Test Bank for Essentials of Cultural Anthropology A Toolkit for a Global Age, 3rd Edition

Test Bank for Essentials of Cultural Anthropology A Toolkit for a Global Age, 3rd Edition chapter 1 1. Many associate globalization with rapid economic development and the conveniences of digital media; however, these are not all its consequences. Make an argument for the fact that globalization also has negative consequences. Support your argument with at least three pieces of evidence from the text. 2. Student activists at your university are demanding a complete ban on electronic devices that use Congolese coltan because of the armed conflict, child exploitation, and largescale displacement of civilian families. However, based on what you read, the solution to the problem is not so cut-and-dried. Based on what you have learned in Chapter 1, craft an argument that explains why simply banning electronics may not immediately benefit the Congolese in the regions associated with coltan mining and explain what other kinds of solutions are currently being used to tackle these negative effects of the global demand for coltan. 3. Explain how anthropologists have had to adapt to the impact of global forces on the communities they study. What tools or new approaches have they developed to help them do their work in a globalized world? 4. Define the term Anthropocene and use it to explain one phenomenon mentioned in the text. 5. Globalization is also affecting the world’s environment. Identify three effects of human activity on the environment, and then choose one and discuss its consequences. 6. One aspect of globalization is uneven development. Explain what this means and how it affects the world. Provide an example. Answer Key chapter 1 1. Answer: There are many possible answers. Answers may discuss negative consequences of flexible accumulation, uneven development, and/or globalization on the environment. Corporations quickly repatriate production from U.S. cities (via outsourcing or offshoring) to maximize profits by benefitting from lower wages, lower taxes, and looser regulations in developing nations. For example, General Motors moved automobile production from Flint, Michigan, to Mexico, Brazil, China, and Thailand, and Walmart now has 7,000 factories in China. Other examples include call centers in Manila, the Philippines; a company in Sierra Leone, West Africa, that processes New York City traffic tickets; and doctors in Bangalore, India, who interpret U.S. X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs from the United States. Answers may discuss uneven access to globalization’s benefits, such as the fact that billions of people in developing nations lack Internet access. Discussions of uneven globalization may also note how extreme poverty accompanies globalization: For example, half of the world’s population lives in poverty and nearly 700 million in extreme poverty. In the United States, 40 million people, including 12 million children, experience food insecurity. Globalization also escalates the human impact on the planet; examples include climate change, global warming, water scarcity, the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon disaster, and a floating island of plastic debris the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean. Pollution from garbage, sewage, and agricultural fertilizer runoff, combined with overfishing, rising water temperatures, and increasing acidity caused by carbon dioxide, has caused a 50 percent decline in marine populations over the past 50 years. Changing weather patterns have altered agricultural patterns and crop yields. Global warming has caused polar ice and glaciers to melt, resulting in rising sea levels that threaten to submerge regions such as Bangladesh. Other answers are possible as well. 2. Answer: Like you, people in the Congo also rely on coltan-enabled electronics. Coltan traders transfer money from towns to forest mines via cell phone. Miners transfer money home via cell phone. Buyers determine coltan’s quality and price by cell phone. Militia leaders instruct troops who control coltan extraction. Grassroots human rights organizations use the Internet to publicize conditions on the ground. Local and global actors are addressing the crises caused by coltan extraction by using digital media to encourage the responsible consumption of coltan. Local Congolese community organizations have partnered with global human rights groups, students, and other local activists in Europe and the United States to demand “conflict-free” digital minerals. Global digital corporations like Apple have established codes of conduct for acquiring rare minerals like coltan, cobalt, and tin. Some have posted online lists of mines and mining operations certified as conflict-free. 3. Answer: It is no longer possible to study any community without studying the global forces that affect it. One way that anthropologists have adapted is by studying local communities and following the effects of global forces through multi-sited ethnographies. This allows anthropologists to get a comprehensive view of the community and its unique situation. For example, the author found that in order to study the Chinese community in New York, it was necessary to go to China to get a complete understanding of Chinese communities and population movement. 4. Answer: Anthropologists have increasingly used the concept of the Anthropocene to explain the relationship between human activity and changes in the environment. The Anthropocene is a distinct era in which human behavior is shaping the earth in permanent ways. The text focuses on negative effects of human behavior on the planet, including climate change, water scarcity, overpopulation, extreme poverty, biological weapons, and nuclear missiles. All these phenomena threaten human survival. 5. Answer: Possible effects of human activity on the environment include climate change, global warming, water scarcity, overfishing, pollution, overpopulation, extreme poverty, biological weapons, and nuclear missiles. Their consequences threaten the world’s ecological balance. A good answer can discuss, for example, global warming and a rise in global temperatures, changing weather patterns, and the rapid melting of polar ice and glaciers, which causes flooding that greatly impacts half the world’s population, as the majority of people live within fifty miles of a seacoast.. Other good answers may discuss how pollution from garbage, sewage, and agricultural fertilizer runoff, combined with overfishing, rising water temperatures, and increasing acidity caused by carbon dioxide, have caused a 50 percent decline in marine populations over the past fifty years, or how conflict is caused by freshwater scarcity compounded by the purchase of water rights by private companies. Other answers may mention the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 that poured 210 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the floating plastic island the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and the marine life that dies from eating plastic. 6. Answer: Many people associate globalization with rapid economic development and progress, but globalization has not brought equal development to the world’s people. For example, the distribution of Internet access is very uneven. Europe, North America, and Asia account for the vast majority of high-tech consumption, while whole areas of Africa are completely marginalized and excluded from the globalization process. Globalization is creating extreme wealth for some people, but it is also creating extreme poverty for others. For example, half the world’s population continues to live in poverty and nearly 700 million people live in extreme poverty, surviving on less than $1.90 per day. Even in the United States, the wealthiest country in the world, 40 million people, including 12 million children, experience food insecurity.