Anthropology Questions and Answers

Answer: C

First hand personal study of local settings is ethnography, the descriptive study of one culture through fieldwork and participant observation, which produces the raw material of cultural anthropology.

Ethnology is the comparative and theoretical study built on many ethnographies. Ethno-science studies how a people classify their own world. Ethno-history reconstructs a people's past from documents and oral tradition, not from direct present-day fieldwork.

Answer: B

Franz Boas advocated the 'four-field approach' that divides anthropology into cultural anthropology, physical (biological) anthropology, archaeology and linguistics. It became the standard structure of American anthropology.

Malinowski is linked with functionalism and Trobriand fieldwork, Radcliffe-Brown with structural-functionalism, and Marcel Mauss with the study of gift exchange and the French sociological tradition. None of them is credited with the four-field scheme.

Answer: D

The statement that anthropology is the science of human similarities and differences is by Clyde Kluckhohn, who made it in 'Mirror for Man', where he presented anthropology as a way of understanding human variation and what is common to all people.

Kroeber, Radcliffe-Brown and Herskovits each wrote their own definitions, such as Herskovits on culture as the man-made part of the environment, but this particular phrase is Kluckhohn's.

Answer: D

Ethnology differs from ethnography in all the ways given, so the answer is 'all the above'. Ethnography is the first-hand descriptive study of a single culture, whereas ethnology is comparative, uses the data collected by other anthropologists and generalises across cultures to reach broader principles.

Each of the first three options states one of these differences, and so none alone is complete, which makes the fourth option the correct choice.

Answer: B

The correct match is a-iv, b-i, c-ii, d-iii. 'Races and Cultures of India' was written by D. N. Majumdar, 'Up from the Ape' by E. A. Hooton, 'Anthropology Today' is the volume edited by A. L. Kroeber, and 'The People of India' is by H. H. Risley.

The other codes give the Risley book to Kroeber or to Majumdar, or the Hooton book to Risley, so they do not agree with the authors of these books. Only the second option matches all four.

Answer: B

Growth goes with subcutaneous fat (iii), H. Kalmus with defective colour vision (i), molecular anthropology with evolution (iv) and the Pleistocene with hominids (ii), so the code is (iii) (i) (iv) (ii), option B.

Kalmus studied the genetics of colour blindness, which fixes (b) with (i). Option A gives Kalmus hominids, option C starts with hominids for growth, and option D gives growth defective colour vision.

Answer: D

Basal metabolic rate goes with metabolism (iv), communication with information (iii), grooming with social cementing (i) and erect posture with man (ii), so the code is (iv) (iii) (i) (ii), option D.

Option A swaps communication and erect posture, option B starts with social cementing for metabolic rate, and option C starts with man for metabolic rate. Each fails on the first pair, metabolic rate with metabolism.

Answer: A

Insulin is linked with diabetes (iv), DNA with protein (iii), data with the frequency polygon (ii) and heart disease with the lipid profile (i), so the code is (iv) (iii) (ii) (i), option A.

Option B swaps data and heart disease. Options C and D give insulin a frequency polygon or a lipid profile, which are not linked with insulin; the lipid profile is a test used in heart disease risk.