latino and Middle Eastern or North African. How many of the 7 minimum categories are neither of those two?

Select one.

• 7
• 5
• 2
• 9

An illustrative student sets a neighborhood farmers' market, where a bell opens trading and buyers chat with growers, beside an online grocery order that arrives at the door at a fixed price. What does looking at the two together show?

Select one.

• that ordering online is the more advanced and efficient way to shop
• that the market's opening bell is an old habit that should be dropped
• that each way of buying food is one arrangement among several possible
• that all people everywhere get their food in basically the same way

Young people on an illustrative coming-of-age trek, cut off from ordinary life and not yet treated as adults, say they feel an unusually strong bond with one another. Which term names that bond?

Select one.

• Animism
• Communitas
• Incorporation
• Liminality

In what year was the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the United States law on returning Native American remains and sacred objects, signed into law?

Select one.

• 1951
• 2003
• 1990
• 1979

In an illustrative interview, a baker calls wrist pain "my flour arm", and the interviewer files the remark under "explanatory model". Which pairing labels the emic and the etic correctly?

Select one.

• "My flour arm" is emic, and "explanatory model" is etic
• Both terms are emic, because both of them describe the wrist
• "Explanatory model" is emic, while "my flour arm" is etic
• Both terms are etic, because the interviewer wrote both down

In an illustrative family, two siblings disagree about the house rule against phones at dinner: one says a message from a grandparent is an exception, and the other says no phones means no phones. What does their disagreement show?

Select one.

• that the family has no culture, since its rule is unclear
• that one sibling is right and the other is ethnocentric
• that the phone rule is about to disappear from the family
• that culture is shared within a group but never uniform

A visiting student staying with an illustrative host family that eats its main meal late in the evening calls the habit "lazy and backward." Which concept best names the student's reaction?

Select one.

• cultural relativism, describing the habit in its own terms
• enculturation, learning the host family's habits over time
• ethnocentrism, judging by the standards of one's own culture
• moral relativism, the claim that no moral judgment holds anywhere

True or false: at an illustrative farmers' market, an observer's label "repeat buyers" is the emic term, and the vendors' own word "regulars" is its etic counterpart.

True or false.

• True
• False

An illustrative planner lists 4 rites of passage, each divided into van Gennep's 3 phases, so every rite has one separation, one transition, and one incorporation entry. How many of the phase entries are separation or transition?

Select one.

• 12
• 4
• 8
• 7

An illustrative restaurant cook sends money to a sibling in another country every month and calls the sibling often. Which reading fits the course?

Select one.

• The money is redistribution, because a central office collects and gives it out
• The money is market exchange, because it is paid at a posted, agreed price
• The calls and transfers show globalization has made every place the same
• The money is a remittance, part of the transnational ties the cook keeps

In an illustrative workplace, staff follow a shift supervisor's schedule because they agree the supervisor has the right to set it. In anthropological terms, what does the supervisor hold?

Select one.

• Authority, power that people accept as rightful
• Power alone, the ability to force action against people's will
• A title, which carries weight whether or not people accept it
• Law, a rule that only a court is able to enforce

An illustrative campus meal card can be spent only at the dining hall and on nothing else. Which kind of money is it?

Select one.

• General-purpose money, accepted for nearly any exchange
• Special-purpose money, valid for certain exchanges only
• Redistribution, because the campus runs the dining hall
• Balanced reciprocity, because each meal is paid for in full

At an illustrative family dinner, a grandparent describes a flood that swept through the town before anyone else at the table was born. Which design feature of language makes this possible?

Select one.

• Arbitrariness
• Productivity
• Displacement
• Traditional transmission

An illustrative field note from a coffee counter reads: at 7:45 a.m., a barista starts making an oat-milk latte as a customer walks in, before the customer orders. Which part belongs in the possible-interpretation column rather than the observed column?

Select one.

• the barista starts an oat-milk latte right away
• the time, 7:45 a.m., and the place, the busy coffee counter
• the customer may be a frequent visitor with a known order
• the customer walks in before saying anything at all

In an illustrative family, an older sibling pays for a younger sibling's school books each term, and nobody keeps track or expects to be repaid. Read as a classroom model, which form of exchange does this look like?

Select one.

• Generalized reciprocity
• Market exchange at a set price
• Negative reciprocity
• Balanced reciprocity

Evans-Pritchard reported that when a granary collapsed on people sitting under it, the Azande accepted that termites had weakened its supports. What did witchcraft explain in such a case?

Select one.

• How termites weaken wood, which the Azande did not know
• Why it fell on those people at that moment
• Nothing, since termites alone were the explanation
• Which rite of passage the people beneath it had begun

Over several generations, an illustrative immigrant community and its new neighbors borrow foods, words, and holidays from each other, and both groups change some of their ways. Which term names this?

Select one.

• acculturation, the change that follows sustained contact
• enculturation, because children learn the community's ways
• ethnocentrism, because each group compares itself to the other
• cultural relativism, because both groups' ways are described

An illustrative student observes the open seating area of a public library from 2:00 to 4:30 p.m. and writes 6 field-note entries. On average, about how many minutes passed between entries?

Select one.

• 6 minutes, because the visit produced 6 entries
• 25 minutes, because 150 divided by 6 is 25
• 2.5 minutes, because the visit lasted 2.5 hours
• 10 minutes, because 60 divided by 6 is 10

A honeybee's dance tells hive mates where flowers are, while a person can describe a garden that burned down long ago or one that never existed. Which statement correctly relates communication and language?

Select one.

• Language and communication mean the same thing, since both pass information between individuals.
• Communication is any passing of information; language is one learned, symbolic kind that can say new and absent things.
• Language is any passing of information, and communication is the special human form built from words and grammar.
• Communication is found only in animals and language only in humans, so the two categories never overlap at all.

An illustrative museum label describes researchers who study fossilized sea creatures that lived long before any humans existed. Which field does that research belong to?

Select one.

• archaeology, the subfield that studies past human objects and sites
• paleontology, a field that sits outside of anthropology
• biological anthropology, the subfield that studies human evolution
• cultural anthropology, through long-term fieldwork with a community

An illustrative city office hires an anthropologist to find out, through interviews and observation, why residents rarely use a new community center, and to recommend changes. What kind of anthropology is this?

Select one.

• applied anthropology, using the discipline's methods on a practical problem
• a fifth subfield that studies only modern companies and their customers
• an older name for archaeology from before it was a recognized subfield
• the study of how the human body spends energy during physical labor