Read the passage and answer the questions. If so much of present day cultural…
2020
Read the passage and answer the questions.
If so much of present day cultural learning depends on situation and context how do the resulting assemblages acquire an organised coherence? One way this issue is being raised in recent anthropology is through the concern with identity, whether defined as identity of the person of an ethnic group or of an entire nation. But identities do not swim above in the stream of social life like amoebas in fermenting banana soup. If definitions of identity involve a characterisation of attributes and a drawing of boundaries around the units so defined, in contrast with other units, this must have a causal context. Moreover, we know that the search for identity varies historically, intensifying or slackening over periods of time. Thus, a major rise occurred in the demand for identity with the advent of the nation-state and the collateral development of nationalism, which hoped to create a unified and identifiable 'people', out of diverse populations with distinctive identities of their own. Recently, the demand for identities has risen once again, precisely at a time when cultural repertoires are becoming again more heterogeneous, as people have responded to changes in the social division of labour, in their relation to governments, in reaction to new modes of communication. These repertoires of cultural understandings and practices do not easily fit any traditional notion of culture as an integral and integrated set of forms and meanings.
Ques: What is the focal issue in the present day cultural learning?
- A.
Unending discussions on it
- B.
Contextual clarity
- C.
Anthropological concern
- D.
The need to organise the issue properly
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Concept: In a passage's main-idea / focal-issue question, the correct option is the concern the author keeps returning to across the whole passage - not a single clause borrowed out of context, and not a supporting detail mentioned only once.
Application: The passage opens by tying cultural learning to "situation and context." Every example that follows - identity's rising and falling salience across historical periods, the nation-state's drive to unify diverse peoples, and today's more heterogeneous cultural repertoires responding to shifts in labour, government, and communication - illustrates the same point: cultural meaning is shaped by context, not by fixed forms. That recurring thread - the centrality of context to understanding present day cultural learning - is the passage's focal issue, i.e. contextual clarity.
Cross-check: Contrasting the options against what the passage actually develops:
Unending discussions on it - the passage poses a rhetorical question to introduce its theme; it never describes an ongoing dispute or unresolved argument.
Anthropological concern - anthropology is named only as the discipline that studies identity as one instance of this issue, a supporting detail, not the passage's own central concern.
The need to organise the issue properly - this borrows the phrase "organised coherence" from the opening line, but the passage never returns to "organising" as its subject; every following example is about contextual dependence, not about achieving organisation.
Result: The passage's central, recurring concern is how present day cultural learning depends on situation and context - contextual clarity is the focal issue.