Cultural Anthropology Test Questions – Flashcards

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The moral and intellectual principle that one should withhold judgement about seemingly strange or exotic beliefs and practices is
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cultural relativism
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The thinker who developed the evolutionary theory or natural selection in the 19th century
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Charles Darwin
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Increasing, professional anthropologists are
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all of the above
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The 19th century British anthropologist who is credited with the development of the concept of culture through an evolutionary perspective where the most evolved societies resembled the British societies in which he lived was
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E.B. Tylor
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The primary ethical responsibility of anthropologists is to
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the people or species they study
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Diversity defined anthropologically
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focuses on multiplicity and variety
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A key element of the scientific method, which both explains things and guide research, is
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theories
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The comparative method
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all of the above
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Even though anthropologists use parts of the scientific method, some dont see what they do as science because
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the complexity of social behavior prevents any completely objective analysis of human culture
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There is rarely any guessing involved in the development of theories because they are tested repeatedly T/F
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True
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What prompted intellectuals to start systematically explaining the differences among people?
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the Industrial Revolution
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Western colonial powers understood the different customs and cultures of the people they colonized as
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proof of their primitive nature
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Which of the following is the most significant aspect of the salvage paradigm?
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anthropologists need to collect information from societies before they die out
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During fieldwork cultural anthropologists
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all of the above
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Linguistic anthropologists traditionally sttudy
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all of the above
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A realistic perspective on the meanings of Coca-cola in Tzotzil Maya communitites in Chiapas, Mexico, would emphasize
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that they, the Tzotzil, are dominated by globalization
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An ethical approach to anthropological research would emphasize
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all of the above
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Contemporary cultural anthropologists still rank societies along an evolutionary scale from "primitive" to "advanced" T/F
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False
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The main idea behind the holistic perspective is to study culture
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through systematic connections of different parts
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Because our values and beliefs are reflected in many elements of life such as clothes, food, and language means that culture is
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intergrated
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The most enduring and ritualized aspects of culture are refered to as
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traditions
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The application of a holistic perspective to understand changes in everyday practices, such as eating breakfast cereals, reveals
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the processes of cultural appropriation
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A cross-cultural perspective on eating insect larvae would reveal
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all of the above
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The defining feature of historical particularism is
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individual societies develop particular cultural traits and undergo a unique process of change
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A symbol
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all of the above
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The controversy between Native Americans and NCAA schools using mascots illustrates
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the power of tradition
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Who is responsible for the theory of social evolution
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E.B. Tylor
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The theory of culture that proposes that cultural practices, beliefs, and institutions fulfill the psychological and physical needs of society is call
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functionalism
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The idea that embraces dynamic cultural processes and the idea that the observer of cultural processes can never see culture completely objectively represent
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post-structuralism
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Cultural determinism is unproductive for cultural analysis because
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all of the above
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The process of learning culture from a very young age is called
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encultration
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How would a critical relativist explain Native American criticisms of cultural appropriation?
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while it is importance to understand Native American claims from their point of view, it doesnt mean we should accept them as the only way to view the issue
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The American anthropologist repsonsible for the concept of historical particularism was named
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Franz Boaz
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A social consequence of introducing coffee into the highlands of Papua New Guinea was that
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all of the above
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If you wanted to understand the norms of a society, you would be most likely to focus on
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everyday interaction
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Norms tend to be stable because
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people learn them when they are young
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The theorist most connected with post-structuralism is
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Renato Rosaldo
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The idea that Ongee ancestors make tidal waves and earthquakes would be understood by an interpretive anthropologist as
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a way of explaining how the world works
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Culture is
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learned and shared
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Ethnocentrism
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all of the above
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Examples of social institutions are
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all of the above
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The structuralist approach to culture theorizes what?
