totemism

—totemistic, adj.

/toh"teuh miz'euhm/, n.

1. the practice of having totems.

2. the system of tribal division according to totems.

[1785-95, Amer.; TOTEM + -ISM]

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Complex of ideas and practices based on the belief in kinship or mystical relationship between a group (or individual) and a natural object, such as an animal or plant.

The term derives from the Ojibwa word ototeman, signifying a blood relationship. A society exhibits totemism if it is divided into an apparently fixed number of clans, each of which has a specific relationship to an animate or inanimate species (totem). A totem may be a feared or respected hunted animal or an edible plant. Very commonly connected with origin myths and with instituted morality, the totem is almost always hedged about with taboos of avoidance or of strictly ritualized contact. Totem, taboo, and exogamy seem to be inextricably intertwined. See also totem pole.

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▪ religion

Introduction

 system of belief in which humans are said to have kinship or a mystical relationship with a spirit-being, such as an animal or plant. The entity, or totem, is thought to interact with a given kin group or an individual and to serve as their emblem or symbol.

      The term totemism has been used to characterize a cluster of traits in the religion and in the social organization of many peoples. Totemism is manifested in various forms and types in different contexts and is most often found among populations whose traditional economies relied on hunting and gathering (hunting and gathering culture), mixed farming with hunting and gathering, or emphasized the raising of cattle.

      The term totem is derived from the Ojibwa word ototeman, meaning “one's brother-sister kin.” The grammatical root, ote, signifies a blood relationship between brothers and sisters who have the same mother and who may not marry each other. In English, the word totem was introduced in 1791 by a British merchant and translator who gave it a false meaning in the belief that it designated the guardian spirit of an individual, who appeared in the form of an animal—an idea that the Ojibwa clans (clan) did indeed portray by their wearing of animal skins. It was reported at the end of the 18th century that the Ojibwa named their clans after those animals that live in the area in which they live and appear to be either friendly or fearful. The first accurate report about totemism in North America was written by a Methodist missionary, Peter Jones, himself an Ojibwa, who died in 1856 and whose report was published posthumously. According to Jones, the Great Spirit had given toodaims (“totems”) to the Ojibwa clans, and because of this act, it should never be forgotten that members of the group are related to one another and on this account may not marry among themselves.

The nature of totemism

 Totemism is a complex of varied ideas and ways of behaviour based on a worldview drawn from nature. There are ideological, mystical, emotional, reverential, and genealogical relationships of social groups or specific persons with animals or natural objects, the so-called totems.

      It is necessary to differentiate between group and individual totemism. These forms share some basic characteristics, but they occur with different emphases and in different specific forms. For instance, people generally view the totem as a companion, relative, protector, progenitor, or helper, ascribe to it superhuman powers and abilities, and offer it some combination of respect, veneration, awe, and fear. Most cultures use special names and emblems to refer to the totem, and those it sponsors engage in partial identification with the totem or symbolic assimilation to it. There is usually a prohibition (taboo) or taboo against killing, eating, or touching the totem.

      Although totems are often the focus of ritual behaviour, it is generally agreed that totemism is not a religion. Totemism can certainly include religious elements in varying degrees, just as it can appear conjoined with magic. Totemism is frequently mixed with different kinds of other beliefs, such as ancestor worship, ideas of the soul, or animism. Such mixtures have historically made the understanding of particular totemistic forms difficult.

Group totemism

      Social or collective totemism is the most widely disseminated form of this belief system. It typically includes one or more of several features, such as the mystic association of animal and plant species, natural phenomena, or created objects with unilineally related groups (lineages (lineage), clans, tribes, moieties (moiety system), phratries) or with local groups and families; the hereditary transmission of the totems (patrilineal or matrilineal); group and personal names that are based either directly or indirectly on the totem; the use of totemistic emblems and symbols (symbol); taboos and prohibitions that may apply to the species itself or can be limited to parts of animals and plants (partial taboos instead of partial totems); and a connection with a large number of animals and natural objects (multiplex totems) within which a distinction can be made between principal totems and subsidiary ones (linked totems).

