The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss says that the incest taboo is universal because humans:
a. are instinctively opposed to inbreeding through biological programming.
b. repress their sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex and thus learn how to control sexual behavior from birth.
c. have learned to establish alliances with strangers and thereby share and develop culture.
d. prefer to marry their brothers and sisters and must use culture to regulate sexual access and avoid inbreeding. e. do not like sex.
ANSWER: c
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A traveler in Jakarta, Indonesia, witnessed a very interesting practice of ethnomedicine designed to lower blood pressure and relieve pain. What was it?
a. They were bathing in Coca Cola, allowing the seltzer to bubble around their bodies. b. They were laying on train tracks to sense small electric charges. c. They were eating various types of local insects believed to be therapeutic. d. They were covering themselves in manure and then sun-bathing. e. They were bathing in aspirin dissolved in gasoline.
The U.S. custom of the bride’s family paying for the wedding is most similar to which type of marital exchange?
A) bride price B) bride service C) dowry D) gift exchange
This chapter mentions the work of Wolf and Mintz, both students of Julian Steward, as illustrations of approaches that
A. ignore the role of history in shaping culture as we know it. B. consider the relevance of world-system theory and political economy to anthropology. C. focus on the study of cultures as closed systems, untouched by regional and even global dynamics. D. put human agency at the center of cultural analysis. E. are just as deterministic as the old evolutionary models, but for different reasons.
Frequent nursing of children over as many as 4 or 5 years acts to stimulate ovulation among food foragers such as Bushman. As a consequence, women give birth to more offspring at shorter intervals
a. True b. False Indicate whether the statement is true or false