LSAT 128 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q21

LR Question 21 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Cultural anthropological theory tends to fall into two …

QUESTION TYPE: Most Strongly Supported

CONCLUSION: Cultural anthropologists should employ both existing approaches and integrate a third perspective.

ANALYSIS: We have two established approaches in cultural anthropology that disagree with each other. Despite this disagreement, the stimulus says we should use both approaches, and a third one. What each approach is doesn’t actually matter to answer the question.

Note that I excluded a reasoning section above (typically I write conclusion and reasoning). That’s because there is no reasoning given for why cultural anthropologists should use both approaches despite their disagreement with one another. We can infer this, though. Maybe as a general principle two theories don’t have to be incompatible just because they disagree.

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1. The argument doesn’t claim this – it says to combine three approaches, not just argue for one.
2. This might be tempting, but there’s no claim that they exclude the concept of community overall. It just states that the view of community as a set of individual actions is neglected. So it’s actually arguing that individual actions are overlooked, not the community.
3. There’s no support that these theorists (from the second approach discussed) overlook the humanity of individuals.
4. The discussion was solely about different theoretical approaches in cultural anthropology, not about fieldwork methodology.
5. CORRECT. This is exactly what we can infer from the stimulus. There’s disagreement between theory 1 and 2, but the stimulus still says cultural anthropologists should use both. So just because there’s disagreement, doesn’t mean that they’re incompatible.