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Social Science
Q:
Rites of passage involve three phases: separation, liminality, and totemism.
Q:
Communitas is the strong feeling of collective unity shared by individuals at the core of a society who define themselves in opposition to the societys liminal members.
Q:
The Hindu principle of ahimsa functions to ensure that cattles milk production is maximized.
Q:
Cargo cults, syncretic religions that mix Melanesian and Christian beliefs, are
A. culturally defined activities associated with the transition from one place or stage of life to another.
B. a religious response to the expansion of the world capitalist economy, often with political and economic consequences.
C. cultural acts that mock the widespread but erroneous belief of European cultural supremacy.
D. just like religious fundamentalism in that they are ancient cultural phenomena enjoying a rebirth in current world affairs.
E. antimodernist movements that reject anything Western.
Q:
Antimodernism describes the rejection of the modern in favor of what is perceived to be an earlier, purer, better way of life. Fundamentalism describes antimodernist movements in various religions. Ironically,
A. fundamentalist movements have both benefited from and promoted the use of technology for international networking.
B. fundamentalists never lead a better way of life, precisely because they reject the benefits of modern life.
C. religious fundamentalism is itself a modern phenomenon, based on a strong feeling among its adherents of alienation from the perceived secularism of the surrounding modern culture.
D. fundamentalist sentiments depend on recognition of the modern culture.
E. religious fundamentalism is an extremely old phenomenon that actually spurred the rise of modernism.
Q:
Which of the following statements about religion is NOT true?
A. The functions of religious beliefs and practices vary with the society.
B. Religion is often an instrument of societal change, even revolution.
C. Religion serves only to maintain social solidarity; it does not create or maintain societal divisions.
D. Political leaders never mix religion with politics.
E. Religious fundamentalism is as old as human culture.
Q:
Marvin Harriss (1974, 1978) studies of how beliefs and rituals may function as part of a groups cultural adaptation to its environment are an illustration of
A. how religion can play a prominent role in cultural ecology.
B. the dangers that religious effervescence can pose to the environment if it is not contained.
C. how nonhuman primates also have a capacity for religion, although it is very limited.
D. the dangers of extending the realm of religion to nature.
E. the fact that religion is evolutionarily adaptive.
Q:
Which of the following was NOT a reason that the Indian sacred cow is adaptive in Harriss studies?
A. Zebu cattle require less food per animal than do beef cattle.
B. Wandering cattle indirectly provide fertilizer for agricultural fields.
C. Zebu cattle are frequently slaughtered and their meat distributed on ceremonial occasions.
D. Cattle dung provides a cheap source of heating and cooking energy.
E. Harris demonstrated that the Indian sacred cows are not adaptive.
Q:
Which of the following functions to reduce differences in wealth between the members of a society and tends to be directed at socially marginal individuals?
A. blood feuds
B. Olympian religions
C. rites of passage
D. cargo cults
E. witchcraft accusations
Q:
What term refers to a custom or social action that operates to reduce differences in wealth and bring standouts in line with community norms?
A. rite of passage
B. revitalization movement
C. syncretism
D. taboo
E. leveling mechanism
Q:
What kind of religion is most frequently found in foraging bands?
A. communal
B. shamanic
C. cargo cult
D. monotheistic
E. polytheistic
Q:
Which of the following kinds of religions involves full-time religious specialists?
A. communal religion
B. shamanic religion
C. Olympian religion
D. individualistic cults
E. idiosyncratic belief systems
Q:
Robert Bellah (1978) coined the term world-rejecting religion to describe most forms of Christianity, including Protestantism. More generally, world-rejecting religions
A. are shamanic religions that reject the encroachment of capitalism and modernity.
B. reject the material world and focus on the bodys internal biological balance.
C. are a recent historical phenomenon.
D. tend to reject the naturalthe mundane, ordinary, material, secularworld and focus instead on a higher realm of reality.
E. focus on the effects that heavenly bodies such as the moon, sun, and Mars have on social life.
Q:
Protestant values such as asceticism and entrepreneurship as a result of the belief that success on earth could lead to salvation, and a fervent individualism due to the belief that only individuals could be saved lead, in the right conditions, to the rise of capitalism. Who made this argument?