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people make sense of the world through binary oppositions ie. raw/cooked
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Anthropologist overcome ethnocentrism by
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seeing matters from the point of view of another culture
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When Kay Warren presented her anthropological research, a group of Maya intellectuals, activist, and political leaders
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challenged her right to study the Maya culture as a foreign anthropologist
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Anthropologist believe that our behavior is influenced by
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both
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A paradigm that emphasizes humans that are made up of complex biological, cultural, and psychological processes is
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biocultural
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The human mind is
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all of the above
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Ethnopsychology is largely concerned with
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understanding how other societies make sense of selves, persons, and emotions
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Anthropologist Kim Hopper believes
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industrialized nations produce "surplus people"
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Slight, unpredictable variation in the genetic code that occurs during reproduction is called
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mutation
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The movement of genes through interbreeding or intermarriage among humans from different population is
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gene flow
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This anthropologist rejected the idea that there are groups of people belonging to stable and unchanging races
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Franz Boas
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Nature and nurture are not opposed but intertwined T/F
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True
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Gene flow and gene drift work on human populations in opposite ways T/F
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True
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Neural plasticity is illustrated by
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all of the above
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An illustration of the bioculture of humans is
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mental stress from losing a job causing insomnia
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The affects and feelings we experience as humans
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may not have an exact equivalent in another culture
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Cultural models help us make sense of the world because
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they provide a pattern for one's own behavior and interpreting others' actions
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The limitation of culture and personality studies was that they assumed
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all of the above
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Intelligence is
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not marked by a single fixed gene
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The enhanced cognition of early modern humans allowed for
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all of the above
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According to Mauss and Durkheim, a key feature of the concept of personhood in many other culture is
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defined socially
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A cross-cultural perspective on manic depression would
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all of the above
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If an anthropologist who studies cultural models were to analyze the Ilongot concept of liget, she or he might emphasize
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all of the above
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Which of the following would most interest an anthropologist who studies geneticization
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the search for breast cancer gene
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A biological perspective on the evolution of our species would emphasize that
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all of the above
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Animal call systems
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can only communicate in response to real-world stimuli
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Koko, thegorilla, ans Washo, the chimp, were two ape primates who had learn
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American sign language
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_______ refers to the structure of speech sounds
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phonology
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How words fit together to make meaningful units is called
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morphology
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The study of grammatical categories, such as tense and word order, is called
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morphology
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When anthropologists study the way people use language in real settings rather than as a set of grammatical rules, they are focusing on
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parole
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A stoplight is a visual example of a
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sign
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Anthropologist Sherry Ortner distinguished three kinds of culturally powerful symbols that include all of the following except
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narrative symbol
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The study of how people classify things in the world is called
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ethnoscience
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A language of mixed origin that developed from a complex blending of two parent languages is called
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creole
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The set of sounds and movements that animals make to communicate is called a call system T/F
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True
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Most people are unaware of the structure of a language until someone speaking it makes a mistake T/F
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True
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Languages change very slowly, taking generations or even centuries T/F
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False
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American's pattern of gender inequality is built into our linguistic practices T/F
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True
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In evolutionary terms humans are distinct from other primates with respect to their ability to use language because
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we can speak using our larynx
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For pastoral groups such as the Dinka and the Nuer, the cow acts as which of the following symbol?
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elaborating symbol
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Edward Spair, who had been
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all of the above
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Linguistics refer to mixed languages with a simplified grammar that people rarely learn as a mother tongue as
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pidgin language
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The US government's prohibition of Native American children speaking their indigenous languages in Indian schools has contributed most profoundly to
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language death
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Although language is one of the most rule-bound aspect of human culture, it is also one of the least conscious T/F
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True
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Because of the widespread use of mass media today, sociologist have found increasing homogeneity in the use of language in the US T/F
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False
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If you were a linguistic anthropologist interested in language change in smaller American cities, building on William Labov's studies, what method would you use?
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record how younger people, middle aged, and senior citizens pronounces ordinary american words
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The canadian government helps preserve the use of french
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all of the above
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If you studied speech patterns such as those analyzed in Robin Lakoffs study of genderized speech, you might find that talking like a lady
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marginalize women voice in work context
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If you were conducting a symbolic analysis of TV programs and wanted to identify a key scenario such as the Horatio Alger myth, which of the following would you focus on?
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plots that are repeated in many of the programs that American viewers interpret as commonplace social experiment
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