Claude Lvi-Strauss Meets Alexander Goldenweiser: Boasian Anthropology and the Study of Totemism Author(s): Warren Shapiro Source:

American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Sep., 1991), pp. 599-610 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/679938 . Accessed: 25/02/2011 23:40
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WARREN SHAPIRO

Rutgers University

Claude L vi-Strauss Meets Alexander Goldenweiser: Boasian Anthropology and the Study of Totemism

Contraryto some recentoverviewsof the "Boas school" (e.g., by Marvin Harris and Derek Freeman), Boasian anthropologywas farfrom unifiedeven on a single subject: totemism.Although more recentthoughton this subjectstemsfrom Livi-Strauss, Alexander Goldenweiser's formulations. This corpusincludedideas that alcorpuson totemismanticipatesLevi-Strauss's teredin the courseof Goldenweiser's career,and thesealterationswere differentlyreceivedby his "Boasian" contemporaries. seemslikely-though details of theprocessare unclear-that GolIt denweiser'sideas "diffused"to Levi-Strauss.

traditions. The more seem (nearly) defunct in these self-constructuralism"''-might recent--"French scious "post-structuralist" days, especially if we discount "structural Marxism." But although Levi-Strauss is undeniably a less conspicuous figure in the 1980s and 1990s than he was two decades ago, interest in his thought continues (e.g., Crocker 1985; Luhrmann 1990; Mandelbaum 1987; Rossi 1982; Werbner 1989). The other tradition--"Boasian to the roots of the profession in the United States. These roots anthropology"-reaches underlie branches that go off in several directions of current relevance (and to which I shall return), and their study has in recent years achieved something of a renaissance (Shapiro 1985:7). Here I shall let the expression "Boasian anthropology" designate not only Franz Boas's own work (Stocking 1974) but, as well, that of his first cohort of students at Columbia University. I hasten to add that, by so doing, I do not wish the present effort to be construed as joining a polemic literature, including White (1966:3-28), Harris (1968:250ff.), and Freeman (1983:19-49), which concocts a unified "Boas school" to serve as counterpoint (Shapiro 1982:285; 1985:10-13). On the contrary, I hope to show that the "school" was far from unified even on a single subject: totemism. More specifically, I would argue as follows. Established thought on totemism and kindred subjects (e.g., Fox 1967; Leach 1964; Maddock 1978; Tambiah 1969; Worsley 1967) is expressly inspired by Levi-Strauss's famous tomes on these topics (Levi-Strauss 1963b, 1966). Levi-Strauss himself credits especially Radcliffe-Brown (1952), but the sheer bulk of his contributions gives the impression that he stands only on the narrowest of shoulders and mostly on his own two feet. However, the seminal ideas on totemism put forward by Alexander Goldenweiser not only antedate those of both Levi-Strauss and Radcliffe-Brown but substantially anticipate L6vi-Strauss's formulations, and in some ways signal an improvement on them (Shapiro 1981:29). These ideas altered in the course of Goldenweiser's career, and their various alterations were differently received by his contemporaries. My argument is intended to pay posthumous homage to a remarkably underappreciated scholar.
HIS IS AN ESSAY ON THE CONJUNCTION of two anthropological
WARREN SHAPIRO is Professor, Department of Anthropology, Douglass Campus, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

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The "Analytical Study"

