BSocSc Bachelor of Social Science Bachelor of Social Science Anthropology 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which concept describes the way colonized peoples strategically combine elements of the colonizer's culture with their own to create new hybrid identities?
- Assimilation
- Hybridity (Correct answer)
- Nativism
- Cultural imperialism
Correct answer: Hybridity
Homi Bhabha's concept of hybridity describes the creative, ambivalent mixing of colonial and indigenous cultures that challenges pure or fixed identity categories.
Question 2: In the anthropology of religion, what is 'animism'?
- The belief that a single all-powerful god created and governs the universe
- The belief that spirits or souls inhabit natural objects, animals, and phenomena (Correct answer)
- The practice of worshipping deceased ancestors through elaborate ceremonies
- A form of divination using animal entrails
Correct answer: The belief that spirits or souls inhabit natural objects, animals, and phenomena
Animism, as described by E.B. Tylor, is the belief that spiritual beings or souls animate nature, considered by Tylor to be the earliest form of religion.
Question 3: What is the 'mode of production' concept, as used by Marxist anthropologists like Eric Wolf?
- The cultural values a society associates with labor and craftsmanship
- The combination of technology, social relations, and resources through which a society produces its material needs (Correct answer)
- The output efficiency of an agricultural system measured in calories per acre
- The ritual context in which goods are ceremonially produced
Correct answer: The combination of technology, social relations, and resources through which a society produces its material needs
Mode of production refers to the way a society organizes the means and social relations of production, shaping its economic base and social superstructure.
Question 4: Which term refers to the bodily practices and dispositions that people acquire through socialization, which Bourdieu called the embodied sense of one's place in the social world?
- Habitus (Correct answer)
- Field
- Doxa
- Symbolic capital
Correct answer: Habitus
Habitus is Bourdieu's term for the durable, transposable dispositions—ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—that are internalized through social experience.
Question 5: In forensic anthropology, what information can be reliably estimated from skeletal remains?
- The individual's exact birth date and nationality
- Biological sex, approximate age at death, stature, and population affinity (Correct answer)
- The cause of death in all cases regardless of condition
- The individual's occupation and economic class
Correct answer: Biological sex, approximate age at death, stature, and population affinity
Forensic anthropologists analyze skeletal morphology to estimate the biological profile—sex, age, stature, and ancestry—which assists in identifying unknown individuals.
Question 6: What does 'reciprocity' mean in economic anthropology, as distinguished by Marshall Sahlins?
- The state monopoly over the distribution of goods and services
- The exchange of goods and services between parties based on social relationships rather than market price (Correct answer)
- The accumulation of surplus wealth by individual households
- The ritual destruction of property to display social prestige
Correct answer: The exchange of goods and services between parties based on social relationships rather than market price
Sahlins distinguished generalized, balanced, and negative reciprocity as different modes of exchange embedded in varying degrees of social closeness and obligation.
Question 7: The 'culture and personality' school of American anthropology, associated with Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, argued primarily that:
- Biological inheritance determines the core traits of national cultures
- Cultural conditioning shapes personality types, and no single personality pattern is universal (Correct answer)
- Economic structures determine psychological dispositions across all cultures
- Personality traits are universal constants unaffected by cultural context
Correct answer: Cultural conditioning shapes personality types, and no single personality pattern is universal
Mead and Benedict showed through cross-cultural research that personality, gender roles, and emotional expression vary dramatically with cultural upbringing rather than biology.
BSocSc Bachelor of Social Science Bachelor of Social Science Anthropology 5
Which concept describes the way colonized peoples strategically combine elements of the colonizer's culture with their own to create new hybrid identities?