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1 A folk culture is a small isolated, cohesive, conservative, nearly self-sufficient group that is homogeneous in custom and race with a strong family or clan structure and highly developed rituals. Order is maintained through sanctions based in the religion or family and interpersonal relationships are strong. Tradition is paramount, and change comes infrequently and slowly. There is relatively little division of labor into specialized duties. Rather, each person is expected to perform. a great variety of tasks, though duties may differ between the sexes. Most goods are handmade and subsistence economy prevails. Individualism is weakly developed in folk cultures, as are social classes. Unaltered folk cultures no longer exist in industrialized countries such as the United States and Canada.
2 Perhaps the nearest modern equivalent in America is the Amish, a German American farming sect that largely renounces the products and labor saving devices of the industrial age. In Amish areas, horse drawn buggies still serve as a local transportation device and the faithful are not permitted to own automobiles. The Amish's central religious concept of Demut "humility" clearly reflects the weakness of individualism and social class so typical of folk cultures and there is a corresponding strength of Amish group identity. Rarely do the Amish marry outside their sect. The religion, a variety of the Mennonite faith, provides the principal mechanism for maintaining order.
3 By contrast a popular culture is a large heterogeneous group often highly individualistic and constantly changing. Relationships tend to be impersonal and a pronounced division of labor exists, leading to the establishment of many specialized professions. Secular institutions of control such as the police and army take the place of religion and family in maintaining order, and a money-based economy prevails. Because of these contrasts, "popular" may be viewed as clearly different, from "folk". The popular is replacing the folk in industrialized countries and in many developing nations. Folk-made objects give way to their popular equivalent, usually because the popular item is more quickly or cheaply produced, is easier or time saving to use or lends more prestige to the owner.
Which of the following statements is NOT true of a folk culture?

A. Impersonal.
B. Religious.
Conservative.
D. Collective.

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With human footprints on the moon, radio telescopes listening for messages from alien creatures (who may or may not exist), technicians looking for celestial and planetary sources of energy to support our civilization, orbiting telescopes' data hinting at planetary systems around other stars, and political groups trying to figure out how to save humanity from nuclear warfare that would damage life and climate on a planet-wide scale, an astronomy book published today enters a world different from the one that greeted books a generation ago. Astronomy has broadened to involve our basic circumstances and our mysterious future in the universe. With eclipses and space missions broadcast live, and with NASA, Europe, and the USSR planning and building permanent space stations, astronomy offers adventure for all people, an outward exploratory thrust that may one day be seen as an alternative to mindless consumerism, ideological bickering, and wars to control dwindling resources on a closed, finite Earth.
Today's astronomy students not only seek an up-to-date summary of astronomical facts— they ask, as people have asked for ages, about our basic relations to the rest of the universe. They may study astronomy partly to seek points of contact between science and other human endeavors: philosophy, history, politics, environmental action, even the arts and religion.
Science fiction writers and special effect artists on recent films help today's students realize that unseen worlds of space are real places—not abstract concepts. Today's students are citizens of a more real, more vast cosmos than conceptualized by students of a decade ago.
In designing this edition, the Wadsworh editors and I have tried to respond to these developments. Rather than jumping at the start into murky waters of cosmology, I have begun with the viewpoint of ancient people on Earth and worked outward across the universe. This method of organization automatically (if loosely) reflects the order of humanity's discoveries about astronomy and provides a unifying theme of increasing distance and scale.
This passage is most probably taken from ______.

A. an article of popular science
B. the introduction of a book of astronomy
C. a lecture given by the author to astronomy students
D. the preface of a piece of science fiction

