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Anthropology

Question: Examine the impact of tourism on the cultures of South-East Asia. How can the anthropological perspective help us understand and plan for these changes?

Answer: Southeast Asia has witnessed significant growth in tourism in recent years. The region has made a conscious effort to attract visitors in growing numbers and views tourism as a means of economic development. The traditional tourist centres such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are now being joined by other countries in the region that are beginning to experience periods of relative stability su......(short extract) to download the full answer, please Sign in or Register then make a payment or submit an essay

Question: Using ethnographic material, assess the value and limitations of the concept of resistance.

Answer: The concept of resistance is one of some contention amongst anthropologists. There are many definitions of exactly what constitutes resistance and the understanding of the concept has changed dramatically over time. Within this essay, I shall show how the usage of the word has shifted in recent years. I shall compare the benefits and limitations of different understandings of the term and consider......(short extract) to download the full answer, please Sign in or Register then make a payment or submit an essay

Question: According to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, a ‘gift’ is ‘something...which is voluntarily transferred to another without the expectation or receipt of an equivalent’. Anthropologists, however, routinely talk about ‘gift-exchange’. Discuss this apparent paradox.

Answer: Gifts are exchanged constantly for all sorts of occasions, ranging from economic transactions to celebrations, such as birthdays. In some situations, such as birthday gifts, people usually give gifts without expecting a return of the equivalent in that particular moment, they do, however, expect a gift from the very same person when it is their own birthday. This is gift exchange. I believe that t......(short extract) to download the full answer, please Sign in or Register then make a payment or submit an essay

Question: In Evan-Pritchard’s view, what political institutions acted to promote equilibrium within Nuer society? To what extent does his viewpoint underestimate the role of external factors in encouraging stability within Nuer society?

Answer: The study of stateless societies represents one of the fundamental contributions of anthropology to political analysis. Nowhere have these studies been more vigorously pursued than in Africa, and among them Evans-Pritchard’s ‘The Nuer’ stands as a foundational work.......(short extract) to download the full answer, please Sign in or Register then make a payment or submit an essay

Question: ‘To acquire resources efficiently, foragers must organise themselves to be in the right place at the right time, with the right numbers of people’ (Peoples and Bailey, 87). Discuss, using examples, some of the ways in which foragers have achieved this result.

Answer: Foragers, or hunter-gatherers are defined as groups of people who exploit the wild plants and animals of their territory for food[1]. However, these people do not try to expand their available resources by farming crops or breeding livestock[2]. Despite this, foragers do attempt to acquire resources more efficiently in a number of ways, including razing forests to the ground, creating pasture land......(short extract) to download the full answer, please Sign in or Register then make a payment or submit an essay

Question: Anthropology Research paper
The Veil; Reasons Behind Its Removal

Answer: Having seen the contradicting opinions regarding the concept of the veiled teenager, I have always been interested in the stories behind why a teenage girl, 20 years or younger, would decide to be veiled and a few months later decide that she should not be. The issue of being veiled at such an early (in my personal opinion) age was one that was frequently visited in several classes......(short extract) to download the full answer, please Sign in or Register then make a payment or submit an essay

Question: How can we account for the spectacular rise of the Arabs?

Answer: When looking at the sudden elevation of the Arabs in terms of conquest, one certainly cannot dispute the spectacular nature of their rise. Within less than a century of the death of Mohammed in 632, Arab armies had transformed themselves from a tribal society in which the socially meaningful unit was that of a small tenting or village group encompassing four or five generations of family; to invad......(short extract) to download the full answer, please Sign in or Register then make a payment or submit an essay

Question: What are the forces that drive and retard population growth? Do healthy, prosperous, populations reproduce faster than poor unhealthy ones?

Answer: This essay seeks to give an overview of some of the forces that drive and retard population growth. These forces include food supply, technological advances, environmental factors such as carrying capacity of land and socio-cultural factors such as health, poverty, urbanisation and their influence on birth and mortality rates. Population theorists like Malthus believed that populations were ulti......(short extract) to download the full answer, please Sign in or Register then make a payment or submit an essay

Question: Outline the advantages and disadvantages of Ethnographic methods. Include as an illustrative material (i) Your own ethnographic case study, and (ii) examples from both (a) anthropological research in a modern organisational context and (b) more traditional ethnographies.

Answer: ‘Ethnography is the hallmark of social anthropology’. It’s the study of people in naturally occurring settings or ‘fields’ (whether in a ‘New Guinea village or on the streets of New York’), through the use of methods, which capture their social meanings and ordinary activities, involving the anthropologist participating directly in the setting and ‘immersing himself within the cul......(short extract) to download the full answer, please Sign in or Register then make a payment or submit an essay

Question: Why is the body an important object of anthropological study?

Answer: In order to try and understand a different culture I feel it is of paramount importance to first consider the smallest human unit of that culture. How people relate to that individual unit, facilitates understanding of collectives such as the family and the society itself. As Comaroff suggests, (1985:6-7), “the body mediates all action upon the world and simultaneously constitutes the self and t......(short extract) to download the full answer, please Sign in or Register then make a payment or submit an essay

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Anthropology

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