      Group totems are generally associated or coordinated on the basis of analogies or on the basis of myth or ritual. Just why particular animals or natural things—which sometimes possess no economic worth for the communities concerned—were originally selected as totems is often based on eventful and decisive moments in a people's past. Folk traditions regarding the nature of totems and the origin of the societies in question are informative, especially with regard to the group's cultural presuppositions. For example, a group that holds that it is derived directly or indirectly from a given totem may have a tradition in which its progenitor was an animal or plant that could also appear as a human being. In such belief systems, groups of people and species of animals and plants can thus have progenitors in common. In other cases, there are traditions that the human progenitor of a kin group had certain favourable or unfavourable experiences with an animal or natural object and then ordered that his descendants respect the whole species of that animal.

      Group totemism was traditionally common among peoples in Africa, India, Oceania (especially in Melanesia), North America, and parts of South America. These peoples include, among others, the Australian Aborigines (Australian Aborigine), the African Pygmies (Pygmy), and various Native American peoples—most notably the Northwest Coast Indians (Northwest Coast Indian) (predominantly fishermen), California Indians (California Indian), and Northeast Indians (Northeast Indian). Moreover, group totemism is represented in a distinctive form among the Ugrians and west Siberians (hunters and fishermen who also breed reindeer) as well as among tribes of herdsmen in north and Central Asia.

Individual totemism

      Individual totemism is expressed in an intimate relationship of friendship and protection between a person and a particular animal or a natural object (sometimes between a person and a species of animal); the natural object can grant special power to its owner. Frequently connected with individual totemism are definite ideas about the human soul (or souls) and conceptions derived from them, such as the idea of an alter ego and nagualism—from the Spanish form of the Aztec word naualli, “something hidden or veiled”—which means that a kind of simultaneous existence is assumed between an animal or a natural object and a person; i.e., a mutual, close bond of life and fate exists in such a way that in case of the injury, sickness, or death of one partner, the same fate would befall the other member of the relationship. Consequently, such totems became most strongly tabooed; above all, they were connected with family or group leaders, chiefs, medicine men (medicine man), shamans (shamanism), and other socially significant persons.

      Studies of shamanism indicate that individual totemism may have predated group totemism, as a group's protective spirits were sometimes derived from the totems of specific individuals. To some extent, there also exists a tendency to pass on an individual totem as hereditary or to make taboo the entire species of animal to which the individual totem belongs.

      Individual totemism is widely disseminated. It is found not only among tribes of hunters and harvesters but also among farmers and herdsmen. Individual totemism is especially emphasized among the Australian Aborigines and the American Indians (American Indian).

Some examples of totemism

Wiradjuri

      Among the Wiradjuri, an Aboriginal people who traditionally lived in New South Wales (Australia), totem clans are divided among two subgroups and corresponding matrilineal moieties. The group totem, named “flesh,” is transmitted from the mother. In contrast to this, individual totems belong only to the medicine (medicine man) men and are passed on patrilineally. Such an individual totem is named bala, “spirit companion,” or jarawaijewa, “the meat (totem) that is within him.” There is a strict prohibition against eating (dietary law) the totem. Breach of the taboo carries with it sickness or death. It is said: “To eat your jarawaijewa is the same as if you were to eat your very own flesh or that of your father.”

      The medicine man identifies himself with his personal totem. Every offense or injury against the totem has its automatic effect upon the man who commits it. It is a duty of the totem to guard the ritualist and the medicine man while he is asleep. In the case of danger or the arrival of strangers, the animal goes back into the body of the medicine man and informs him. After the death of the medicine man, the animal stands watch as a bright flickering light near the grave. The individual totem is also a helper of the medicine man. The medicine man emits the totem in his sleep or in a trance so that it can collect information for him.

      In this tradition, sorcery may also be practiced by the medicine man. By singing, for instance, the medicine man can send out his totem to kill an enemy; the totem enters the chest of the enemy and devours his viscera. The transmission (rite of passage) of the individual totem to novices is done through the father or the grandfather, who, of course, himself is also a medicine man. While the candidate lies on his back, the totem is “sung into” him. The blood relative who is transmitting the totem takes a small animal and places it on the chest of the youngster. During the singing, the animal supposedly sinks slowly into his body and finally disappears into it. The candidate is then instructed on how he has to treat the animal that is his comrade, and he is further instructed in song and the ritual concentration that is necessary to dispatch the totem from his body.