1 Consider these results from a study released last week by the Manhattan Institute, a New York-based think tank: Two-thirds of suburban and urban 12th-graders have had sex; 43 percent of suburban 12th-graders and 39 percent of urban 12th-graders have had sex during "one-night stands." 74 percent of suburban 12th-graders and 71 percent of urban 12th-graders have tried alcohol more than two or three times. Just over 40 percent of 12th- graders in urban and suburban schools have used illegal drugs. 20 percent of urban 12th grade girls have been pregnant; 14 percent of suburban 12th-grade girls have.
2 The study was conducted via student surveys, and the data were collected from the same group of adolescents in three waves from 1995 to 20O2. The study, which surveyed an estimate of 20,000 students, was sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and other federal agencies. The study's authors, Jay Greene and Greg Forster, concluded that students in suburban high schools consume alcohol, smoke cigarettes and partake in as much illegal drug use as students in urban schools, and sometimes even more than their city counterparts. Students in suburban schools also had about the same levels of sexual behavior. as their urban counterparts. The authors suggest that folks who have been fleeing the city hoping to find a "wholesome" life may just come up wanting.
3 Greene, a senior fellow at the institute, told me that he was surprised that the study showed there isn't too much of a difference between urban and suburban high schoolers
4 Surprised? That's because we continue to idealize the more affluent suburbs and demonize the poorer sections of the city. For decades, "city" has been a euphemism for black and poor and decadent, and "suburbs" synonymous with white and wealthy and puritanical. But, of course, neither has ever been totally true. Yet, we're often still surprised when a group of well-to-do kids do something stupid and not so surprised when poor kids do.
5 Henry Binford, an associate professor of history at Northwestern University, said there's a long history of idealizing suburban life that goes back to the 19th century. "Part of the appeal for people moving out was for them to get away from the dirt and crime, poor services and the hurly-burly of the downtown," he said. "Many imagined that the suburbs would be havens. They thought suburban life was healthier and more moral than city living. But the suburbs were never pure or safe or without difficulty as people thought they would be. " It's fantasy duking it out with reality.
6 Why the similarities despite the differences in ZIP codes and, often, opportunities? For starters—and this is a no-brainer—adolescents will be adolescents no matter where they live. They have to contend with similar peer pressures regarding sex, drugs and alcohol. Other pervasive influences, including various media messages, transcend suburban-urban boundaries.
7 Young people tend to have a high propensity for doing stupid things and getting themselves into sticky situations. How ZIP codes play a role is that some wealthier kids' parents can afford to get them unstuck far better than others. Most of us recognize that there is no hermetically sealed place to rear youngsters. But some people still think so, says Greene, a graduate of New Trier High School on the North Shore. "A lot of the flight to the suburbs is still related to the perception that certain social ills are so concentrated in the city," Greene said. That perception is reinforced by television shows and movies about city life; by the news. It's so ingrained that we tend not to question it. We take it for granted.
8 One of the things that attracted me to this study was not so much the similarities—the "findings" that kids will be kids wherever they live—but the continued shock about the

A. compare the behavior. of urban and suburban kids in terms of some social problems
B. highlight the gravity of some social problems involving kids
C. show the author's well-informedness
D. draw attention to the seriousness of problems with suburban kids

In the last paragraph, the underlined expression "these developments" refers to all of the

A. the development of science fiction and special effects of films
B. the new concepts about the universe acquired by today's astronomy students
C. the world-wide involvement in space exploration
D. humanity's new achievements in the field of astronomy

The beginning of our sleep-deficit crisis can be traced to the invention of the light bulb a century ago. From diary entries and other personal accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries, sleep scientists have reached the conclusion that the average person used to sleep about 9.5 hours a night. "The best sleep habits once were forced on us, when we had nothing to do in the evening down on the farm, and it was dark." By the 1950s and 1960s, that sleep schedule had been reduced dramatically, to between 7.5 and eight hours, and most people had to wake to an alarm clock. "People cheat on their sleep, and they don't even realize they're doing it." says Dr. David. "They think they are okay, because they can get by on 6.5 hours, when they really need 7.5, eight or even more to feel ideally vigorous."
Perhaps the most merciless robber of sleep, researchers say, is the complexity of the day. Whenever pressures from work, family, friends and community mount, many people consider sleep the least expensive item on his program. "In our society, you're considered dynamic if you say you only need 5.5 hours' sleep. If you've got to sleep 8.5 hours, people think you lack drive and ambition."
To determine the consequences of sleep deficit, researchers have put subjects through a set of psychological and performance tests requiring them, for instance, to add columns of numbers or recall a passage read to them only minutes earlier. "We've found that if you're in sleep deficit, performance suffers," says Dr. David. "Short-term memory is weakened, as are abilities to make decisions and to concentrate."
People in the 18th and 19th centuries used to sleep about 9.5 hours a night because they had ______.

A. no drive or ambition
B. no electric light
C. the best sleep habits
D. nothing to do in the evening

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