homework

1. How does anthropology differ from other fields of study you’ve encountered?

2. What do you think about the suggestion that anthropology is the fundamental discipline concerned with humans?

3. What is the difference between tacit and explicit culture? How can anthropologists discover these two kinds of culture?

4. Would it be adaptive for a society to have everyone adhere to the cultural norms?

6. Does a theoretical orientation enhance one’s way of looking at the world, or does it blind one to other possibilities?

8. If two ethnographers describing the same culture disagree, how do we decide who’s right?

9. What are some of the ethical issues faced by anthropologists when they conduct ethnographic research?

10. Why might natural selection have favored the development of true language in humans but not in apes?

11. Why would world be better off with many different languages spoken or with just one universal language?

13. Why might foragers be less likely than intensive agriculturalists to suffer from food shortages?

15. What are the possible effects of a postindustrial economy in which a large proportion of the population has inexpensive access to computers and information?

17. Is an industrial or a developed economy incompatible with a more egalitarian distribution of resources?

18. In a multi-ethnic society, does ethnic identity help or hinder social equality?

19. Would you expect female-male differences in personality to disappear in a society with complete gender equality in the workplace?

20. Will it remain customary in our society to marry? Why do you think it will or will not?

21. Do you think extended-family households will become more frequent in our society? Why?

23. Why does kinship provide the main structures of social action in noncommercial societies?

24. Many formerly unisex associations have been opened their membership to the opposite sex. What might be the result of this change?

26. Could any of the religious practices you know about be classified as magic? Are they associated situations which involve anxiety?

27. What kinds of cultural items might most easily be borrowed by another culture?

28. The expansion of the West has had some terrible consequences for many peoples. Have there been any beneficial consequences?

30. Why do native remedies often contain chemicals that are the same as, or similar in effect to, chemicals used in remedies by Western biomedicine?

I expect, at the very least, one fully-developed paragraph per question. Each paragraph should have a topic sentence, fully-developed sentences, accurate spelling, and good grammar. Support your answer with examples from the text, as well as from personal observation.

Surname 1

Name

Cultural Anthropology

Assignment: Homework

Due Date

Homework

Question 1) How does anthropology differ from other fields of study you’ve encountered?

Anthropology differs from many other scientific fields of study. Anthropology is a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding human beings. Anthropology draws on many other disciplines such as geology, biology, botany, chemistry, and genetics, for example. It is by combining the relevant material from each field, as is applicable to humans that we begin to build knowledge of the human experience.

Question 2) ….

et cetera.