The extent to which the notion of totemism dominated Victorian and early post-Vicwas reflexively seen to do so-is nowhere better illustrated torian social thought-and than in Arnold van Gennep's summary of theory on "the totemic problem" (van Gennep 1920). Although the various classic theories differed markedly from one another, all assumed that the expression "totemism" designated a unitary class of phenomena. Goldenweiser's initial contribution to the controversy, and the only one for which he is now known, was to show that the alleged unitary character of totemism is in fact an analytical concoction. This was accomplished in his remarkable doctoral dissertation of 1910, "Totemism: An Analytical Study," in which he surveyed much of the pertinent ethnographic materials and reached the following conclusion:' Exogamy, taboo, religious regard, totemic names, descent from the totem-all fail as invariable characteristics of totemism. Each of these traits, moreover, displays . . . striking independence in its distribution. [Goldenweiser 1910:88] This independence bore directly on the various unilinear or "evolutionary" theories then current: If we must regard the groups of phenomena which in various areas have been termed "totemic" as conglomerates of essentially independent features, the fundamental error . . . of totemic inquiry and speculation becomes at once apparent. I mean the attempts to assign to the various factors in totemism a correlated historical development. . . . An integral development of totemism loses its plausibility, in view of the demonstrated historical independence of its factors. [Goldenweiser 1910:88] The "analytical study" thus had much of the flavor of the Boasian deconstruction of Victorian social theory and, as such, was soon hailed by Robert Lowie (1911) and Edward Sapir (1912), the latter lauding it as "the most notable . . contribution to ethnological method yet produced by American anthropologists" (1912:461). At least equally noteworthy is Goldenweiser's assault on the nominalism-what might nowadays be called the "essentialism" (Shapiro 1990)-of Victorian totemic theory: On the basis of material furnished by some one area or a number of areas, a definite group of features is called "totemism." Another totemic area is discovered where an additional feature is found, or where one of the old ones is missing. Immediately the questions arise. ... Is thistotemism? or Was thattotemism? or Is this truetotemism, and thatwas incompletely totemism developed, im Werden? Was thattruetotemism, and this ... a laterdevelopment? the light of the foregoing or In discussion, any definite answer to these questions must needs be arbitrary. [Goldenweiser 1910:89-90; emphasis in original] It was this aspect of the "analytical study" that especially attracted Boas. Six years after its publication he insisted that "Totemism is an artificial unit, not a natural one" (Boas 1916:321). As Stocking (1974:14) has pointed out, this concern with the subjective character of typologies, with what might be called their "observer-dependency," pervades Boas's social theory; and as I have suggested elsewhere (Shapiro 1982:285; 1985:11; 1988), it forges links with more recent developments in cognitive science, and with "postmodern" thought. Hence, his appreciation of the "analytical study" signals far more than a commitment to idiographic analysis, to what critics refer to pejoratively as "historical particularism."

Toward a Proto-Structural View of Totemism

In fact, Goldenweiser's "analytical study" moved considerably further from "particularist" concerns. Consider the following: the peculiarity of totemic phenomena is not to be found in the sum of totemic elements in any given tribe, nor in any individual element, but in the relation obtaining between the elements .... That the process is an association, and not a merejuxtaposition, is indeed apparent. True, each of the elements in question is complex historically and psychologically, and variable;

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but in each totemic combination forces are at work which tend to correlate the several heterogeneous elements. Thus it happens that the totemic phenomena assume the character of an organic whole. [Goldenweiser 1910:92] The modern flavor of this passage is remarkable: indeed, the distinction between "the sum of totemic elements" and "the relation obtaining between the elements" foreshadows the entire structuralist project (Gardner 1972:170-172). Goldenweiser went on to argue that the key integrative factor lay in an underlying system of social units, especially of the "clan" variety: The intimacy of the above associations could never become so absolute if not for the fact that the various elements ... become linked with definite social units (say, the clans), of which they the with henceforth become . . . the symbols. Thisassociation socialunitsis whatconstitutes peculiarity combinations. [Goldenweiser 1910:93;emphasis added] of totemic Hence, a few pages after his well-known deconstruction of totemism, Goldenweiser proceeded to reconstruct it. It is this reconstructive process that would dominate all his subsequent writings on the subject. Here is Goldenweiser a year after the "analytical study": Group A and group B have each certain taboos. The groups combine. Have we totemism? Not necessarily. For the result may be simply a larger group C. ... But A and B may combine while preserving their identity. They may thus become definite social units (say, clans) and the taboos ... would then be socialized within the clans, forming the nucleus of a totemic community. But there is really no need of such hypothetical constructions, for this is ... what we actually find in totemic communities. The ... ceremonies, artistic representations, etc. are in totemic within the social units to which they refer; they are their . . . symbols. groups always socialized [Goldenweiser 1911:595-596; emphasis in original] Note that the focus of attention has been more definitely moved to clan systems, and that there is a marked diminution of interest in historical process. This latter is pushed further aside in the same article: totemic complexes must be regarded as the product of convergent evolution. On the other hand, all totemic complexes are . . . constituted by the fact that the component social units of the comwith the various totemic features, or that the totemic features become plexes become associated within the limits of the social units. This . .. factor .. . seems to be a constant. Moresocialized over, it can not itself be conceived as a product of convergent evolution, but seems to be a primary socio-psychological fact. [Goldenweiser 1911:596;emphasis in original] The following year saw Goldenweiser publish a pair of articles on totemism (Goldenweiser 1912a, 1912b). The first of these is largely a "particularist" retort to the "evolutionist" Andrew Lang (1912). Even here, though, Goldenweiser insisted, with remarkable self-consciousness, that: I am very far from making far-fetched attempts at finding differences where similarities are essential, or from denying thefundamental unityof the totemic problem, notwithstanding the genetic heterogeneity of totemic complexes. [ 1912a:384; emphasis added] The "unity" Goldenweiser had in mind consisted in this: "The specific content of the features of each clan is different, but the form they assume is strictly identical in all the social units of the group, which units may thus be described as equivalenttotemic units" (1912a:384; emphasis in original). A half-century later, Levi-Strauss (1973:149) would express precisely the same idea with his oft-quoted remark, "it is not the resemblances, but the differences, which resemble each other." By distinguishing in a "totemic complex" between the idiographic "content" and the nomothetic "form"-a distinction he was from now onward to maintain-Goldenweiser was able to wed "particularist" and "evolutionary" concerns. That the latter were his primary focus is clear from his remarks in his second article of 1912, that "the clans of a totemic organization are so interwoven as to constitute . .. an integral system... the homology of the clans is... the most patent fact about a totemic organization" (Golden-

