National Museum of Anthropology by Jami Dwyer
Totem
This is a symbol of the spiritual ancestor for a group in aboriginal Australia and North America.
The totem usually takes the form of an animal or sacred plant.
Normally there are taboos against slaying or eating the totem.
Most theorists probably project their own ideas onto the meaning of the totem.
The French sociologist Durkheim argued that the totem is nothing more than an emblematic center for a social group. For Durkheim the aboriginal’s belief in ancestral spirits is incorrect but the totem nevertheless plays a crucial role in ensuring the social cohesion of the clan.
Freud used the totem to create a rather fanciful mythic history of mankind that served his own ideas about the Oedipus Complex and the development of the superego.
Anthropologists have forwarded so many different ideas about the totem that one anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, has questioned the validity of the term.
However, the numerous and conflicting interpretations of the totem have raised some salient questions: May one cultural system really understand another? Does everyone in a given culture hold the same beliefs? What is a cultural system? Could a researcher ever answer these questions with certainty? » Emic-Etic, Levels of Knowledge, Lévi-Bruhl (Lucien), Totem Pole
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