totemic system

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a symbolic and social system in which human groups — typically clans or lineages — maintain a special relationship with a specific natural species, object, or phenomenon that serves as the group's emblem, ancestor, protector, or symbolic identity marker; totemism was a major preoccupation of early anthropology: Durkheim argued that totemic religion was the most elementary form of religious life and that worship of the totem was ultimately society worshipping itself; Lévi-Strauss proposed a structural analysis arguing that totemic systems use natural differences between species to express and think through social differences between human groups — nature serves as a code for culture; totemic systems typically involve food taboos, ritual obligations, and rules of exogamy — members of the same totemic group must marry outside it — creating a system of differentiated groups whose interactions weave social order from symbolic material