Author: iamdefinitory

Cultural Codes: The underlying rules and conventions that govern social behavior and meaning within a culture, which can be revealed through structural analysis.

Lévi-Strauss’s Structuralism: Focuses on understanding the unconscious structures of the human mind through cultural expressions like myths, kinship, and language.

Structural Analysis: The method of analyzing cultural phenomena by focusing on their underlying structural relationships rather than their surface meanings or individual components.

Kinship Systems: In structuralist anthropology, kinship is seen as a system of relationships governed by universal rules, such as the need to establish alliances through marriage.

Cultural Universals: The idea that certain cultural structures, such as kinship systems, myths, and taboos, are universal across human societies.

Mythology: According to structuralism, myths across cultures share common structures and reflect universal cognitive processes, such as the need to reconcile contradictions.

Binary Oppositions: A key concept in structuralism, where cultural phenomena are understood in terms of opposing pairs (e.g., life vs. death, male vs. female) that structure human understanding and social organization.

Structuralism: A theoretical approach in anthropology, particularly associated with Claude Lévi-Strauss, which posits that human culture and society can be understood through underlying structures—such as language, kinship, and mythology—that govern social life.

Grassroots Peacebuilding: Community-driven initiatives that promote reconciliation, social healing, and long-term conflict prevention.