A. Claude Lvi-Strauss in his famous book The Savage Mind (1962, 1966)
B. Robert Bellah
C. Anthony F. C. Wallace in his attempt to show religions relevance in understanding historical change
D. Sir Edward Burnett Tylor
E. Max Weber in his influential book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904, 1958)
Q:
Christianity is the worlds largest religion, with some 2.1 billion adherents, followed by Islam, which has approximately 1.3 billion practitioners. Islam is the fastest-growing religion. This chapters Appreciating Diversity segment examines how Islam has spread by adapting successfully to many national and cultural differences, including the presence of other religions that were already established in the areas to which Islam has spread. An important result of this process is that
A. Islam is far from homogeneousthe faith reflects the increasingly diverse areas in which it is practiced.
B. unlike Christianity, Islam has the capacity to transform local culture profoundly.
C. Islam is growing at the expense of other beliefs and practices.
D. the separation of religion and state is disappearing in most places in the world.
E. the West is losing the culture war.
Q:
What did HandsomeLake lead in about 1800 among the Iroquois?
A. a shamanistic cult
B. a revitalization movement
C. an animistic-residualist front
D. a structuralist movement
E. a cargo cult
Q:
According to Victor Turner, all rites of passage have three phases: separation, liminality, and incorporation. Of these three, the liminal phasewhich is the most interestingis typically characterized by
A. intensification of the social hierarchy.
B. a forming of an implicit ranking system.
C. the use of secular language.
D. symbolic reversals of ordinary behavior.
E. no change in the social norms.
Q:
What are induction into the U.S. Marine Corps and the vision quest of certain North American Indian societies examples of?
A. binary opposition
B. a generalized exchange
C. a structural analysis of religion
D. rites of passage
E. genetic programming
Q:
What is the term for the marginal or in-between phase of a rite of passage?
A. voodoo
B. mana
C. taboo
D. liminality
E. animism
Q:
What is communitas?
A. a social inequality that is accepted even by those who are less privileged
B. a collective liminality
C. anxiety
D. the Latin word for mana
E. the supernatural
Q:
Rituals serve the social function of creating temporary or permanent solidarity among peopleforming a social community. We see this also in practices known as
A. mana.
B. liminality.
C. animism.
D. totemism.
E. fundamentalism.
Q:
Totemism, one form of cosmology, is
A. a system, in this case a religious one, for imagining and understanding the universe.
B. Claude Lvi-Strausss term to describe the binary oppositions prevalent in religious myths all over the world.
C. a synonym for folklore.
D. the etic explanation of peoples view on human agency.
E. the emic concept of spirituality.
Q:
Animism, polytheism, and monotheism are the
A. three kinds of religion that exist in the world today.
B. stages of ritual, according to Victor Turner.
C. stages, according to Edward Tylor, through which religion evolved.
D. stages through which all present-day religions have passed.
E. names for the three psychological needs that all individuals have, thus explaining the universality of religion.
Q:
What kind of religion is based on the idea that each human has a double, which is active during sleep?
A. animatism
B. totemism
C. animism
D. mana
E. polytheism
Q:
Besides animismand sometimes coexisting with it in the same societythere is a view of the supernatural as a domain of raw impersonal power, or force, that people can control under certain conditions. This conception of the supernatural is particularly prominent in Melanesia. Melanesians refer to this force as
A. taboo.
B. magic.
C. good (or bad) luck.
D. The Force.
E. mana.
Q:
What term refers to the manipulation of the supernatural to accomplish specific goals?
A. animism
B. magic
C. religion
D. a rite of passage
E. pantheism
Q:
________ magic is based on the belief that whatever is done to an object will affect a person who once had contact with it.
A. Contagious
B. Imitative
C. Serial
D. Sequential
E. Simultaneous
Q:
Religion and magic dont just explain things and help people accomplish goalsthey also enter the realm of human feelings. In other words,
A. they serve emotional needs as well as cognitive (i.e., explanatory) ones.
B. religion helps reduce differences by promoting brotherly love.
C. they determine the emotional well-being of all their practitioners.
D. they often lead to extreme psychological disruption and even mental illness.
E. they are psychologically and cognitively relevant, but these realms are well contained and have no effect beyond the mental well-being of the practitioner.