Nor-Papua

      Among the Nor-Papua of New Guinea, patrilineal, exogamous (exogamy) groups (consanguineous sibs) are spread over several villages and are associated with animals, especially fish. They believe that they are born from totems, and they make them taboo. Children are given an opportunity to decide during their initiation whether they will respect the paternal or maternal totem. Each group of relatives has a holy place to which the totem animal brings the souls of the dead and from which the souls of children are also believed to come. Totem animals are represented in various manifestations: as spirit creatures in sacred flutes, in disguises, and in figures preserved in each man's house. At the end of initiation ceremonies, the totems are mimicked by the members of the group.

Iban

      Among the Iban of Sarawak (Malaysia), individual totemism has been the tradition. Particular persons dream of a spirit of an ancestor or a dead relative; this spirit appears in a human form, presents himself as a helper and protector, and names an animal (or sometimes an object) in which he is manifested. The Iban then observe the mannerisms of animals and recognize in the behaviour of the animals the embodiment of their protector spirit (ngarong).

      Sometimes, members of the tribe also carry with them a part of such an animal. Not only this particular animal, but the whole species, is given due respect. Meals and blood offerings are also presented to the spirit animal.

      Young men who wish to obtain such a protector spirit for themselves sleep on the graves of prominent persons or seek out solitude and fast so that they may dream of a helper spirit. Actually, only a few persons can name such animals as their very own. Individuals with protector spirits have also attempted to require from their descendants the respect and the taboo given the animal representing the spirit. As a rule, such descendants do not expect special help from the protector spirit, but they observe the totemistic regulations anyway.

Birhor

      The Birhor, a people that were traditionally residents of the jungle of Chotanagpur Plateau in the northeast Deccan (India), are organized into patrilineal, exogamous totem groups. According to one imperfect list of 37 clans (clan), 12 are based on animals, 10 on plants, 8 on Hindu castes (caste) and localities, and the rest on objects. The totems are passed on within the group (social structure), and tales about the tribe's origins suggest that each totem had a fortuitous connection with the birth of the ancestor of the clan.

      The Birhor think that there is a temperamental or physical similarity between the members of the clan and their totems. Prohibitions or taboos are sometimes cultivated to an extreme degree. In regard to eating, killing, or destroying them, the clan totems are regarded as if they were human members of the group. Moreover, it is believed that an offense against the totems through a breach of taboo will produce a corresponding decrease in the size of the clan. If a person comes upon a dead totem animal, he must smear his forehead with oil or a red dye, but he must not actually mourn over the animal; he also does not bury it.

      The close and vital relationship between the totem and the clan is shown in a definite ceremony: the yearly offering to the chief spirit of the ancestral hill. Each Birhor community has a tradition of an old settlement that is thought to be located on a hill in the area. Once a year, the men of each clan come together at an open place. The elder of the clan functions as the priest who gives the offering. A diagram with four sections is drawn on the ground with rice flour. In one of these, the elder sits while gazing in the direction of the ancestral hill. The emblem of the particular totem is placed in one of the other sections of the diagram; depending on the circumstances, this emblem could be a flower, a piece of horn or skin, a wing, or a twig. This emblem represents the clan as a whole. If an animal is needed for such a ceremony, it is provided by the members of another clan who do not hold it as a totem. The Birhor show great fear of the spirits of the ancestral hill and avoid these places as far as possible.

Kpelle

      Among the Kpelle people of Liberia there is not only group totemism but also individual totemism. Both kinds of totems are referred to variously as “thing of possession,” “thing of birth,” or “thing of the back of men.” These phrases express the idea that the totem always accompanies, belongs to, and stands behind one as a guide and warner of dangers. The totem also punishes the breach of any taboo.

      Kpelle totems include animals, plants, and natural phenomena. The kin groups that live in several villages were matrilineal at an earlier time, but during the 20th century they began to exhibit patrilineal tendencies. The group totems, especially the animal totems, are considered as the residence of the ancestors; they are respected and are given offerings. Moreover, a great role is played by individual totems that, in addition to being taboo, are also given offerings. Personal totems that are animals can be transmitted from father to son or from mother to daughter; on the other hand, individual plant totems are assigned at birth or later.

