tion is not easily explained away as merely another mode of
designation, or naming. Wherever social units of any kind—
individuals, groups, clans, families, corporations, sports
teams, or military units—are arrayed on an equal footing and
in “symmetrical” opposition to one another, the possibility
arises of transforming a mere quantitative diversity into qual-
itative meaning through the use of concrete imagery. Diver-
sity is then not merely encoded but instead enters the dimen-
sion of meaning, of identity as a concrete, positive quality.
Whenever we speak of a sports team as the Braves, Indi-
ans, Cubs, or Vikings, or speak of the Roman, American,
German, or Polish eagle, or consider Raven, Eagle, and Killer
Whale clans, we make the differences among the respective
units something more than differences, and we give each unit
a center and a significance of its own. Whenever this occurs,
the possibility arises of developing this significance, to a
greater or lesser degree, into a profound relationship of rap-
port, communion, power, or mythic origin. Viewed in this
light, the “totems” of a social entity become markers and car-
riers of its identity and meaning; to harm or consume the
totem may well, under certain cultural circumstances, be-
come a powerful metaphor for the denial of qualitative
meaning. When theorists of totemism sought to explain the
phenomenon solely in terms of the food quest, marriage re-
strictions, coding, or classification, they subverted the force
of cultural meaning to considerations that would find an eas-
ier credibility in a materialistically and pragmatically ori-
ented society, “consuming,” as it were, meaning through its
markers and carriers.
The ostensibly “primitive” character of totemism is an
illusion, based on a tendency of literate traditions to overva-
lue abstraction and to reduce the rich and varied spectrum
of meaning to the barest requirements of information cod-
ing. In fact abstract reference and concrete image are inextri-
cably interrelated; they imply each other, and neither can
exist without the other. Certainly, peoples whose social orga-
nizations lack hierarchy and organic diversity (e.g., social
class or the division of labor) tend to develop and dramatize
a qualitative differentiation through the imagery of natural
species, whereas those whose social units show an organic di-
versity need not resort to a symbolic differentiation. The
choice, however, is not a matter of primitiveness or sophisti-
cation but rather of the complementarity between social
form and one of two equally sophisticated, and mutually in-
terdependent, symbolic alternatives.
SEE ALSO Anthropology, Ethnology, and Religion; Austra-
lian Indigenous Religions, overview article; Warlpiri
Religion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brandenstein, C.-G. von. Names and Substance of the Australian
Subsection System. Chicago, 1982. A comprehensive, com-
parative analysis of totemic categories in relation to Austra-
lian social organizaiton.
Durkheim, Émile. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
(1915). Reprint, New York, 1965. The classic work on the
social origin and conception of religion; totemism plays a
prominent part in the argument.
Frazer, James G. Totemism and Exogamy. 4 vols. London, 1910.
The work that established totemism as a central issue in the
era of historical anthropology. Well written, but an exercise
in a dated style of anthropological speculation.
Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo. New York, 1918. The heuris-
tic psychoanalytic “origin myth” of society, its neuroses and
taboos; theoretical speculation on totemism at the apex of its
popularity outside of anthropological circles.
Goldenweiser, Alexander A. “Totemism: An Analytical Study.”
Journal of American Folk-Lore 23 (1910): 179–293. The clas-
sic critique on the “evolutionary” concept of totemism, valid
even in relation to works published years afterward.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Le totémisme aujourd’hui. Paris, 1962.
Translated into English by Rodney Needham as Totemism
(Boston, 1963). The modern critique of totemism, written
from a symbolic point of view; a classic of the structuralist
approach.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind. London, 1966. A devel-
opment of the idea of totemism as denomination into the
notion of a “science of the concrete.”
Meggitt, M. J. “Understanding Australian Aboriginal Society:
Kinship Systems of Cultural Categories.” In Kinship Studies
in the Morgan Centennial Year, edited by Priscilla Reining,
pp. 64–87. Washington, D.C., 1972. An account by a noted
ethnographer of the complexities of Australian Aboriginal so-
cial conceptualization.
Sapir, J. David. “Fecal Animals: An Example of Complementary
Totemism.” Man, n.s. 12 (April 1977): 1–21. A contempo-
rary study of a highly unusual form of individual totemism
and its philosophical implications.
New Sources
Adler, Alfred, Bernard Juillerat, and Marie Mauzé. Totémismes.
Ivry, France, 1998.
Morphy, Howard. “Myth, Totemism and the Creation of Clans.”
Oceania 60, no. 4 (1990): 55–64.
Ratha, S. N. “Rethinking Totemism: Man-nature Relationship in
Maintaining the Ecological Balance.” Man in India 70, no.
3 (1990): 245–252.
Schwartz, Theodore. “Culture Totemism: Ethnic Identity, Primi-
tive and Modern.” In Ethnic Identity: Creation, Conflict, and
Accommodation. Walnut Creek, Calif., 1995.
Shapiro, Warren. “Claude Lévi-Strauss meets Alexander Golden-
weiser: Boasian Anthropology and the Study of Totemism.”
American Anthropologist 93, no. 3 (1991): 599–610.
Silverman, Eric Kline. “Gender of the Cosmos: Totemism, Soci-
ety and Embodiment in the Sepik River.” Oceania 67, no.
1 (1996): 30–49.
ROY WAGNER (1987)
Revised BibliographyTOTONAC RELIGION. In the city of Zempoala
(Cempoallan), situated in what is today the state of Veracruz,
Mexico, the Totonac people were the first to receive Europe-TOTONAC RELIGION 9253