Totemism is the set of beliefs and spiritual and social manifestations linked to a totem. Totemism is an anthropological concept that designates a relationship with nature, a complex system of ideas, symbols or practices between an individual or a social group and an animal or even an inanimate object represented by the totem.
It includes the ideally postulated relationships between two series, one of them natural and the other, cultural. We find totemism in America and Oceania, and it seems it is a belief inherent in primitive man rather than a global diffusion transmitted between cultures and ethnic groups . The totem is an animate or inanimate being from which a group of people say and believe they descend.
Totemism is not always considered a religious phenomenon. It is not really a religion, it is expressed, among other characteristics, in the worship of animals. Totemism manifested itself in various forms and types in different contexts, especially among peoples who mixed the economy (crops and hunting) and, especially, among hunter communities, as in Australia; it is also present in tribes that raise cattle.
Totemism can by no means be classified as a general phase in the cultural development of the clan, but it has undoubtedly had a psychological effect on the behavior of certain ethnic groups, on their socialization and on the formation of the human personality.
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Summary: Totemism by Claude Levi Strauss