Q:
Bronislaw Malinowski found that the Trobriand Islanders used magic when sailing, a hazardous activity. He proposed that
A. people turn to magic to instill psychological stress on their competitors, especially when the fish supply is very low.
B. magic actually reduced the fishing results for the Trobriand Islanders, but at least they did not feel directly responsible, since then they could blame it on bad luck.
C. magic was a surprisingly effective stand-in for proper fishing skills and experience, because it made people confident in their capacities.
D. because people cant control matters such as wind, weather, and the fish supply, they turn to magic.
E. magic emboldened people to take more risks.
Q:
Which of the following is true about rites of passage?
A. Beliefs and rituals can, ironically, both diminish and create anxiety and a sense of insecurity and danger.
B. Despite their prevalence during the time that Victor Turner did his research, rites of passage have disappeared with the advent of modern life.
C. Participants in rites of passage only are tricked into believing that there was a big change in their lives.
D. Rites of passage only worsen the anxieties caused by other aspects of religion.
E. Rites of passage would be effective in diminishing anxiety and fear if they did not involve the liminal phase.
Q:
Which of the following phases is NOT included in passage rites?
A. aggregation
B. authorization
C. marginality
D. separation
E. reintegration
Q:
What are the similarities and differences between shamanistic and communal religions? How do these compare with Olympian religions and monotheism? What kinds of general evolutionary trends are discernible in religious worship?
Q:
Discuss two cases of religions role in social change.
Q:
Is religion declining or becoming increasingly important in contemporary society? Why? If you believe that religion is declining, what is replacing it?
Q:
mile Durkheim, an early scholar of religion, stressed what he termed religious effervescence. Anthropologists too have stressed
A. that proper analysis requires separation of collective re-creation from collective religion.
B. the collective, shared, and enacted nature of religion, the emotions it generates, and the meanings it embodies.
C. the analysis of the use of behavior-altering drugs in religious experience.
D. the collective as well as individual universality of religion.
E. the qualities that make religion present in some societies but not others.
Q:
Like ethnicity and language, religion also is
A. a social fiction.
B. a topic of research that distinguishes anthropology from other disciplines.
C. a phenomenon that illustrates the power of biology over culture.
D. a cultural generality.
E. associated with social divisions within and between societies and nations.
Q:
Who the mentioned in the text as a founder of the anthropology of religion?
A. Margaret Mead
B. Claude Lvi-Strauss
C. Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard
D. Sir Edward Burnett Tylor
E. Bronislaw Malinowski
Q:
To Kottak, the widespread U.S. belief that recreation and religion are separate domains is both ethnocentric and false. Further, it may be taking the fun out of religion.
Q:
Overall, countries in the Global South tend to be more conservative than countries in the Global North.
Q:
Behaviors associated with sports fandom could be considered secular rituals.
Q:
How do you explain the universality of religion?
Q:
On the basis of theories about the origins and functions of religion, what are the functions that organized religion serves in U.S. society? Can religion in the United States be described as embedded in other sociocultural institutions, such as politics? If you have spent most of your life in a different country, feel free to write about religion in that country.
Q:
Contrast ritual behavior with ordinary behavior. Give examples of religious and secular rituals. What are the main differences between such kinds of rituals?
Q:
Much religious and ritual behavior is adaptive. Can you think of cases in which it is not? What does it mean for religion to be maladaptive?
Q:
Does the practice of paying a dowry necessarily imply gender inequality?
Q:
Discuss some of the social functions of levirate and sororate marriage and bridewealth, and identify the sociocultural context of these customs.
Q:
What are some of the differences between endogamy and exogamy, and how absolute is the distinction implied by these terms? Use examples to illustrate your argument.
Q:
Almost all cases of bridewealth are associated with patrilineal, patrilocal systems. Why? If there were such a thing as groom price, where would you expect to find it? Why? Why do we not find groom service ethnographically?
Q:
A person can have multiple spouses without ever getting divorced. Using the concepts you have learned in this chapter, explain this seemingly contradictory statement.
Q:
Religious fundamentalism is as old as religion itself.
Q:
Antimodernism describes a rejection of the modern in favor of what is perceived as an earlier, purer, better way of life.