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weiser 1912b:603). This, apparently, is the "primary socio-psychological fact" he had in mind in his article of 1911. Goldenweiser now dubbed his formulation "the pattern theory" of totemism (1912b:606), as if to emphasize the structural identity of the units within a totemic system. So put forward, the "pattern theory" was variously received within Boasian anthropology. Lowie (1920:139-144) considered it retrograde, preferring instead the gravamen of the "analytical study." A. L. Kroeber gave it a far kinder reception, applying it, with due acknowledgment to Goldenweiser, in his remarkable analysis of Zuni clan organization. Here are Kroeber's words: the Zuni view their clans not so much as ... units of consanguinity or locality which are conglomerated into a mass while retaining their separate privileges and activities, but rather as coordinated divisions, with special but parallel and equivalent functions in a communal entity ... The [key] word [is] "equivalent." ... It appeals to me strongly that the crux of the whole question of what a clan really is rests in the contained idea. If clans . . . had once been separate units, they should possess unequal privileges and different functions, like castes or classes or guilds. Now the overwhelming rule is that they do not exercise distinct functions, but essentially are equivalent. The only alternative interpretation remaining is that they once were separate bodies but that since their union an equivalating tendency has assimilated them. But, once an equivalating tendency is posited, there is no valid reason ... to assume that the tendency is only late and secondary; and if the tendency is old and primary, there is no logical need for bringing originally distinct clan entities into the argument at all .... A tendency toward systematization might ... make use of such accidental or extrinsic groups as a starting-point, and the differences of clan organization among the various nations may well in part be due to the diversity of such associated phenomena. But, given the systematizing and coordinating impulse, nothing else is required:it would seize upon the most trivial suggestions and break itself a channel of its own. [Kroeber 1917b:182-183] This is a seminal rendition, and I shall come back to it. I now return to Boas's 1916 appreciation of the "analytical study." Although Boas here makes unspecific reference to "Doctor Goldenweiser ... in his later publications" (1916:322), his concluding remarks are presented as a creation ex nihilo: we must expect to find a great variety of devices used for the purpose of characterizing exogamic groups.... when the characterization of the group is due to the tendency to develop a distinguishing mark, all these marks must be of the same type, but different in contents. It does not seem plausible that distinguishing traits should belong to entirely distinct domains of thought; that one group might be recognized by a name, another one by a ritual, a third one by crests or emblems. ... We may conclude ... that the homology of distinguishing marks of social divisions of a tribe is ... due to a classificatory tendency. [Boas 1916:326]

Structural Differentiation: Natural and Cultural

Although this underacknowledgment of Goldenweiser's influence is remarkable, there is another aspect of Boas's formulation to which I wish to attend here. Having granted, after all, that "totemism" points to a recurrent phenomenon, Boas asks: Under what conditions does this phenomenon occur? His answer is that it "presupposes the development of the concept of the unilateral family" (1916:325)-what we might nowadays call "groupings generated by unilocal rules of postmarital residence." But Boas was prepared to go further: Such changes of domicile may have been determined by a variety of considerations. They would result even in primitive conditions where property rights in the men's hunting territory existed, and in which, therefore, the strange woman would join the economic group of the man. We might expect in this case the development of paternal families. When, on the other hand, property right in agricultural land prevailed, the man may have joined the woman's group and a maternal family would have developed. . . . It will readily be seen that the elements of a totemic organization are given wherever a unilateral family is designated by some characteristic feature. [1916:325]

