The Social Anthropology of Radcliffe-Brown by Adam Kuper

Author:Adam Kuper [Kuper, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415611572
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2010-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

In most of the tribes that have this form of totemism there is a system of localized rites for the increase of natural species, each local totem centre having its own rite, performed usually by members of the clan or horde to which the totem centre belongs. It is convenient to denote these rites by the term talu by which they are known in some tribes of Western Australia (Kariera, etc.) The so-called intichiuma, properly mbanbiuma, rites of the Aranda tribe are of this type.

There is another system of rites which are not localized, i.e., not performed at a given spot, but have local references to the totem centres. These are representations of the doings of the totemic ancestors, and are really myths dramatically represented.

In some of the tribes having this totemism of local totem centres there is a special connection between each individual and some one totem. This may take the form of a conception that the individual is a reincarnation of one of the totemic ancestors or the incarnation of an emanation from the totem centre.

This form of totemism seems to be very widespread in Australia. It was first studied in detail in the Aranda tribe by Spencer and Gillen. Since then it has been found to extend over a large part of Western Australia. From the Aranda it extends to the extreme north of the continent on the one side, and to the tribes about Lake Eyre (Dieri, etc.) on the other. Miss McConnel has made a study of this type of totemism in the Wikmunkan tribe of the Cape York Peninsula. Recently it has been found in the almost extinct tribes of the east coast in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland. It seems very probably that it extended through the now extinct tribes of the south-east coastal districts as far as Victoria. Far from being confined to the centre of the continent, as has been sometimes supposed, it is found also in the extreme west, the south-east, the north-east and the north.

Another class of customs to which it is usual to apply the term totemism consists of the use of natural species (generally animals) as representatives of social divisions. In some instances the division is named after its animal representative. In the south-east of the continent each of the two sex-groups had as its representative a species of animal. For example, in the coastal regions of New South Wales the bat is the representative or sex-totem of the men, and the tree-creeper (Climacteris sp.) that of the women. In several regions the moieties are named after or closely associated with species of animals; for example, eaglehawk and crow, crow and white cockatoo, white cockatoo and black cockatoo, native companion and turkey, hill kangaroo and long-legged kangaroo. Similarly in the Southern Cross district of Western Australia the alternating endogamous divisions (pairs of sections) are named after two species of birds. In some of the tribes with four sections and in some of those with eight

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