      The totem also communicates magical powers. It is even believed possible to alter one's own totem animal; further, it is considered an alter ego. Persons with the same individual totem prefer to be united in communities. The well-known leopard confederation, a secret association, seems to have grown out of such desires. Entirely different groups produce patrilineal taboo communities that are supposedly related by blood; they comprise persons of several tribes. The animals, plants, and actions made taboo by these groups are not considered as totems. In a certain respect, the individual totems in this community seem to be the basis of group totemism.

A short history of totemistic theory

McLennan to Thurnwald

      There are a number of theories or hypotheses concerning totemism. Many of them are marked by methodological deficiencies, preconceived ideas, and a prejudiced selection of source documents; nevertheless, some of these theories contain points of view that deserve consideration.

      The first theory was proposed by the Scottish ethnologist John Ferguson McLennan (McLennan, John Ferguson). Following the vogue of 19th-century research, he wanted to comprehend totemism in a broad perspective, and in his study The Worship of Animals and Plants (1869, 1870) he did not seek to explain the specific origin of the totemistic phenomenon but sought to indicate that all of the human race had in ancient times gone through a totemistic stage.

      In 1899 McLennan's theories were criticized by Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (Tylor, Sir Edward Burnett), an English anthropologist who rejected the confusion of totemism with mere worship of animals and plants. Tylor claimed to find in totemism the tendency of the human spirit to classify the world and its things. He thus viewed totemism as a relationship between one type of animal and a clan. But he was opposed to the idea of seeing totems as the basis of religion.

      Another Scottish scholar, Andrew Lang (Lang, Andrew), early in the 20th century advocated a nominalistic meaning for totemism, namely (name) that local groups, clans, or phratries, in selecting totem names from the realm of nature, were reacting to a need to be differentiated. If the origin of the names was forgotten, there followed a mystical relationship between the objects—from which the names were once derived—and the groups that bore these names. Lang wanted to explain the relationship through nature myths according to which animals and natural objects were considered as the relatives, patrons, or ancestors of the respective social units. He felt that thoughts by the tribes on these matters led eventually to taboos, and that group exogamy (out-marriage) first originated in the formation of totemistic associations.

      The first comprehensive work on totemism was Totemism and Exogamy, published in 1910 in four volumes by the British anthropologist Sir James George Frazer (Frazer, Sir James George). It presented a meritorious compilation of the worldwide data then available on the subject.

      Basing his view on research done among indigenous peoples in Australia and Melanesia, Frazer saw the origin of totemism as an interpretation of the conception and birth of children, a belief he called “conceptionalism.” According to Frazer, conceptualist cultures explain that women become impregnated when a spirit of an animal or a spiritual fruit enters into their wombs. As children therefore participate in the nature of the animal or plant, these plants or animals take on significance. Frazer thought that conceptualist explanations of conception resulted in the beginning of totem clans derived from a particular natural creature.

      A Russian American ethnologist, Alexander Goldenweiser (Goldenweiser, Alexander), subjected totemistic phenomena to sharp criticism. His critique had lasting importance, especially in the United States, where it engendered a skeptical attitude concerning totemism. Goldenweiser saw in totemism three phenomena that could exist singly and actually coincided only in the rarest of cases. These phenomena were: (1) clan organization, (2) clans taking animal or plant names or having “emblems” obtained from nature, and (3) belief in a relationship between groups and their totems. Goldenweiser did not perceive these phenomena as a unity, since any of them could exist apart from the others.

      In another treatise published in 1910, a German ethnologist, Richard Thurnwald (Thurnwald, Richard), claimed to recognize in totemism the expression of a specific way of thinking among nonindustrial societies. He felt that such groups judge the natural environment according to its external appearance without analyzing it any closer and assume that there are sympathetic connections and combinations of natural things; from these ideas come lasting rules of behaviour such as taboos, respect, and social relationships. For the psychology of totemism, Thurnwald later (1917–18) put forth a detailed, systematic presentation; by means of concrete examples, he also raised questions about the connections of totemism with ancestor worship, notions of souls, and beliefs in power, magic, offerings, and oracles.

