TOTEMISM

a complex of ideas and practices based on the belief in kinship or a mystical relationship between men and natural objects, such as animals and plants. The term totem derives from the Ojibwa (Algonkian Indian) word ototeman, signifying a brothersister blood relationship. Totemism refers to a wide variety of relationships, including the reverential and genealogical, between social groups or individual persons and animals or other natural objects, the so-called totems. It has been centrally important in the religion and social organization of many primitive peoples. The designation totemism was initially restricted by anthropologists to the association of a group of persons with the totem object. A totem was not to be confused with an animal associated only with one person, whether as guardian spirit, animal familiar, or source of supernatural power. Neither was any random association (e.g., human transformations as in the werewolf, shamanistic possession by an animal spirit, supernatural owners of animals) to be designated as totemism. In the late 20th century, however, the term individual totemism has been applied to many of these phenomena. A society may be said to exhibit totemism if it is divided into an identifiable and apparently fixed number of clans, each of which has a specific relationship to an animate or inanimate species (totem); if a member of such a clan ordinarily cannot change his membership; and if people living in the same locality belong to different totemic clans. A totem may be a feared, emulated, or dangerous hunted animal; an edible plant; or any staple food. Very commonly connected with origin legends and with instituted morality, the totem is almost invariably hedged about with taboos of avoidance or of strictly ritualized contact. Membership in the totemic group is in some sense inherited and lifelong, regulating relationships of the child to his blood kin, and designating families that provide acceptable partners for procreation. Totem, taboo, and exogamy (marriage outside the group) are inextricably intertwined. No known society may be said to meet all the criteria of ideal totemism, yet many groups show enough of them to warrant the totemic designation. Of the principal contributors to the discussion of totemism, J.F. McLennan did the first significant theoretical work in his study The Worship of Animals and Plants (1869). The first comprehensive treatment of totemistic phenomena was provided by Sir James Frazer in his Totemism (1885; republished in Totemism and Exogamy, 1910). Totemism attracted wide attention during the flowering of sociology and cultural anthropology in the first decades of the 20th century. The most incisive critique, one that denied the reality of totemism, was supplied by the French ethnologist Claude Lvi-Strauss in Le Totmisme aujourd'hui (Totemism, 1963). system of belief in which humans are believed to have kinship with a totem or a mystical relationship is said to exist between a group or an individual and a totem. A totem is an object, such as an animal or plant that serves as the emblem or symbol of a kinship group or a person. The term totemism has been used to characterize a cluster of traits in the religion and in the social organization of many primitive peoples. Totemism is manifested in various forms and types in different contexts, especially among populations with a mixed economy (farming and hunting) and among hunting communities (especially in Australia); it is also found among tribes who breed cattle. Totemism can in no way be viewed as a general stage in human cultural development; but totemism has certainly had an effect on the psychological behaviour of ethnic groups, on the manner of their socialization, and on the formation of the human personality. The term totem is derived from ototeman from the language of the Algonkian tribe of the Ojibwa (in the area of the Great Lakes in eastern North America); it originally meant his brothersister 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 animalan idea which the Ojibwa clans do indeed portray by their wearing of animal skins. It was reported at the end of the 18th century that the Ojibwa name 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 chief, who died in 1856 and whose report was published posthumously. According to Jones, the Great Spirit had given toodaims (totems) to their 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. Generally speaking, totemistic forms are based on the psychomental habits of the so-called primitives, on a distinctive thought style which is characterized, above all, by an anthropopsychic apprehension of nature and natural beings, for instance, ascribing to them a soul like man's. Beasts and the things of nature are again and again thought of as persons, but mostly as persons with superhuman qualities. Additional reading Franz Boas, The Origin of Totemism, Am. Anthrop., 18:319326 (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, 4:113131 (193334); E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Totemism, Annali Lateran., 13:225248 (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, 1:291321, 377398 vol. 1 (193031), a useful survey article; J.L. Fischer, Totemism on Truk and Ponape, Am. Anthrop., 59:250265 (1957), describes and interprets the highly contrasting forms of totemism found in Micronesia, using not only the unusual sociologicalideological organization but also containing psychological aspects. G. Foster, Nagualism in Mexico and Guatemala, Acta Am., 2:85103 (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, 23:179293 (1910); Totemism, Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 14 (1934); J. Haekel, Der heutige Stand des Totemismusproblems, Mitt. Anthrop. Ges. Wien, 82:3349 (1952), attempts to give a critical examination with concrete examples of the complex question in its various forms; Claude Lvi-Strauss, Le Totmisme 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 1:200206 (1950), offers a short but sufficient characterization of the totemic phenomena, the difficulty in defining it, its great variability, and some concrete examples.