Academic Definitions of Totemism
is a form of symbolic communication that categorically associates human experience with its objects
(Ridington & Ridington, 1970: 50)
an intimate relation which is supposed to exist between a group of kindred people on one side and a species of natural or artificial objects on the other side, which objects are called the totems of the human group
(Frazer, 1910: 3-4)
is not a consistent philosophical system, the product of exact knowledge and high intelligence, rigorous in its definitions and logical in its deductions from them.
(Frazer, 1910: 4)
is a crude superstition…indefinite, illogical, inconsistent.
(Frazer, 1910: 4)
is an identification of a man with his totem, whether his totem be an animal, a plant, or what not.
(Frazer, 1910: 5)
is not in itself a religion at all
(Frazer, 1910: 27)
is essentially democratic; it is, so to say, a treaty of alliance and friend- ship concluded on equal terms between a clan and a species of animals or things;
(Frazer, 1910: 28)
an abstraction represented as a material thing
(Ellen, 1988: 231)
a methodology that emphasizes the comprehension of social discourse.
(Fallon, 2018: 322)
Totemism is firstly the projection outside our own universe, as though by a kind of exorcism, of mental attitudes incompatible with the exigency of a discontinuity between man and nature which Christian thought has held to be essential.
(Levi-Strauss, 1970: 3)
is an artificial unity, existing solely in the mind of the anthropologist, to which nothing specifically corresponds in reality
(Levi-Strauss, 1970: 10)
References
Ellen, R. (1988). Fetishism. Man, 23(2), p.213.
Fallon, B. (2018). The Fetishization Effect: The Manipulation Power of the Machete in the Rwandan Genocide. Implicit Religion, 20(4), 319–333.
Frazer, J. G. (1910). Totemism and exogamy - Vol. 04. London: Macmillan & Co.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1970). Totemism; translated [from the French]. Boston: Beacon Press.
Ridington, R., & Ridington, T. (1970). The Inner Eye of Shamanism and Totemism. History of Religions, 10(1), 49–61.