The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
[CAT 2023 Slot 3]
In 2006, the Met [art museum in the US] agreed to return the Euphronios krater, a masterpiece Greek urn that had been a museum draw since 1972. In 2007, the Getty [art museum in the US] agreed to return 40 objects to Italy, including a marble Aphrodite, in the midst of looting scandals. And in December, Sotheby’s and a private owner agreed to return an ancient Khmer statue of a warrior, pulled from auction two years before, to Cambodia.
Cultural property, or patrimony, laws limit the transfer of cultural property outside the source country’s territory, including outright export prohibitions and national ownership laws. Most art historians, archaeologists, museum officials and policymakers portray cultural property laws in general as invaluable tools for counteracting the ugly legacy of Western cultural imperialism.
During the late 19th and early 20th century — an era former Met director Thomas Hoving called “the age of piracy” — American and European art museums acquired antiquities by hook or by crook, from grave robbers or souvenir collectors, bounty from digs and ancient sites in impoverished but art-rich source countries. Patrimony laws were intended to protect future archaeological discoveries against Western imperialist designs. . . .
I surveyed 90 countries with one or more archaeological sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list, and my study shows that in most cases the number of discovered sites diminishes sharply after a country passes a cultural property law. There are 222 archaeological sites listed for those 90 countries. When you look into the history of the sites, you see that all but 21 were discovered before the passage of cultural property laws. . . .
Strict cultural patrimony laws are popular in most countries. But the downside may be that they reduce incentives for foreign governments, nongovernmental organizations and educational institutions to invest in overseas exploration because their efforts will not necessarily be rewarded by opportunities to hold, display and study what is uncovered. To the extent that source countries can fund their own archaeological projects, artifacts and sites may still be discovered. . . . The survey has far-reaching implications. It suggests that source countries, particularly in the developing world, should narrow their cultural property laws so that they can reap the benefits of new archaeological discoveries, which typically increase tourism and enhance cultural pride. This does not mean these nations should abolish restrictions on foreign excavation and foreign claims to artifacts.
China provides an interesting alternative approach for source nations eager for foreign archaeological investment. From 1935 to 2003, China had a restrictive cultural property law that prohibited foreign ownership of Chinese cultural artifacts. In those years, China’s most significant archaeological discovery occurred by chance, in 1974, when peasant farmers accidentally uncovered ranks of buried terra cotta warriors, which are part of Emperor Qin’s spectacular tomb system.
In 2003, the Chinese government switched course, dropping its cultural property law and embracing collaborative international archaeological research. Since then, China has nominated 11 archaeological sites for inclusion in the World Heritage Site list, including eight in 2013, the most ever for China.
1) From the passage we can infer that the author is likely to advise poor, but archaeologically-rich source countries to do all of the following, EXCEPT:
(1) adopt China’s strategy of dropping its cultural property laws and carrying out archaeological research through international collaboration.
(2) fund institutes in other countries to undertake archaeological exploration in the source country reaping the benefits of cutting-edge techniques.
(3) to find ways to motivate other countries to finance archaeological explorations in their country.
(4) allow foreign countries to analyse and exhibit the archaeological finds made in the source country.
2) Which one of the following statements, if true, would undermine the central idea of the passage?
(1) Museums established in economically deprived archaeologically-rich source countries can display the antiques discovered there.
(2) Western countries will have to apologise to countries for looting their cultural property in the past century.
(3) UNESCO finances archaeological research in poor, but archaeologically-rich source countries.
(4) Affluent archaeologically-rich source countries can afford to carry out their own excavations.
3) It can be inferred from the passage that archaeological sites are considered important by some source countries because they:
(1) are a symbol of Western imperialism.
(2) give a boost to the tourism sector.
(3) generate funds for future discoveries.
(4) are subject to strict patrimony laws.
4) Which one of the following statements best expresses the paradox of patrimony laws?
(1) They were intended to protect cultural property, but instead resulted in the neglect of historical sites.
(2) They were aimed at protecting cultural property, but instead reduced new archaeological discoveries.
(3) They were aimed at protecting cultural property, but instead reduced business for auctioneers like Sotheby’s.
(4) They were intended to protect cultural property, but instead resulted in the withholding of national treasure from museums.
