Page "Totemism" Paragraph 46

From the Australian data, Lévi-Strauss concluded that " real " totemism was based not on the similarities of the matrilineal and patrilineal types but on their dissimilarities.

Such a pattern was clearly expressed in the basic model of the contrasts of the natural with the cultural ( that were outlined above ).

Building on the ideas of Radcliffe-Brown, Lévi-Strauss claimed to perceive antithetical thinking as a crucial structural principle in totemism and believed that the similarity among totemistic ideas in various cultures lay in similarities between systems of differences — those documented in the natural sphere and those in the culturally defined social groups.

Lévi-Strauss concluded that the distinction between the classes of man and animal serves as the conceptual basis for social differences.

For Lévi-Strauss, totemism is therefore an " illusion " and a " logic that classifies "— a post hoc explanation in which the structure of social relations is projected onto the natural phenomena, not taken from it.