Scope and Branches of Anthropology Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The passage says that traditionally anthropologists concentrated on non-Western cultures and left Western civilization and similar complex societies to other disciplines, so option D is correct.

Primitive cultures, other cultures and little known cultures are loose descriptions: the passage speaks of little-known corners of the world only in describing a stereotype, and the text names non-Western cultures as the traditional focus.

Answer: D

The passage says that anthropology is concerned with all varieties of people throughout the world, with people of all periods and with every part of the world that has ever had a human population, so all of the above (option D) is correct.

Each of the other options names only one of the three matters that the text lists together, so each alone is incomplete.

Answer: D

The passage says anthropologists are motivated by the belief that any generalization about human beings, or explanation of a feature of human culture or biology, should be shown to apply to many times and places of human existence, so option D is correct.

Option A, that exotic people are worth watching, repeats the stereotype the passage calls clearly stereotyped. Options B and C describe other interests, and the passage does not give them as the motive for studying so broad a subject.

Answer: C

The statement that anthropology studies only exotic people is not correct, so option C is the answer. The passage calls the view of anthropologists as students of exotic peoples a stereotype and shows that anthropology covers all peoples and periods.

Options A and B are correct statements from the passage: it studies the immediate ancestors of humans and traces human development. Option D, all of the above, cannot be the exception because A and B are true.

Answer: B

The passage says that now anthropologists work in their own and other complex societies, so option B is correct.

Option A is not stated, since the passage says the field is broad and not that it has become specialised. Option C is not made in this form. Option D, more in their own societies, is not claimed: the passage says they work in their own and other societies, not that they work more in their own.

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.