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
[CAT 2022 Slot 2]
When we teach engineering problems now, we ask students to come to a single “best” solution defined by technical ideals like low cost, speed to build, and ability to scale. This way of teaching primes students to believe that their decision-making is purely objective, as it is grounded in math and science. This is known as technical-social dualism, the idea that the technical and social dimensions of engineering problems are readily separable and remain distinct throughout the problem-definition and solution process.
Nontechnical parameters such as access to a technology, cultural relevancy or potential harms are deemed political and invalid in this way of learning. But those technical ideals are at their core social and political choices determined by a dominant culture focused on economic growth for the most privileged segments of society. By choosing to downplay public welfare as a critical parameter for engineering design, we risk creating a culture of disengagement from societal concerns amongst engineers that is antithetical to the ethical code of engineering.
In my field of medical devices, ignoring social dimensions has real consequences.... Most FDA-approved drugs are incorrectly dosed for people assigned female at birth, leading to unexpected adverse reactions. This is because they have been inadequately represented in clinical trials.
Beyond physical failings, subjective beliefs treated as facts by those in decision-making roles can encode social inequities. For example, spirometers, routinely used devices that measure lung capacity, still have correction factors that automatically assume smaller lung capacity in Black and Asian individuals. These racially based adjustments are derived from research done by eugenicists who thought these racial differences were biologically determined and who considered nonwhite people as inferior. These machines ignore the influence of social and environmental factors on lung capacity.
Many technologies for systemically marginalized people have not been built because they were not deemed important such as better early diagnostics and treatment for diseases like endometriosis, a disease that afflicts 10 percent of people with uteruses. And we hardly question whether devices are built sustainably, which has led to a crisis of medical waste and health care accounting for 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
Social justice must be made core to the way engineers are trained. Some universities are working on this.... Engineers taught this way will be prepared to think critically about what problems we choose to solve, how we do so responsibly and how we build teams that challenge our ways of thinking.
Individual engineering professors are also working to embed societal needs in their pedagogy. Darshan Karwat at the University of Arizona developed activist engineering to challenge engineers to acknowledge their full moral and social responsibility through practical self-reflection. Khalid Kadir at the University of California, Berkeley, created the popular course Engineering, Environment, and Society that teaches engineers how to engage in place-based knowledge, an understanding of the people, context and history, to design better technical approaches in collaboration with communities. When we design and build with equity and justice in mind, we craft better solutions that respond to the complexities of entrenched systemic problems.
1) All of the following are examples of the negative outcomes of focusing on technical ideals in the medical sphere EXCEPT the:
(1) continuing calibration of medical devices based on past racial biases that have remained unadjusted for changes.
(2) exclusion of non-privileged groups in clinical trials which leads to incorrect drug dosages.
(3) neglect of research and development of medical technologies for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases that typically afflict marginalised communities.
(4) incorrect assignment of people as female at birth which has resulted in faulty drug interventions.
2) We can infer that the author would approve of a more evolved engineering pedagogy that includes all of the following EXCEPT:
(1) moving towards technical-social dualism where social community needs are incorporated in problem-definition and solutions.
(2) making considerations of environmental sustainability intrinsic to the development of technological solutions.
(3) design that is based on the needs of communities using local knowledge and responding to local priorities.
(4) a more responsible approach to technical design and problem-solving than a focus on speed in developing and bringing to scale.
3) The author gives all of the following reasons for why marginalised people are systematically discriminated against in technology-related interventions EXCEPT:
(1) “Beyond physical failings, subjective beliefs treated as facts by those in decision-making roles can encode social inequities.”
(2) “These racially based adjustments are derived from research done by eugenicists who thought these racial differences were biologically determined and who considered nonwhite people as inferior.”
(3) “But those technical ideals are at their core social and political choices determined by a dominant culture focused on economic growth for the most privileged segments of society.”
(4) “And we hardly question whether devices are built sustainably, which has led to a crisis of medical waste and health care accounting for 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.”
4) In this passage, the author is making the claim that:
(1) engineering students today are trained to be non-subjective in their reasoning as this best enables them to develop much-needed universal solutions.
(2) technical-social dualism has emerged as a technique for engineering students to incorporate social considerations into their technical problem-solving processes.
(3) the objective of best solutions in engineering has shifted the focus of pedagogy from humanism and social obligations to technological perfection.
