CES 101 Exam Questions With Complete Solutions

The pigment that gives skin its colour. ____ protects the skin from the UV rays associated with various skin cancers. Populations near the equator have darker skin to protect them from the harsh effects of the sun. correct answer: Melanin Populations living near the equator. correct answer: Equatorial Populations Nature "selects" the best adapted varieties of animals for survival. correct answer: Natural Selection The idea that, in ways mirror natural selection, society "selects" those cultural traits that will enhance the survival of a particular civilisation. correct answer: Culture Selection Historically, a laborer under contract to an employer for some period of time, usually seven years, in exchange for travel, food, and accommodations. Servants often became indebted to their employer and were often subjected to violence. correct answer: Indentured Servant A medieval European political system in which land was leased through the king to barons and knights who engaged serfs to work the land in return for military protection. The system was based on military, social, and economical obligations and enforced through law, custom, and religion. correct answer: Feudalism The assigning of attitudes, behaviors, and abilities to individuals or groups based on skin color; includes the institutional arrangements that privilege one group over another and ideological apparatus that perpetuates and makes those arrangements possible. correct answer: Racism (Karl Marx argued that the working classes were not conscious of the ways in which the ruling class oppressed them.) Refers to the ability of the labouring class (the proletariat) to challenge the reasons given to them by economic elites as to why they were impoverished. correct answer: Class Consciousness Sociologists view ____ as a social concept because the idea of ____ has changed over time, the categories of ____ are not discrete (they blend into one another), and the definition of ____ changes from country to country. We tend to think about ____ in terms of skin colour, but the reason we place human beings into skin colour categories is as arbitrary as grouping individuals by height, blood type, weight, eye colour, or finger length. correct answer: Race The process in which race operates as a central axis of social relations, which then determine social, economic, and political institutions and practices. correct answer: Racial Formation The social process by which a racial identity is attached to a group and that group is placed in a race-based social hierarchy. (Upon their arrival in America, for example, Europeans labeled the hundreds of indigenous tribal populations "Indians" and placed them in a single group in a racial hierarchy.) correct answer: Racialization A branch of science that attempted to restrict certain groups, typically immigrants and racial minorities, from having children because they were deemed socially and intellectually inferior. correct answer: Eugenics The study of racial groups, their language and culture. correct answer: Ethology The political system in South Africa from 1948 to 1994