#8 - Sociologist: Some anthropologists claim that cultures can most effectively

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Fill in the Blank, Must Be True. The correct answer choice is (B).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[leonardx141]

Complete Question Explanation

Answer choice (A):
I chose this after finishing the set and spending the last 3 minutes on this. Turned out to be wrong so totally not worth it. In my understanding, the reason that it is wrong is the part where it says "reflecting on customs and envisioning alternatives." Does that mean the essential traditions, under the method recommended by some anthropologists, would not be lost after the "reflection"and "envisioning"? Not really. One can reflect on something that is lost, like what I'm doing right now with this question, and that doesn't mean one can regain that lost part. I drew an assumption that reflecting and envisioning leads to preservation of culture, which led to going from B the right answer to A.

Answer choice (B):
Chose this initially. The passage states that every tradition is essential to a culture. In logic it goes like
Culture --> Tradition
If to preserve the culture, we shred some traditions, that means that we lose some tradition and every tradition is essential. /tradition --> /cutlure. If every tradition is essential, the loss of one tradition leads to the loss of the culture. B is right on this ground, and the word "essential" entails a necessary condition.

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

[g_lawyered]

Hi P.S.,
I struggled with this question as I narrowed down to 2 incorrect answer choices A or E. My analysis was the culture can survive but still needs tradition. So I predicted that the inference/conclusion needs to say that: "the strategy needed another type or other tradition". Because of my quick prediction, I picked A because I interpreted "reflecting of own customs" to mean their own "traditions". Can someone breakdown why answer choice A is incorrect?
Also, what about answer choice B makes it the correct answer?
Why is answer choice E incorrect?
Thanks in advance!

[Robert Carroll]

leonardx141,

There's a much more straightforward way answer choice (A) is wrong - it's opposite. The author is showing in the stimulus that a strategy to preserve a culture requires actions that would in fact destroy the culture; i.e., the strategy is self-defeating. Answer choice (A) says that strategy "can" work in certain circumstances. But in fact it never works. So that's opposite.

GGIBA003,

Answer choice (E) has the same problem as answer choice (A), as I explain in this post as well. The strategy never works. Any answer that says it works is out.

Answer choice (B) is correct also for the reasons I stated above - the strategy to "save" a culture requires removing some necessary conditions for the existence of the culture, so the strategy to "save" it will actually destroy it.

Robert Carroll

[TootyFrooty]

Can you please expand on the meaning of this stimulus? I found it to be very contradictory. Or was that intentional? I Kind of struggled to understand the wording because of this, as it said it wants to adopt other traditions. WHY?

[Luke Haqq]

Hi TootyFrooty!

In this stimulus, there's a claim made about what experts say, followed by a conclusion about that assertion. The experts (anthropologists) claim that societies can respond to cultural decay by leaving behind many of their traditions and adopting new ones. There seems to be potential issues with this assertion (and the first word of final sentence, "but," is suggestive that an objection is being raised)--for example, what if these traditions are essential to a culture's identity? If that is true as the final sentence suggests, then this proposal of replacing traditions would lead to eliminating the culture's very identity rather than preventing decay. Answer choice (B) reflects this objection and completes the final sentence of the stimulus.