Scope and Branches of Anthropology Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Anthropology as an academic discipline began in the late nineteenth century. Societies and institutes of anthropology were founded in the 1840s to 1870s, but the first university posts were created in the 1880s and 1890s, such as Tylor's reader at Oxford in 1884 and Boas's work at Columbia in the 1890s. The early nineteenth century had the ethnological societies but no academic discipline, and the twentieth century saw its expansion. The answer is (B).

Answer: B

Ethnocentrism is not part of the anthropological perspective, since it is the judging of other cultures by the standards of one's own, which anthropologists try to avoid. Cross-cultural study, holism, the view of a culture as an integrated whole, and cultural relativism, the understanding of each culture in its own terms, are the characteristic features of the perspective. So (B) is the answer. Anthropologists treat ethnocentrism as a bias to be corrected, not as a part of their method.

Answer: A

The pair that is not correctly matched is Man in India with Hyderabad: the journal Man in India is published from Ranchi. The Journal of Human Ecology is from Delhi, the Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society from Calcutta, and The Eastern Anthropologist from Lucknow, so those pairs are correct. The answer is (A). The question asks for the pair that is wrong, so the three correctly matched journals are the distractors.

Answer: B

The order in which the anthropologists appeared in the academic field is Edward Tylor, Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard and Sol Tax. Tylor, who became reader in anthropology at Oxford in 1884, came first, Malinowski established fieldwork in the 1910s and 1920s, Evans-Pritchard followed in the 1930s and Sol Tax, who developed action anthropology, appeared later. This is option (B). The other options put Tylor after the others.

Answer: C

Among the landmark publications, Risley's 'The People of India' appeared in 1908, and Grierson's 'Linguistic Survey of India' was completed in 1928, which is where the key places it. Guha's racial classification, 'The Racial Affinities of the People of India', came in 1935 in the Census of India, and Sarkar's 'The Aboriginal Races of India' was published in 1954. So the order the key gives is (ii), (i), (iii), (iv), option C.

The other options place Grierson or Sarkar before Risley, or Sarkar before Guha, which does not agree with the dates of these works.

Answer: B

Systematic sampling is a form of probability sampling (ii). A sampling unit is an item in the study population (i). Snowball sampling is a non-probability sampling method (iii), and a sampling frame is a list of the units of analysis (iv). So the code is (ii), (i), (iii), (iv), option B.

The other options take systematic sampling as non-probability or the frame as a population item, which is wrong.

Answer: A

Electrophoresis separates proteins and is a tool of biochemical genetics (ii). Biometry, the measurement of the face and body, is used in facial reconstruction here (iii). The FISH technique, fluorescence in situ hybridisation, belongs to cytogenetics (i), and DNA sequencing belongs to molecular genetics (iv). So the code is (ii), (iii), (i), (iv), option A.

The other options pair the techniques with the wrong fields, for example FISH with molecular genetics.

Answer: A

The correctly matched pair is the Indian Anthropological Association with the journal Indian Anthropologist. The other pairs are wrongly matched: the Indian Society of Human Genetics is not linked to Human Ecology, and Ethnographic and Folk Culture Society is not linked to Man in India, which is a different journal. Eastern Anthropologist is published by the Ethnographic and Folk Culture Society, not by the Indian Anthropological Society.

Answer: A

Both the Assertion and the Reason are correct. An anthropologist uses participant observation, living among the people studied and taking part in their daily life. Ethnographic research does require that another social world be studied with empathy, and participant observation is the method that makes this possible.

So both statements are true, and the options that call one or both of them wrong are not acceptable. Participant observation therefore gives the method, while empathy gives the attitude, and both are central to ethnographic fieldwork.

Answer: A

The assertion is correct and the reason is wrong, option A. Participant observation lets the ethnographer live in a community and so unfold the complexities and subtleties of its social life, which is what the assertion says. But observation of one community cannot show how typical its beliefs and values are of the wider region, since that would need comparison with other communities, so the reason is wrong. Option C therefore fails because of the reason, and B and D fail because the assertion is sound.