RELIG200 Lecture Notes - Survivalism, Émile Durkheim

• School: University of Alberta
• Department: Religious Studies
• Course: RELIG200
• Professor: Glen Fairen

Document Summary

But he looks at the more atomic form in the australian aborigines because it is less nuanced in his opinion. uses spencer and gillen, two field anthropologists doing ethnographies in australia. Tribe => phratries => clans each identifying with a separate totem. Totemism is the easiest way to understand sacred vs. profane in these societies of this kind: you can kill and eat animals that are not your totem. your totem can only be killed and eaten in special ceremonies. It is not the animal or plant that is sacred in itself, but the symbolic. Totemism governed the most basic categories and classifications of the world. The kangaroo clan did not actually worship a kangaroo, the worship they are committing. Is to an anonymous and impersonal force found in these beings but not to be confounded. Diffused in an innumerable multitude of things. this is called the totemic principle.