Totem system

Author: Strauss
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-04-01
Features: The author, Lévi-Strauss, is one of the most influential and controversial anthropologists of the 20th century and the founder of French structuralism. This book is his most anthropologically distinctive work, with the theme of examining totemic systems to discuss types of human thought. The author argues that through totemic systems, animal species provide humans with a differentiation system or, in other words, a symbolic system. The series of distinctions among animals becomes a model for social distinctions. Ganepi misunderstood Boas's thesis; Boas wanted to say that at the social level, the form of the system is a necessary condition for totemic systems. This is also why totemic systems exclude the Inuit, as their social organization is non-systematic. The totemic system must be based on unilineal descent, as this alone is structural. Such a system must rely on the names of animals and plants; it is a special case of using different naming methods. Regardless of what type of reference it is, its nature remains the same.