Social and cultural anthropology

Higher level
Paper 1

2 hours

Instructions to candidates

● Do not open this examination paper until instructed to do so.

● Section A​: read the passage and ​answer​ questions 1 and 2. ​Choose​ either question 3 or
4.
● Answer​ question 5.
● Section B​: answer the question.
● The maximum mark for this examination paper is ​[40 marks]​.

3 pages
Texts in this examination paper have been edited: word additions or explanations are shown in
square brackets [ ]; substantive deletions of text are indicated by ellipses in square brackets […];
minor changes are not indicated.

Extract adapted from Haynes, N. (2016), “Introduction: Online and on the margins in Alto Hospicio,
Chile”, ​Social Media in Northern Chile (Why We Post)​.

On Chile’s national day, Nicole, in Alto Hospicio*, grabbed her second-hand iPhone 4 to send
her boyfriend a message and skim through Facebook. After reading posts wishing everyone
a fun-filled holiday, she wrote her own: “First I am HOSPICEÑA [from the city of Alto
Hospicio],
next I am NORTHERN and finally I am Chilean… so Hooray Alto Hospicio! Hooray the North!!”

5 Social media is associated with global networks, free from nation-states, geographical
differences or cultural variation. Yet Nicole used this medium to declare her local identity
and her loyalties—first to her city, next to the region and only then to her country. This post
established how she imagines her position in the world in relation to various larger communities
to which she belongs.

10 The wealth and prestige of Chile depends on the northern region’s copper exports. However,
most Hospiceños are low-paid manual labourers, who do not receive much economic benefit
from the mines. They regard themselves as marginalized and exploited by the international
companies and national government who extract most of the profits.

While the southern capital, Santiago, appears as a cosmopolitan city, Alto Hospicio looks and
15 feels like another world. To Hospiceños, Santiago symbolizes the economic exploitation of the
region, and the nation’s economic inequalities. Hospiceños identify themselves as peripheral,
as representatives of the country’s inequalities.

Identification is an active process, which involves highlighting certain aspects of the self.
In looking at Hospiceños’ use of online media, it is clear that rather than aiming to distinguish
20 themselves, many individuals highlight their desire for conformity. This is to say, they seek to
reduce the differences between themselves and other Hospiceños through shared assumptions,
which they consider to be natural, determining what is considered appropriate or inappropriate,
right or wrong.

Hospiceños know what their neighbours consider to be appropriate, and they generally follow
25 those guidelines rather than challenge them. They reject attempts to distinguish themselves
from others, identifying in ways that highlight local affiliation connected to family, work and
community politics. Hospiceños express these identifications through social media, reinforcing
their values of conformity.

Social media is used to suppress claims to individuality, as well as other identities such as
30 ethnicity, in order to express communal solidarity. Class distinctions in Alto Hospicio are also
downplayed to emphasize class homogeneity. Key to this sense of class uniformity is a group
rejection of showing off what you have. One Hospiceño, Vicky, spoke about an acquaintance,
“I see her Facebook posts and she’s always buying expensive clothing, wearing jewellery,
new shoes. It seems like a waste of money to me, always posting pictures, always showing
35 off.” Vicky thus clarified the boundaries of what was acceptable in terms of self-presentation.
Behaviour that does not conform to shared values has social consequences as reflected in
Vicky’s gossip.
 Like many Hospiceños, Francisco does not post much original content on Facebook. However,
he does share multiple messages on marginality and difference. One post he shared portrays
40 Adam and Eve. Eve asks, “Adam, where do you think we are?” Adam responds, “We are in
Chile, Eve. Don’t you see that we’re without clothing, without food, without a house, without
education and without hospitals? And they still tell us we’re in paradise!”

Through actions that portray all Hospiceños as similar, and apart from Santiago, they construct
a binary opposition between the good, hard-working but exploited and marginalized population
45 of Alto Hospicio and the imagined superficial, consumerist, exploitative residents of Santiago.
When Hospiceños make themselves different to their image of Santiago residents, they claim
being marginalized as the norm, the condition of the “real” Chile. Hospiceños reverse the logic
of power and link this to morality. They want to be seen as the “real” Chileans.

In Alto Hospicio most social media posts are connected to the performance, maintenance or
50 examination of what it means to be a good Hospiceño.

[Source: Extract adapted from Haynes, N. (2016) ​Social Media in Northern Chile (Why We Post)​.
Used with permission of UCL Press and Nell Haynes. This book is free to download from UCL
Press ​http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1495966/1/Social-Media-in-Northern-Chile.pdf. ​© 2016 Nell
Haynes]

* Alto Hospicio: a city of 100,000 people in the north of Chile, South America, which produces almost
one-third of the world’s copper

Answer question 1 and question 2

1. Define “​identity​” and explain how you would apply this term in the context of the text. [4]

2. Explain how Hospiceños challenge ​power​ through the use of social media relation

with the morality. [6]

Answer either question 3 or question 4.

3. Compare and contrast the ways in which Hospiceños construct their collective ​identity​ through their
use of social media with the ways in which any other group you have studied constructs its own
identity.

or

4. With reference to concepts and ethnography, compare the approaches to research adopted by the
anthropologist in this passage to the approaches to research used by another anthropologist you
have studied.

[10]
Answer question 5.

1. What does it mean to live in a society? Discuss with reference to ​at least two​ sources of
ethnographic material and examples from the passage.
[10]

Section B
Answer question 6.

1. With reference to ​either ​ stimulus A ​or ​stimulus B ​and ​your own knowledge, discuss the defining
features of anthropological ethics.

Stimulus A

She continued, “Yet a man who brags about his sexual predation, who has had dozens of women come
forward to accuse him of sexual assault, who pushes policies that are uniquely harmful to women and
who has filled the courts with judges who proudly rule to deprive women of the most fundamental right to
control their own bodies, sits in the highest office in the land.”

Hill’s parting vote on Thursday was to endorse the impeachment inquiry.

Shawn and I both felt sad watching her implode. But, while I agree with Hill that there are double
standards and that we still dwell in a misogynistic culture, I also think she should have realized that we’re
operating under new rules now and that they apply to both sexes.

[Source: Dowd, M. (2019), “Now Comes the Naked Truth”, ​The New York Times​]

Stimulus B

Civilians huddle together after an attack

by South Vietnamese forces. Dong Xoai,
June 1965. Courtesy of AP/Horst Faas.
[https://www.processhistory.
org/appy-vietnam-war-ep-1/]