eidos

is what we more generally call 'form' or 'structure' (contrasted with ethos, or the feelings and emotions and tradition of a person or group).

In Bateson's usage, eidos is what we more generally call 'form' or 'structure' (cf. Kroeber 1963 [1948]: 100-3). The sets of oppositions he describes in his study of national character (spectatorship v. exhibitionism... dominance v. submission) are part of the eidos of American and of English culture. Ethos refers to the customs, the traditions, also the feelings, the collective emotions, either of a given culture or of a given event which is defined according to cultural norms. More specifically it refers to their distinctive character or spirit. These concepts are related, and at least in his nationalcharacter study ethos seems to depend for its cross-cultural definition on the relation between the eidos of one culture and that of another. History and Theory in Anthropology The methods Bateson used seem particularly suited to the analysis of conflict and potential conflict, and he developed a similar approach to understanding conflict between, for example, male and female among the Iatmul, and East and West in the nuclear arms race. Similarly, Canadian anthropologist Elliott Leyton (1974) has analysed convict in Northern Ireland in terms of direct, eidotic oppositions between aspects of the ethos of Nationalist and Unionist cultures (or Catholic and Protestant) in Northern Ireland. Anthropologist from Northern Ireland have criticized Leyton since then for oversimplifying, as certainly Bateson did on Americans and Englishmen, but the point of this kind of analysis is that convict is often better understood in terms of structures and processes of interaction than in terms of ethnographic detail alone. (Barnard)

eidos, n.All

eidos