Totemism is a belief system in which a totem, a spirit being, sacred object or symbol, most often an animal or plant, serves as the emblem and symbolic kin-marker of a social group such as a family, lineage, clan or tribe. The English term derives from the Ojibwe word ototeman ('one's brother-sister kin') and was first recorded in English in 1791 by trader John Long, describing practices among Algonquian peoples of the Great Lakes region. Émile Durkheim treated totemism as sociologically foundational, arguing in his 1912 study of Australian Aboriginal totemic religion that it functioned as a form of collective worship reinforcing group cohesion. Claude Lévi-Strauss later challenged the category in his 1958 book Le Totémisme aujourd'hui, arguing that totemic classification reflects a general structural logic of human thought rather than a single unified institution. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountFirst documented among Algonquian peoples (Ojibwe) of the North American Great Lakes region; subsequently studied extensively among Australian Aboriginal peoples and documented as a broader, though not universal, pattern across parts of North America, Australia, Africa and Melanesia. 1 Documented YearSourced to the subject's own accountThe English term was first recorded by John Long in 1791, describing Ojibwe practice; Durkheim's major theoretical treatment followed in 1912, and Lévi-Strauss's critical re-theorization in 1958. Connections
Associated With
Totemism is documented as a central and defining feature of many Aboriginal Australian religious and kinship systems, the classic ethnographic case from which much of the comparative theory of totemism was drawn.
Ojibwe, Social Groups The English word totem derives from the Ojibwe language (doodem), and Ojibwe clan organization around named totemic animal ancestors is the source case from which the comparative anthropological concept of totemism was first drawn.
Early anthropology, notably Frazer's and Durkheim's work, treated totemism and taboo as linked features of the same ritual-classificatory systems governing what may and may not be done or eaten.
Critiqued Here
Lévi-Strauss's Le Totémisme aujourd'hui (1958) critically re-theorized rather than extended Durkheim's account, arguing the category as earlier anthropologists used it was an artificial unification of distinct regional phenomena.
Source Wikipedia: Totem
Studied By
Source Wikipedia: Totem
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Totem
Wikipediaetymology, and cross-referenced word-origin research
While the word totem itself is an anglicisation of the Ojibwe term (and both the word and beliefs associated with it are part of the Ojibwe language and culture), belief in tutelary spirits and deities is not limited to the Ojibwe people.
Durkheim section and etymology
In addition, he argued that totemism also served as a form of collective worship, reinforcing social cohesion and solidarity.
Durkheim and Lévi-Strauss sections
As a chief representative of modern structuralism, French ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, and his Le Totémisme aujourd'hui ("Totemism Today" [1958]) are often cited in the field.
- Studied By: Emile Durkheim, Durkheim section, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912)
- Studied By: Claude Lévi-Strauss, Lévi-Strauss section: "the term 'totem' has proved to be a blunt instrument"
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