INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY EXAM QUESTIONS FROM THURSDAY 12 JUNE 1997
There are FIFTEEN questions. Candidates should answer FOUR questions and
urged to illustrate their answers with examples.
1. What is distinctive about the aims and activities of social
anthropologists?.
2. Contrast the main features of pastoral societies with those of
hunter-gatherers.
3. As somebody from a society which is state-organised what do you
notice about societies with no formal government and no classes?
Discuss.
4. Exchange involves negative as well as positive, vengeance as well as
doing people favours. Discuss.
5. Are you convinced by writers who claim that witchcraft accusations
can be socially constructive?
6. Cargo cults look stupid and irrational to a casual visitor in their
area, but are basically sensible and well conceived. Assess this
claim.
7. What are the main features of the social roles of kings?
8. How useful do you find the distinction between domestic and public
domains when you are seeking to explain gender differentiation?
9. In which respects may ethnographic films be said to 'challenge'
conventional written representations in anthropology?
10. What contribution can anthropologist make to the study of
biomedicine?
11. Ethnicity is a response to contemporary circumstances, not a
resurgence of traditionalism. Discuss.
12. Should the term 'peasant' be rejected for reasons of 'political
correctness'?
13. Why is it inadequate to address the problems of poor people in terms
solely of improving their productive technologies.
14. Is mafia a specialist form of patronage?
15. To what extent have the 'egalitarian' ideologies of tradition in
African states influenced the development of modern Islamic republics?
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL
ANTHROPOLOGY EXAM QUESTIONS FROM THURSDAY 13TH JUNE 1996
There are FIFTEEN questions. Candidates should answer FOUR questions and
are urged to illustrate their answers with examples.
1. Describe and discuss the key structural features of ONE swiddening
society.
2. In the simplest societies gender is not an issue. Discuss.
3. Why is marriage so important as a social institution?
4. Examine the implications of seasonal mobility in the social
organisation of any ONE pastoral society.
5. Gifts are never freely given. Discuss with reference to the
comparative anthropology of exchange.
6. Critically consider how anthropologists have analysed blood-feud as a
mechanism of social control in stateless societies.
7. What can studies of EITHER witchcraft accusations OR cargo cults
reveal about the relationship between underlying beliefs and social
experience?
8. Describe any religious ritual with which you are familiar and discuss
its significance for creating and affirming a sense of communal
identity.
9. Compare and contrast the relationship between language and status in
at least TWO societies.
10. Discuss the way in which kinship ties continue to be important in
industrialised societies among the majority and/or minority populations of
those countries.
11. Anthropologists should not act as consultants for mult-national
companies operating 'the Third World'. Discuss.
12. How would you identify a group of people to be peasants?
13. Is there a realistic comparison between red revolutions and green revolutions, or is this usage just a play on words?
14. Modern consumption leads to the elimination of cultural differences.
Discuss.
15. Notions of the causality of illness underpin the distinction between
culturally specific medical systems. Discuss.