Compiled MA Exam Questions – Cultural
Date Compiled: Fall 2008
Instructions: The MA Exam is an all day exam during which students choose and
answer 2 out of 3 questions in the morning (9am-12pm) and 2 out of 3 questions in the
afternoon (2pm-5pm).
The MA Exam is based on 36 hours of coursework (including History, Contemporary
Theory, Research Methods, Regional Ethnography, Current Lit, Data Analysis, Social
Organization, and a range of elective courses) and the Cultural Anthropology
Bibliography. You are likely to see some or similar questions to those listed below on
your exam. Keep these questions in mind as you go through your initial course work.
They will help you to structure your thinking and your preparation for the MA
comprehensive exams. The faculty is aware that particular students may not have had all
the required courses by the time they sit down for the exam. That will be taken in to
consideration.
METHODS
1. Anthropologists concerned with methodology face key challenges related to
issues of 1) qualitative versus quantitative data and approaches, 2) choosing
the appropriate unit of analysis, 3) dealing with intra-cultural diversity, and 4)
sampling from a designated research population. Identify what you consider
to be the most critical challenges related to each. What are the most effective
strategies in the field for dealing with these challenges (site specific examples)
and how can those strategies contribute to "rigorous and systematic"
methodology in field work?
2. In an essay entitled “Quanta and Qualia: What is the “Object of Ethnographic
Method?” anthropologist Richard Schweder (1996) explores the tension
between quantitative and qualitative modes of inquiry and analysis, observing
that increasing numbers of people are asking what the problem is. He writes:
“Why not just combine numbers and narratives, measurements and meanings,
calculations and interpretations, magnitudes and qualities, and get on with
doing better and more complete research? Such optimism, he continues, “is
not surprising….. For if one focuses only on the epistemological side of
science (on method and reasoning), thereby overlooking the question of the
metaphysical status of the objects of the scientific inquiry, the demarcation
between quantitative and qualitative research must seem either cut and dry.. or
threadbare.” (p176). But, Shweder argues, the tension between the two
approaches is in fact quite real and significant because quanta and qualia are
different kinds of intellectual objects. (p. 177)__the distinction is one of
ontology not method. “The kinds of properties studied in qualitative research
