Revision summary
Animism, for Tylor, is belief in souls in persons and things. Totemism, for Durkheim, is the clan’s sacred emblem and the rite that gathers the group. They share a sacred link to non-human beings and an old evolutionary placement that is no longer law. They differ as intellectualist soul-theory versus sociological emblem-theory. Village spirits and clan names in India may resemble either without copying Australian totemism.
Model answer
Introduction
Animism and totemism are two classical names for early religion. Edward Tylor used animism for belief in souls and spirits. Emile Durkheim used totemism, especially Australian clan religion, as the elementary form of the sacred. They overlap as theories of non-theistic religion. They differ in what they take as the object of worship.
Body
Animism
- Tylor, in Primitive Culture, defined animism as the belief that persons, animals, plants, and things have souls.
- Dreams, death, and trance were his evidence for how the soul idea arose.
- Animism is a philosophy of nature as peopled by wills. It need not organise a clan.
Totemism
- A totem is a plant, animal, or object that stands for a clan and is treated as sacred kin.
- Durkheim, in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, argued that the totem is the clan’s emblem, and that worship of the totem is society worshipping itself.
- Taboos of killing and eating, and rites that gather the clan, are the social machinery.
- Radcliffe-Brown and later writers debated whether totemism is one institution or a bundle of practices.
Similarities
- Both were used to describe religions without a single high god of the Abrahamic type.
- Both link the sacred to non-human beings.
- Both were placed by nineteenth-century anthropology at the start of a religious evolution, a ladder that later anthropology rejected as a law.
- Both can appear in the same society: spirits of place beside clan emblems.
Differences
- Animism centres souls in things. Totemism centres a social emblem and a group.
- Tylor’s path is intellectualist: people infer souls. Durkheim’s path is sociological: rites make the sacred.
- Totemism is a system of classification of groups. Animism is a theory of life in nature.
- Indian illustrations include village spirit cults that look animistic, and clan or gotra animal names that look totemic without being Australian totemism.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD A[Tylor animism] --> S[Souls in beings] T[Durkheim totemism] --> C[Clan emblem rites] S --> R[Sacred non-human] C --> R R --> L[Not one evolutionary law]
Conclusion
Animism and totemism are similar as classical labels for sacred relations with non-human beings. They differ because animism is a doctrine of souls and totemism is a clan emblem and rite. Tylor explains belief. Durkheim explains society. Neither is a universal first stage of all religion.
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Is every animal-named clan totemic?
No. A name may survive without taboo, rite, and emblem worship in Durkheim’s sense.
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Did Durkheim deny spirits?
He shifted the explanation from souls in things to the social production of the sacred.
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