ABSTRACT
In contrast with the essentially classificatory concerns of Levi-Strauss, Philippe Descola views totemism as an ontology, a mode of identification, a schema for integrating experience. One element of the world only becomes significant in contrast with others, but Descola hopes to avoid having to divide them up into the “black boxes of culture and nature”. The great division between nature and culture may be seen as exotic in comparison with the choices made by the rest of humanity. Descola claims that four ontologies govern our relations with the other: totemism, animism, naturalism and analogism. By way of example, animism and naturalism are to be considered as ontological regimes of the collectives of human and non-human beings that comprise them. The identity of the composition of Australian totemic groups is reinforced by the identity of the relations that determines them: “they share the same origin, inherence and parity.
