Totemism - Claude Lévi-Strauss - 1972

In this landmark work of structural anthropology, Claude Lévi-Strauss dismantles one of the discipline's most enduring misconceptions. For decades, scholars treated totemism—the supposed mystical identification between human groups and natural species—as a distinct religious phenomenon unique to "primitive" societies. Lévi-Strauss reveals this as an intellectual illusion, a false category that says more about Western thought than about the cultures it claimed to describe. Lévi-Strauss demonstrates that totemic classifications are not expressions of mystical communion with nature, but sophisticated systems of logical thought. The relationships between clans and their associated animals or plants function as a code—a way of using differences observed in nature to conceptualize and organize social differences. Far from representing primitive mentality, these systems reveal the universal human capacity for abstract, systematic thinking. *Totemism* cleared away a century of anthropological confusion and established the foundations for Lévi-Strauss's later masterwork, *The Savage Mind*. Essential reading for anyone interested in how humans create meaning, organize society, and think about the relationship between culture and nature. - Totemism - Claude Lévi-Strauss. Trnaslated by Rodney Needham Printed 1972, Beacon Press, Boston Softcover. Approx. 5.5x8in. 116pp. Name of a previous owner stamped on front page (see photo). Cover, spine show some wear consistent with vintage.