Durkheim to Radcliffe-Brown

      The founder of a French school of sociology, Émile Durkheim (Durkheim, Émile), examined totemism from a sociological and theological point of view. Durkheim hoped to discover a pure religion in very ancient forms and generally claimed to see the origin of religion in totemism. For Durkheim, the sphere of the sacred is a reflection of the emotions that underlie social activities, and the totem was, in this view, a reflection of the group (or clan) consciousness, based on the conception of an impersonal power. The totemistic principle was then the clan itself, and it was permeated with sanctity. Durkheim held that such a religion reflects the collective consciousness that is manifested through the identification of the individuals of the group with an animal or plant species; it is expressed outwardly in taboos, symbols, and rituals that are based on this identification.

      In further contributions, Goldenweiser in 1915–16 and 1918 criticized Lang, Frazer, and Durkheim and insisted that totemism had nothing to do with religion; he held instead that man in no way viewed his totem as superior to himself or as a deified being but viewed it as his friend and equal. Goldenweiser also rejected Frazer's thesis of conceptionalism as an explanation of totemism. On the other hand, Goldenweiser was of the opinion that all totemistic manifestations do have at least something of a kind of religion, but he was not inclined to include the guardian spirit conception within totemism.

      In 1916 an American ethnologist, Franz Boas (Boas, Franz), suggested that totemism exhibited no single psychological or historical origin; since totemistic features can be connected with individuals and all possible social (social structure) organizations, and they appear in different cultural contexts, it would be impossible to fit totemistic phenomena into a single category. Boas was against systematizing and thought it senseless to ask questions about the origins of totemism.

      The first theoretician of the Vienna school of ethnology, Fritz Graebner (Graebner, Fritz), attempted to explain the forms of both individual totemism and group totemism and designated them as a moderately creedal or semireligious complex of ideas according to which individual members or subgroups of a society are thought to be in an especially close (but not cultic) relationship to natural objects. According to Graebner, one can use the cultural-historical method to establish the extent to which totemistic forms belong to one definite cultural complex; which forms of totemism are “older” or “younger”; and the extent to which forms belong together in an antecedent-decedent relationship. Graebner tried to work out a “totem complex” (a “culture circle”; see kulturkries (Kulturkreis)) for the South Seas. This complex entailed a patrilineal group totemism as well as the material, economic, and religious elements that, in his opinion, appear to be combined with the totemism in that area.

      Another member of the same school, Bernhard Ankermann, in 1915–16 championed the view that all totemisms, regardless of where they are found, contained a common kernel around which new characteristics are built. As seen from the standpoint of what was found in Africa, this kernel appeared to him to be the belief in a specific relationship between social groups and natural things—in a feeling of unity between both—a relationship he believed to be spread throughout the world, even if only in a modified or diminished form. From Ankermann's perspective, magical (magic) and animalistic ideas and rites are merged with totemism in a strong inseparable unity.

      The genesis of this type of relationship presupposes a state of mind that makes no distinction between man and beast. Although magic can be closely connected with totemism, the feeling of unity between man and beast has nothing to do with magic, which was connected with it only later. According to Ankermann, the totems are not something perilous, something to be shunned, but on the contrary are something friendly—a totem is thought to be like a brother and is to be treated as such. Further, the totemistic taboo occurs because the totem is a relative. Ankermann was inclined to see the formation of totemism in an emotional animal-man relationship: early hunters, he thought, might have imitated those animals that attracted their attention most of all. Ankermann further explained that “primitive man” identifies himself with the animal while he is imitating it, and that the habit of so doing could lead to a continuing identification expressed as totemism.

      In 1915–16 Wilhelm Schmidt (Schmidt, Wilhelm), then the leader of the Vienna School of Ethnology, viewed totemism strictly according to the then-popular schemes of culture circles or kulturkries (today long abandoned); because totemism was disseminated throughout the world, he thought of it as a single cultural complex in spite of local differences. He maintained that the differences in totemism explored by earlier theories are exaggerations and could, moreover, be due to the lack of particular elements of totemism, to the loss of certain forms of totemism, to incursions from the outside, or to different stages of the development of totemism, none of which would exclude a unified origin for all of totemism. Schmidt believed that the cultural-historical school of ethnology had produced proof that an older, genuine totemism had been an integral part of a culture located in a definite area and that it was “organically” connected with definite forms of technology, economy, art, and worldview. From this supposedly “pure” form of totemism, Schmidt wanted to separate derived forms, such as individual totemism. Moreover, though he did not designate totemism as a religion, he saw that it did have some sort of religious meaning. In opposition to Ankermann, Schmidt regarded a more recent, or “higher,” form of hunting as the economic basis for the totemistic “culture circle.”

