Download Study questions for Quiz 3, Monday, Nov

Study questions for Quiz 3, Tuesday, March 1
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Gender and anthropology
1.
Be able to describe ‘typical’ gender relations in foraging societies, horticultural societies, pastoral societies and
agricultural societies. (chapter 8 of Culture Counts and lecture)
2. How are gender differences accommodated in various indigenous North American groups, according to the article
Strange Country This? What is the importance of male and female roles for Berdache identity? What are third and
fourth genders among Native Americans?
3. Be able to explain the role of Hijras of India. (Culture Counts)
4. What are core rituals among the Sambia of New Guinea as part of male initiation and how do they relate to
conceptualization of male and female power? (Culture Counts)
5. What is the difference between sex and gender? (lecture)
6. According to Michael Kimmel, is gender inequality learned or biological? (lecture)
7. What is the ‘rule of thumb’ connected with women’s level of power and influence in a culture or group? (lecture)
8. Why have many anthropologists concluded that gender inequalities in many places of the world were often created or
exacerbated by Western, European and Euro-American influences during colonialism? How is the case of the Igbo
women in Nigeria an example?
9. Which type of subsistence pattern tended to foster the most egalitarian relationships between men and women? Why?
Why did anthropologist Helen Fisher (TED video about love and romance) say that as women move into the work force
in the present, we are emulating the ways that humans lived before the invention of the plow and agriculture?
10. What were some of the main points that Fisher made concerning the sex drive, romantic love, and deep attachment?
What does she predict for marriages in the future?
11. What did Signithia Fordham show in her study of a predominantly black high school in Washington D.C? What did
Fordham learn about the paradox that Euro-American women experienced in the 1990s compared with the double
paradox that African American women experienced? What were mainstream assumptions about women and the reality
for African American women? Why? (lecture)
12. How does the Malagasy example of men and women’s speech patterns and beliefs about gender compare with typical
North American assumptions about men and women’s speech patterns and beliefs about gender? (lecture)
13. According to the biological anthropologist authors of Why Sex Matters, what are the reproductive imperatives of males
compared with females and what might those differences have to do with patterns of gender dominance? (lecture)
14. Why have there been no apparent matriarchies? (lecture and Why Sex Matters)
15. What do reproductive imperatives have to do with war, according to the authors of Why Sex Matters? Are current wars
still hooked to reproductive imperatives the way they were in the distant past, according to Bobbi Low and other
biological anthropologists? (lecture)
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Economic anthropology
16. What is the importance of economy to social organization?
17. Explain generalized reciprocity and balanced reciprocity as an economic strategies. What were the lessons about
generalized and balanced reciprocity that the Counts learned as described in Too Many Bananas, Not enough
Pineapples, and No Watermelon at all. (lecture and handout)
18. Explain balanced reciprocity. What is its social significance as an economic strategy? (lecture and handout)
19. What is negative reciprocity? (handout and connected with market economy)
20. What is the social/relationship importance of gift giving as a foundation for economics in many cultures?
21. How would you explain the complexities of ‘gift giving’ from wealthy nations to poor nations as a type of reciprocity,
according to the discussion in the article Strings Attached?
22. What is foraging and what are some typical foraging social elements? (lecture and Culture Counts)
23. What is pastoralism and what are some typical pastoralist social elements? (lecture and Culture Counts)
24. What is horticulture and what are some typical horticultural social elements? What is agriculture and what are some
typical agricultural social elements? (lecture and Culture Counts)
25. What is agriculture and what are typical agricultural social elements? (lecture and Culture Counts)
26. What is industrialization and what are some typical industrialization social elements? (lecture and Culture Counts)
27. What is capitalism and what are some typical capitalistic social elements? (lecture and Culture Counts)
28. Be able to define egalitarian, ranked, and stratified societies.
29. Is U.S. society egalitarian, ranked, or stratified? Why?
30. What is the functionalist explanation of the importance of class and stratification compared with the conflict view
explanation?
31. Define hegemony.
32. What is a radical critique?
33. Concerning the film Who’s Counting, about New Zealand economist Marilyn Waring. A. In the film, what are several
examples of confronting hegemony, or of radical critique? B. What men, women, and children are negatively affected by
the limitations of the international economic system? How and Why? C. How might beliefs about the current systems of
accounting inhibit or even prevent certain kinds of creative solutions to environmental and economic crises? (Beliefs
such as: It’s common sense. That’s just the way it is and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s inevitable. It’s the best
possible system. Etc. etc.) D. How might we create a system that is more conducive to equitability and sustainable
livelihood? What can be done?
34. What might the emphasis on military spending and the military industry tell us about our economic structure in the
United States. How do current levels of military spending and military exporting relate to Waring’s points about the
reasons for the ways that we ‘count’ value in our economic system? Whose interests are served when a few powerful
elite decide for the rest of the world how to count and figure value and what is valuable?
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35. What is the connection between clock time and industrialization? (lecture)
36. What are the values connected with factory economics and industrialization that influence our perception of time,
money, and value? How did these expectations about work and time and people evolve from industrialization? (lecture)
37. What did David Harvey mean by time compression, the speed up of time, and the necessity for continually expanding
and increasing consumption connected with our current version of capitalism? (lecture)
38. Why did David Harvey say that we have become a throwaway society and how does this influence human relationships
and expectations? (lecture)
39. About the article The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race : A. How is Diamond’s analysis an example of a
radical critique? B. What are specific examples of hegemony that anthropologist Jared Diamond discusses in the article. C.
What are several specific reasons Diamond gives for asserting that agriculture may be problematic to human health and
sustainable livelihood? How does Diamond back up his claims? D. How would you critique Diamond’s discussion? (Critique
means an assessment, be it negative and/or positive. Critique means an analysis of strengths and weaknesses.)
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