Structural anthropology

An approach that explains cultural practices and institutions through underlying systems of relationships, especially in kinship, myth, and classification.

Structuralism: An intellectual approach that explains phenomena through systems of relations among their elements. Structural anthropology applies structuralist analysis to cultural systems.
Kinship system: A system of relationships organizing descent, marriage, and family roles in a society. Kinship is one of the central domains structural anthropologists analyze.
Claude Lévi-Strauss: A French anthropologist who made structural analysis influential in the study of kinship, myth, and classification. He developed the approach's best-known analyses and theoretical framework.
Functionalism: An approach that explains social institutions by the roles they perform in maintaining a society. Structural analysis seeks relational patterns beneath institutions rather than primarily their social functions.
Binary opposition: A pair of contrasting terms treated as mutually defining elements within a system. Analyses often trace how cultural meanings are organized through oppositions such as nature and culture.
Alliance theory: An account of social organization that emphasizes marriage ties and exchanges between groups. It interprets marriage rules as relations linking social groups, not just family customs.
Roman Jakobson: A linguist whose work on phonology and poetics influenced twentieth-century structuralism. His account of relational oppositions helped shape Lévi-Strauss's analytical methods.
Historical particularism: An anthropological approach that explains cultures through their distinct histories and contexts. It contrasts with structural analysis's search for underlying patterns across cultural materials.
Mytheme: A recurring relational unit used to analyze the structure of a myth. Myth analysis breaks narratives into relations that can recur in different arrangements.
Totemism: A system associating social groups with animals, plants, or other natural kinds. Lévi-Strauss examined how such associations classify relations among human groups.

Linked from 64 pages