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Claude Levi-Strauss was a Belgian-born French anthropologist known for his development of structural anthropology. He believed that the 'structures' of human thought are the same in all cultures and that they should be the primary focus of anthropological investigation.

Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. Through structuralism, Levi-Strauss intended to explore the universals in the human mind that transcend and yet give rise to, the diversity of cultures.

Levi-Strauss' structural anthropology often employs the organic analogy, where societies are compared to living organisms, suggesting that various parts of society, like those of a body, function in an interdependent manner within the overall system that is the social structure.

Levi-Strauss' analysis of kinship systems was a major part of his work in structural anthropology. He argued that the underlying structures of kinship are found in the unconscious and are universal, manifesting in the observable systems of family and marital organization.

In Levi-Strauss' view, totemism is less about a specific religious practice and more about the human tendency to use natural symbols to express abstract ideas. Totemism becomes a means to understand the structure of human thought, particularly the creation of meaning through classification.

Binary opposition is a key concept in structuralism where pairs of mutually-exclusive signifiers are fundamental to establishing meaning within a culture. According to Levi-Strauss, these oppositions (such as raw vs. cooked) are elementary forms of classification that exist in every culture.

Structuralism in anthropology is a framework positing that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader system. It emphasizes that cultural elements are not isolated and arbitrary but rather are parts of a meaningful whole.

In anthropological terms, bricolage is the process by which 'bricoleurs' create new cultural elements by using pre-existing materials or ideas. Levi-Strauss highlighted this concept to describe the way in which mythical thought structures are constituted.

This is Levi-Strauss' landmark study where he uses structuralism to analyze the universal underlying patterns in the variety of kinship systems around the world, proposing that the prohibitions and exchanges in kinship are the products of the deep structures of the human mind.

Mythologiques is a four-volume work by Claude Levi-Strauss that analyzed the structure of myths in various indigenous cultures of the Americas, showcasing his argument that myths from vastly different cultures reveal similar structures and logical patterns.

Structural analysis in anthropology is a method developed by Levi-Strauss wherein phenomena are analyzed in terms of binary oppositions and the overall structures they form. It is used to reveal the unconscious infrastructures of human thought and culture.