ABSTRACT
Totemism, according to Israel's, 'emerges with the establishment of symmetrical relations between structurally similar social groupings which may or may not come to be integrated into one political community'. Ethnicity, in contrast, 'has its origins in the asymmetric incorporation of structurally dissimilar grouping into a single political economy'. According to Comaroff and Comaroff, ethnicity has two main qualities: a subjective classification of the world into social entities; and a stereotypical attribution of these groupings, usually in a hierarchical way, into niches in the social division of labor. The differences, however, ethnicity and totemism share many qualities. Both are, in the words of Comaroff and Comaroff, 'modes of social classifications and social consciousness, markers of identity and collective relations'. Ethnicity is not a direct reflection of habitus, or of culture. Jones builds on Bourdieu's habitus. According to Shenan, the habitus provides the resources for ethnic identity and for the 'emblemic' and 'assertive' usage of style.