      The leading representative of British social anthropology, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (Radcliffe-Brown, A.R.), took a totally different view of totemism. Like Boas, he was skeptical that totemism could be described in any unified way. In this he opposed the other pioneer of social anthropology in England, Bronisław Malinowski (Malinowski, Bronisław), who wanted to confirm the unity of totemism in some way and approached the matter more from a biological and psychological point of view than from an ethnological one. According to Malinowski, totemism was not a cultural phenomenon, but rather the result of trying to satisfy basic human needs within the natural world. As far as Radcliffe-Brown was concerned, totemism was composed of elements that were taken from different areas and institutions, and what they have in common is a general tendency to characterize segments of the community through a connection with a portion of nature. In opposition to Durkheim's theory of sacralization, Radcliffe-Brown took the point of view that nature is introduced into the social order rather than secondary to it. At first, he shared with Malinowski the opinion that an animal becomes totemistic when it is “good to eat.” He later came to oppose the usefulness of this viewpoint, since many totems—such as crocodiles and flies—are dangerous and unpleasant.

      In 1952, when Radcliffe-Brown rethought the problem, he found that the similarities and differences between species of animals are to a certain degree translated into ideas of friendship and conflict, or close relationships and opposition among people. The structural principle that Radcliffe-Brown believed he had discovered at the end of this study is based on the fusion of the two contrary ideas of friendship and animosity. In this view, totemism speaks in its own way of interrelationships and antitheses, ideas that are also found in moieties. Thinking in terms of opposing things is, according to Radcliffe-Brown, an essential structural principle for evaluating totemism.

Lévi-Strauss (Lévi-Strauss, Claude)

      The most incisive critique of totemistic phenomena, one that denied the “reality” of totemism, was supplied by the French ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (Lévi-Strauss, Claude) in Le Totémisme aujourd'hui (English translation, Totemism, 1963). As a chief representative of modern structuralism, Lévi-Strauss was especially stimulated by Radcliffe-Brown, whose views he attempted to further expand. Lévi-Strauss believed that he was to approach the apparent, acknowledged difficulties in the study of totemism from the viewpoint of a study of structure. In order to study the structure of totemism, Lévi-Strauss devised a scheme to illustrate the abstract polarities that he saw in totemism as a phenomenon in human culture.

      His scheme was implemented in a table of oppositions or polarities, or mutual relationships. The basic opposition, or relationship, was between nature and culture. On the one hand, there were in nature certain realities such as species of animals or plants and specific animals or plants. On the other hand, there were in culture various groups and individuals who identified themselves with particular species or with specific animals or plants. Lévi-Strauss distinguished four kinds of relationship between nature and culture within totemism: (1) a species of animal or plant identified with a particular group, (2) a species of animal or plant identified with an individual, (3) a particular animal or plant identified with an individual, and (4) a particular animal or plant identified with a group.

      According to Lévi-Strauss, each of these four combinations corresponds to the phenomena that are to be observed in one people or another. The first holds good, for example, for the Australians, for whom natural things are associated with cultural groups (moieties, sections, subsections, phratries, clans, or the association of persons from the same sex). As an example of the second combination, there is the individual totemism of North American Indians, in which a person is correlated with a species of nature. For the third type of combination, the Mota people of the Banks Islands of Melanesia are cited: the individual child is thought of as the incarnation of a particular animal, plant, or natural creature that was found and consumed by the mother at the time that she was conscious of her pregnancy. For the fourth type of correlation, Lévi-Strauss cited examples from Polynesia and Africa where definite individual animals formed the object of group patronage and veneration.

