Totem System -- Miniature Classic

Author: (French) Lévi-Strauss, translated by Qu Dong
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 originator of French structuralism. This book is one of his most anthropologically-oriented works, with the theme of discussing types of human thought through the examination of totemism. The author argues that through totemism, animal species provide humans with a system of differentiation 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 meant that at the social level, the form of the system is a necessary condition for totemism. This is also why the totemic system excludes 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 different naming methods, and regardless of the type of reference, its nature remains the same.