Q:
Fundamentalists are correct in seeing a rise in secularism in contemporary North America.
Q:
Using what you know about cross-cultural comparisons of marital practices, discuss the following statement: Serial monogamy is the result of a cultural emphasis on individualism, whereas polygamy is the result of a cultural emphasis on social responsibility.
Q:
How would you explain the universality of the incest taboo? You may draw on one or more of the explanations offered previously.
Q:
In the caste system of India, failure to adhere to class endogamy rules traditionally resulted in a ritually impure marriage.
Q:
Royal endogamy among Hawaiians functioned to limit the number of conflicts about royal succession, this explanation being an example of the latent function of a social custom.
Q:
Same-sex marriages are not culturally viable institutions.
Q:
Dowries are most common in societies in which women occupy an elevated status position.
Q:
In tribal societies, unlike industrial ones, marriage entails only an agreement between the people getting married; descent groups play only a minor role.
Q:
If John marries his deceased brothers widow, this arrangement is called a levirate marriage.
Q:
Cross-culturally, divorce is known only in industrialized societies where a high percentage of women are gainfully employed.
Q:
In a study among the Hopi of northeastern Arizona, more than a third of the women of this community had been divorced at least once, which correlates with the fact that these women were socially and economically insecure.
Q:
Serial polygamy is the practice of having more than one wife, but never more than one at the same time.
Q:
Polygynous marriages often serve important economic and political functions, with the number of wives a man has serving as an indicator of his wealth, prestige, and status.
Q:
With polyandry, a woman takes more than one husband.
Q:
The biological degeneration explanation for the incest taboo has won over supporters because of universal concerns about biology.
Q:
One theory regarding the universality of the incest taboo argues that by forcing people to marry outside their immediate kin group, peaceful alliances between people would extend to include a greater number of individuals.
Q:
Homogamy is the practice of marrying within a culturally prescribed group to which one does not belong.
Q:
Native American berdaches were permitted to marry men.
Q:
A new view of early human origins suggests that the emergence of a pair bond between male and female would have allowed humans to recognize their relatives.
Q:
Cultures have different definitions and expectations of relationships that are biologically or genetically equivalent. In other words, kinship is socially constructed.
Q:
Exogamy is the practice of seeking out a mate within ones own social group.
Q:
The children of your fathers sister are called your cross-cousins.
Q:
Incest is a cultural universal that is defined the same way by all cultures.
Q:
Early anthropologists explained incest taboos as a reflection of instinctive horror of mating with close relatives. However, this explanation for incest taboos has been rejected because formal incest restrictions would be unnecessary if humans really do have an instinctive aversion to incest.
Q:
What is the term for the marital exchange in which the brides family or kin group provides substantial gifts when their daughter marries?
A. polygamy
B. bridewealth
C. dowry
D. progeny price
E. brideservice
Q:
Divorce tends to be more common
A. when the dowry is very small.
B. when marriages are political alliances between groups.
C. in matrilineal than in patrilineal societies.
D. in societies in which marriage residence is patrilocal.
E. in all societies when romance fails
Q:
What is the name of the custom by which a widower marries the sister of his deceased wife?
A. sororate marriage
B. serial polyandry
C. filial marriage
D. levirate marriage
E. fraternal marriage
Q:
Polygamy, although formally outlawed, has survived in Turkey since the Ottoman period, when having several wives was viewed as a symbol of power, wealth, and sexual prowess. Unlike the past, when the practice was customary and not illegal, polygamy can put contemporary women at risk. How?
A. Women in polygamous unions have less of a chance to marry several men themselves.
B. Because their marriages have no official status, secondary wives who are abused or mistreated have no legal recourse.
C. The increase in the number of wives a man takes on increases inter-wife feuds.
D. As cross-cultural studies have shown, violence against women is correlated with the presence of polyandry in society.
E. Unlike in the past, polygamous unions are no longer unions based on romantic love.
Q:
Which of the following best defines polygyny?
A. the type of marriage in which there is more than one husband
B. the custom whereby a wife marries the brother of her dead husband
C. the type of marriage involving only two spouses
D. the custom whereby a widower marries the sister of his dead wife
E. the type of marriage in which there is more than one wife