Anthropological concept denoting a "totalizing, all-encompassing perspective". A holistic analysis will take the social whole into consideration - the context - that surrounds the phenomena. In the history of anthropology, holism is associated in part with a methodological ideal (to see as many connections as possible), in part with a theoretical ideal in structural functionalism, where social phenomena a priori were assumed to "maintain the whole". As a methodological ideal, holism implies i.a. that one does not permit oneself to believe that our own established institutional boundaries (e.g. between politics, sexuality, religion, economics) necessarily may be found also in foreign societies. One of the greatest advances of structural functionalism was their detailed documentation of how e.g. religion, economy and politics were interconnected. Kinship was the "glue" that held these spheres together.