ethos and eidos
"Concept (from Greek) introduced into anthropology by Benedict (see 1934), and later used famously by Bateson (1938), and Geertz (1957). Ethos attempts to capture the emotional communality or "ambience" that a group shares, as opposed to the cognitive (thought-centered, logical) communality, which Bateson called "eidos", but some later researchers such as Keesing (1974), use synonymously with culture. It might, e.g., be meaningful to say that a group has an "agressive" ethos, though Bateson has pointed out that such simple labels are probably insufficient to characterize any real-world ethos, which would as a minimum be bi-polar (e.g. "dominant-submissive"). Benedict spoke of ethos in terms of cultural configurations. Later researchers have investigated linguistic analogies, and (since the late 1970's) links between social memory, emotion and the body (Bourdieu, Connerton)."[source, ethos in anthrobase].
"universally forms of lex talionis, or "the law (lex) of retaliation." The lex talionis is a law of equal and direct retribution: in the words of the Hebrew scriptures, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, an arm for an arm, a life for a life.""[source:lex talionis]