(4) engineering students today are taught to focus on objective technical outcomes, independent of the social dimensions of their work.
The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
[CAT 2022 Slot 3]
Sociologists working in the Chicago School tradition have focused on how rapid or dramatic social change causes increases in crime. Just as Durkheim, Marx, Toennies, and other European sociologists thought that the rapid changes produced by industrialization and urbanization produced crime and disorder, so too did the Chicago School theorists. The location of the University of Chicago provided an excellent opportunity for Park, Burgess, and McKenzie to study the social ecology of the city. Shaw and McKay found... that areas of the city characterized by high levels of social disorganization had higher rates of crime and delinquency.
In the 1920s and 1930s Chicago, like many American cities, experienced considerable immigration. Rapid population growth is a disorganizing influence, but growth resulting from in-migration of very different people is particularly disruptive. Chicago’s in-migrants were both native-born whites and blacks from rural areas and small towns, and foreign immigrants. The heavy industry of cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh drew those seeking opportunities and new lives. Farmers and villagers from America’s hinterland, like their European cousins of whom Durkheim wrote, moved in large numbers into cities. At the start of the twentieth century, Americans were predominately a rural population, but by the century’s mid-point most lived in urban areas. The social lives of these migrants, as well as those already living in the cities they moved to, were disrupted by the differences between urban and rural life. According to social disorganization theory, until the social ecology of the ‘‘new place’’ can adapt, this rapid change is a criminogenic influence. But most rural migrants, and even many of the foreign immigrants to the city, looked like and eventually spoke the same language as the natives of the cities into which they moved. These similarities allowed for more rapid social integration for these migrants than was the case for African Americans and most foreign immigrants.
In these same decades America experienced what has been called ‘‘the great migration’’: the massive movement of African Americans out of the rural South and into northern (and some southern) cities. The scale of this migration is one of the most dramatic in human history. These migrants, unlike their white counterparts, were not integrated into the cities they now called home. In fact, most American cities at the end of the twentieth century were characterized by high levels of racial residential segregation... Failure to integrate these migrants, coupled with other forces of social disorganization such as crowding, poverty, and illness, caused crime rates to climb in the cities, particularly in the segregated wards and neighborhoods where the migrants were forced to live.
Foreign immigrants during this period did not look as dramatically different from the rest of the population as blacks did, but the migrants from eastern and southern Europe who came to American cities did not speak English, and were frequently Catholic, while the native born were mostly Protestant. The combination of rapid population growth with the diversity of those moving into the cities created what the Chicago School sociologists called social disorganization.
1) The author notes that, “At the start of the twentieth century, Americans were predominately a rural population, but by the century’s mid-point most lived in urban areas.” Which one of the following statements, if true, does not contradict this statement?
(1) The estimation of per capita income in America in the mid-twentieth century primarily required data from rural areas.
(2) A population census conducted in 1952 showed that more Americans lived in rural areas than in urban ones.
(3) Demographic transition in America in the twentieth century is strongly marked by an out-migration from rural areas.
(4) Economists have found that throughout the twentieth century, the size of the labour force in America has always been largest in rural areas.
2) Which one of the following is not a valid inference from the passage?
(1) According to social disorganisation theory, the social integration of African American migrants into Chicago was slower because they were less organised.
(2) The failure to integrate in-migrants, along with social problems like poverty, was a significant reason for the rise in crime in American cities.
(3) According to social disorganisation theory, fast-paced social change provides fertile ground for the rapid growth of crime.
(4) The differences between urban and rural lifestyles were crucial factors in the disruption experienced by migrants to American cities.
3) A fundamental conclusion by the author is that:
(1) to prevent crime, it is important to maintain social order through maintaining social segregation.
(2) according to European sociologists, crime in America is mainly in Chicago.
(3) the best circumstances for crime to flourish are when there are severe racial disparities.
(4) rapid population growth and demographic diversity give rise to social disorganisation that can feed the growth of crime.
4) Which one of the following sets of words/phrases best encapsulates the issues discussed in the passage?
(1) Rapid population growth; Heavy industry; Segregation; Crime
(2) Chicago School; Social organisation; Migration; Crime
(3) Chicago School; Native-born Whites; European immigrants; Poverty
(4) Durkheim; Marx; Toennies; Shaw
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