Cultural anthropological theory tends to fall into two camps. One focuses on everyday social behavior as a system that has developed in response to human needs in a given environment. The other rejects this approach, focusing on the systems of meanings by which thoughts, rituals, and mythology in a society are structured. Cultural anthropologists, however, should employ both approaches, and also attend to a third, often neglected dimension: the view of a community as a set of individuals whose actions constitute the actual stuff of everyday life.
Summary
Cultural anthropologists generally have two camps of theories. One approach focuses on everyday behavior as a system that develops in response to human needs. The other approach focuses on the systems of meanings by which thoughts, rituals, and mythology in a society are structured. However, anthropologists should employ both approaches in addition to a third. The third approach views a community as a set of individuals whose actions compromise every day life.
Strongly Supported Conclusions
Even if some anthropologists disagree, their approaches to anthropological theory are not necessarily incompatible.
A
Patterns of social behavior have meaning only when considered from the point of view of the community.
Unsupported. The author isn’t suggesting that patterns of behavior can only be understood from a community’s point of view. Rather, the author is arguing for anthropologists to consider this view in addition to the dominant camps.
B
Cultural anthropologists too often rely on a conception of human needs that excludes the notion of community.
Unsupported. We know that the first camp focuses on human needs, but we don’t know whether their conception of needs excludes all notion of community. All we can say is that anthropologists neglect one particular view of community: the view recommended by the author.
C
Cultural anthropological theorists who focus on issues of meaning overlook the humanity of their individual subjects.
Unsupported. The second camp focuses on systems of meanings, but nothing suggests that this focus comes at the cost of overlooking anyone’s humanity. The topic of subjects’ humanity isn’t raised by the author, but that doesn’t mean the anthropologists overlook it.
D
Systems of behavior can be understood only by experiencing the environments to which they respond.
Unsupported. We know that some anthropologists understand systems of behavior in light of human response, but we don’t know if that is the only way for this analysis. Stating that it is the “only” way is too strong.
E
Disagreement among cultural anthropological theorists does not necessarily imply that their approaches are incompatible.
Strongly supported. The author states that although these anthropologists disagree over their approaches, they should actually employ both approaches, as well as a third. This implies that at least these three approaches are all compatible with each other.
Criminologist: According to a countrywide tabulation of all crimes reported to local police departments, the incidence of crime per 100,000 people has risen substantially over the last 20 years. However, a series of independent surveys of randomly selected citizens of the country gives the impression that the total number of crimes was less in recent years than it was 20 years ago.
"Surprising" Phenomenon
Crime rates are up, but people surveyed believe the total number of crimes are down.
Objective
The right answer will be a hypothesis that explains the difference between the statistic about crime rates and public perception of total crime. That difference must account for either an actual decrease in the number of total crimes due to a reduced population, for the public simply being wrong about crime in the country, or for some mitigating factor around crime reporting.
A
Not all of the citizens selected for the series of independent surveys had been the victims of crime.
This just means that at least one person surveyed wasn’t a crime victim. It explains nothing about why public perception about total crime differs from crime rate statistics.
B
Most crimes committed in the country are not reported to local police departments.
If most crimes committed aren’t reported, then the crime rate statistics would undersell total crime. But people surveyed seem to think that crime has gone down. This doesn’t explain that discrepancy.
C
The total annual number of crimes committed in the country has risen over the past 20 years but has fallen in proportion to the country’s growing population.
This seems to contradict official statistics. Crime rates are up, whereas this suggests that crime rates are down.
D
In the series of independent surveys, many of the respondents did not accurately describe the crimes to which they had fallen victim.
The respondents weren’t necessarily victims of crimes. And of those who did, we don’t care how accurately they described being victims of crimes.
E
Of crimes committed in the country, a much greater proportion have been reported to local police departments in recent years than were reported 20 years ago.
Crime rates are up because people are reporting crimes to the police. However, it could still be true that the total number of crimes has fallen during that same time period. This explains why public surveys and official crime rate statistics give incongruous results.