Sample Questions and Key Concepts for the Second Social Structure Exam

Anthropology 412/812 Fall 2004

• Crossculturally, what are the major factors that help us understand variation in divorce rates, especially changes in divorce rates through time?  Why do some many of these explanations focus on female attributes and motivations?  Is this focus reasonable?
• What are some of the problems in applying an evolutionary approach to the study of human behavior?  Consider some of the points made in chapters by Irons and Cronk and Smith.
• How do the concepts of reciprocal altruism and kin selection answer the question of cooperation and apparent altruism from an orthodox evolutionary perspective?
• In modern societies there is an inverse relationship between wealth and fertility but the relationship is positive in traditional societies.  How can one account for these patterns (e.g., embodied capital) and why may it pose a special challenge to evolutionary theory?
• Contrast and compare the three different evolutionary approaches to human behavior described by Smith.  In what significant ways do they differ, what do they have in common, and are the approaches complimentary or antagonistic?
• What role does sexual selection play in explaining male and female differences in mating and parental investment?
• How do we explain differences between men and women over sexual jealousy in terms of how they deal with it and what there precise concerns are?
• How do Pearson, Hendrix, and other explain variation in divorce rates crossculturally?
• If polygyny generally leads to reduced fertility for women, what factors can explain its persistence?
• Which do they think (and why) is more important in polygyny: female choice or male coercion or a combination of the two? Use research by Strassmann and Chisholm and Burbank to illustrate your answer.
• What are the most common causes for divorce and how do they tell as about the purpose of marriage?
• What factors are responsible for variation in family forms (nuclear and extended)?
• What factors may lead parents to commit infanticide?  How could such an act be consistent with maximization of reproductive success.
• Why are nuclear families and an absence of corporate descent groups associated with the state?
• What physical features of the opposite sex do men and women find attractive and why?
• How does one account for the double standard in regards to extra and pre-marital sexual behavior?
• What is the difference in the relationship between social status or wealth and fertility in traditional versus modern societies?
• What are the differences shown by Lancaster and Kaplan in men who abandon their children and those who do not and differences in how those children fare?
• According to Rosenblatt and others what factors allow individuals to freely court and select potential mates and what factors militate against this?
• How does Melvin Ember explain the presence or absence of cousin marriage?
• Describe the factors that differentiate polygynous men from monogamous men in economically stratified and non-stratified societies.
• What sort of functions do descent groups have?
• The Trivers-Willard model of parental investment by sex of offspring predicts that either males and/or females will receive more investment depending on the socioeconomic status of their parents.  How and why do these factors influence investment patterns?  Use examples from chapters by Cronk and Irons and others to illustrate your answer.
• Why does polygyny seem to depress the fertility of women and the survivorship of their children?
• What social factors increase the probability of spousal abuse by husbands?
• Describe and critique the major theories of menopause.  Which one would you put your money on and why?
• What are the major factors affecting post-marital residence and what is the logic behind them?
• Differentiate between the following models of polygyny: resource defense, harem or male coercion polygyny, and social status polygyny.  Provide ethnographic examples of each.

• reproductive success and fitness
• reciprocal altruism
• tit-for-tat
• survivorship
• father absence
• kin selection or inclusive fitness
• sexual selection
• female choice
• parental investment
• conflicts of interest
• opportunity costs
• trade-offs
• primogeniture
• polygyny threshold
• somatic, reproductive, mating, parental, and nepotistic efforts
• matrifocal, stem, extended, joint, and nuclear families
• polyandry
• embodied capital
• father effect and mother effect
• paternity certainty
• EEA or the environment of evolutionary adaptedness
• mismatch theory
• reductionism
• proximate and ultimate causes
• quantity versus quality of offspring
• r and K selection
• wealth flow
• reproductive value
• Trivers-Willard
• pathogen stress
• fluctuating asymmetry 
• dads and cads
• waist to hip ratio
• composite or average faces
• fluctuating asymmetry
• models
• prisoner's dilemma
• evolutionary arms race
• fertility units per male