LEADER 04040nam 22005654a 450 001 9910451620803321 005 20210603002735.0 010 $a0-231-50877-8 024 7 $a10.7312/jone13438 035 $a(CKB)1000000000457764 035 $a(OCoLC)614998931 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebrary10183484 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000242984 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11215891 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000242984 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10329850 035 $a(PQKB)10445213 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC909332 035 $a(DE-B1597)458974 035 $a(OCoLC)979953806 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780231508773 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL909332 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10183484 035 $a(EXLCZ)991000000000457764 100 $a20050114d2005 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcn||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 14$aThe secret of the totem$b[electronic resource] $ereligion and society from McLennan to Freud /$fRobert Alun Jones 210 $aNew York $cColumbia University Press$dc2005 215 $a1 online resource (357 p.) 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 0 $a0-231-13438-X 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $tFront matter --$tCONTENTS --$tIntroduction --$t1. Totemism as Animal Worship --$t2. Totemism as Sacrament --$t3. Totemism as Utility --$t4. Totemism as Self-Transcendence --$t5. Totemism as Neurosis --$tConclusion. The Secret of the Totem --$tNotes --$tBibliography --$tIndex 330 $aThough it is now discredited, totemism once captured the imagination of Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim, James Frazer, and other prominent Victorian thinkers. In this lively intellectual history, Robert Alun Jones considers the construction of a theory and the divergent ways religious scholars, anthropologists, psychoanalysts, and cultural theorists drew on totemism to explore and define primitive and modern societies' religious, cultural, and sexual norms. Combining innovative readings of individual scholars' work and a rich portrait of Victorian intellectual life, Jones brilliantly traces the rise and fall of a powerful idea. First used to describe the belief systems of Native American tribes, totemism ultimately encompassed a range of characteristics. Its features included belief in a guardian spirit that assumed the form of an a particular animal; a prohibition against marrying outside the clan combined with a powerful incest taboo; a sacrament in which members of the totemic clan slaughtered a representative of the totemic species; and the tracing of descent through the female rather than the male. These attributes struck a chord with the late Victorian mentality and its obsession with inappropriate sexual relations, evolutionary theory, and gender roles. Totemism represented a set of beliefs that, though utterly primitive and at a great evolutionary distance, reassured Victorians of their own more civilized values and practices. Totemism's attraction to Victorian thinkers reflects the ways in which the social sciences construct their objects of study rather than discovering them. In discussing works such as Freud's Totem and Taboo or Frazer's The Golden Bough, Jones considers how theorists used the vocabulary of totemism to suit their intellectual interests and goals. Ultimately, anthropologists such as A. A. Goldenweiser, Franz Boas, and Claude Lévi-Strauss argued that totemism was more a reflection of the concerns of Victorian theorists than of the actual practices and beliefs of "primitive" societies, and by the late twentieth century totemism seemed to have disappeared altogether. 606 $aTotemism 608 $aElectronic books. 615 0$aTotemism. 676 $a201/.4 700 $aJones$b Robert Alun$01043122 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910451620803321 996 $aThe secret of the totem$92467868 997 $aUNINA