      Lévi-Strauss also critiqued the findings of A.P. Elkin, a specialist on Australia, where totemism had already played a special role in the formation of anthropological and sociological theories and where it exhibits an abundance of forms. Elkin had also differentiated four forms: individual totemism; social totemism—i.e., totemism that is in a family, moiety, section, subsection, patrilineal clan, or matrilineal clan; cultic totemism, with a religious content that is patrilineal and “conceptional” in form; and dream totemism—totemistic content in dreams—found in social or individual totemism. Elkin denied the unity of totemism, but (according to Lévi-Strauss) wanted to preserve its reality on the condition that he might trace it back to a multiplicity of types. For Elkin, there is no longer “one” totemism but many totemisms, each in itself a single irreducible whole.

      In connection with the Australian material, Lévi-Strauss argued that matrilineal clan totemism—which was passed on through the “flesh” or “blood”—and patrilineal clan totemism—which was based on dreaming—were in no way heterogeneous but were to be thought of as being mutually complementary. These two types of totemism were different means of connecting the material and spiritual world; together, they expressed the relationship between nature and society.

      From the Australian data, Lévi-Strauss concluded that “real” totemism was based not on the similarities of the matrilineal and patrilineal types but on their dissimilarities. Such a pattern was clearly expressed in the basic model of the contrasts of the natural with the cultural (that were outlined above). Building on the ideas of Radcliffe-Brown, Lévi-Strauss claimed to perceive antithetical thinking as a crucial structural principle in totemism and believed that the similarity among totemistic ideas in various cultures lay in similarities between systems of differences—those documented in the natural sphere and those in the culturally defined social groups. Lévi-Strauss concluded that the distinction between the classes of man and animal serves as the conceptual basis for social differences. For Lévi-Strauss, totemism is therefore an “illusion” and a “logic that classifies”—a post hoc explanation in which the structure of social relations is projected onto the natural phenomena, not taken from it.

After Lévi-Strauss

      During the later 20th century, anthropologists and sociologists became increasingly preoccupied with such issues as the construction of meaning and identity in a postcolonial world. Given that totemistic belief systems had proved to be relatively durable over the course of human history, many scholars asked whether it was useful, as Lévi-Strauss had advocated, to dispose of totemism as a “mere” social construct. As a result, investigations of totemism generally declined; those that were undertaken moved away from treatments of its universality (or lack thereof) and toward studies that considered totem systems in more specific contexts.

Josef Haekel Ed.

Additional Reading

Franz Boas, “The Origin of Totemism,” Am. Anthrop., 18:319–326 (1916), contains a variety of ideas and objects defined as totemism, and thus maintains little unity; A.P. Elkin, “Studies in Australian Totemism: The Nature of Australian Totemism,” Oceania, 4:113–131 (1933–34); E.E. Evans-Pritchard, “Nuer Totemism,” Annali Lateran., 13:225–248 (1949), describes the manifestations of totemism combined with the conception of the spirit in the “Nilot” tribe; J.V. Ferreira, Totemism in India (1965), a critical evaluation of hitherto existing works on totemism in general and that of India in particular; R. Firth, “Totemism in Polynesia,” Oceania, 1:291–321, 377–398 vol. 1 (1930–31), a useful survey article; J.L. Fischer, “Totemism on Truk and Ponape,” Am. Anthrop., 59:250–265 (1957), describes and interprets the highly contrasting forms of totemism found in Micronesia, using not only the unusual sociological–ideological organization but also containing psychological aspects. G. Foster, “Nagualism in Mexico and Guatemala,” Acta Am., 2:85–103 (1944), deals with important borderline cases of totemism with particular regard to the problem of personal totemism; J.G. Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, 4 vol. (1910) and Totemica: A Supplement to Totemism and Exogamy (1937), comprehensive and informative reference works although the hypotheses are now out of date; A.A. Goldenweiser, “Totemism: An Analytic Study,” J. Am. Folklore, 23:179–293 (1910); “Totemism,” Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 14 (1934); J. Haekel, “Der heutige Stand des Totemismusproblems,” Mitt. Anthrop. Ges. Wien, 82:33–49 (1952), attempts to give a critical examination with concrete examples of the complex question in its various forms; Claude Lévi-Strauss, Le Totémisme aujourd'hui (1962; Eng. trans., Totemism, 1963), contains a detailed critical evaluation of existing hypotheses of Anglo-American and French authors; R. Piddington, An Introduction to Social Anthropology 1:200–206 (1950), offers a short but sufficient characterization of the totemic phenomena, the difficulty in defining it, its great variability, and some concrete examples.

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