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This decidedly non-"particularist" formulation was subsequently given classic statement by Lowie (1920:147-185). In later years it was restated for several ethnographic regions by American anthropologists (e.g., Goldschmidt 1948; Oberg 1955; Steward 1937), independently invented by Daryl Forde in 1947 (Forde 1947), and thence diffused to the theoretical arsenal of British descent theory in Meyer Fortes's famous article of 1953 (Fortes 1953; see also Kuper 1982). What I wish to stress about this formulation, though, is not its scholarly pedigree but its treatment of totemism as a form of symbolic differentiation among groupings that are already locally distinct; that is, as an aid to what might be dubbed "natural differentiation." By contrast, recall Kroeber's position, especially his conclusion that "there is no logical need for bringing originally distinct clan entities into the argument at all." What we have here is not a contingent batch of "groups" forming a "social organization" but a logical system of categories comprising a structure. Differentiation among the catenot natural but gories-and here I see no need to make apologies to Levi-Strauss-is cultural. In point of fact, the two "theories of totemism" are not competitive, though it seems clear that Kroeber, at least, thought them to be so. Rather, each seems to fit different data. Thus it would be hard to argue that the symbolic homologies among clan-villages in the Northwest Amazon, often separated from one another by several days' walk (C. Hugh-Jones 1979; S. Hugh-Jones 1979; Sorensen 1967), fit the Kroeberian model. This would appear to be more at home in multiclan communities, such as those of the Zuni. Especially remarkable here are clan systems like those of the Bororo of Central Brazil, recently reanalyzed by Crocker (1985), where the number of units, and their articulation with one another and with things outside themselves, are all fixed. These seem to be "pure structures," with little or no concession to historical contingency, and in this respect they resemble moiety arrangements and the "class" systems of Aboriginal Australia.2 The question now arises as to whether Goldenweiser, whose influence Kroeber adequately acknowledged but Boas did not, ever demonstrated a recognition of Kroeber's seminal distinction. I can make only a weak argument that he did. In a review of Native North American social organization published in 1914, he proffered the following remark: "A group based on relationship, and one based on local cohabitation, may be designated as natural groups" (Goldenweiser 1914:433). There is an implied contrast here with clans, but it is not expressly made. On the contrary, elsewhere in the same article Goldenweiser observed that "converging evidence from many parts of the North American area points to territorial unity as the basis for future clan . . . systems" (1914:431). His firsthand observations of the importance of "maternal families" in Iroquois social life (Goldenweiser 1913:368-370) point in the same direction, as do his textbook renditions of the various "forms of social organization" (Goldenweiser 1922:235-258, 1937:296-374; see also Goldenweiser 1915:724). Despite the remarkable perception, noted above, that "the clans of a totemic organization ... constitute ... an integral system," Goldenweiser never put forward a formulation as bold as Kroeber's between "basic and secondary patterns of social structure" (Kroeber 1939). Instead, like Boas, Lowie, their American followers, and the British descent theorists, he remained wedded to the received notion that the "secondary patterns"-the especially symbolic ones-are derived from the "basic patterns"-those having to do with locality and consanguinity.

The "Form and Content" Statement

But Goldenweiser did take the pattern theory further, if in different directions. Its richest statement is his 1918 article, significantly titled "Form and Content in Totemism" (Goldenweiser 1918). Here is the gravamen of this remarkable formulation: In a community subdivided into social units, such as clans, the first demand is for some kind of classifiers.., which would identify the separate units and yet signify their equivalence by be-

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longing to one category.... the classificatory aspect remains a fixed requirement, so that whatever traits may develop in the social crucible appear as homologous traits.... it would fit the properties of which were near and dear to him, of things, however, that would not lie too closely within the realm of specifically human activities, as, in such a case, confusion might result . . . there exists in all primitive communities a complex of experiences and attitudes . animals in particular are constantly used for naming purposes
. .

needs of the situation if the . . . objectifications

. .

consisted of things congenial to man, the

of

just the sort needed....

with nature....

That complex comprises the experiences resulting from man's contact

.... They are

beautifully adjusted to the function of classifiers .. . for they contain many individuals belonging to ... several wide categories, they are familiar and congenial to man, yet lie outside the circle of specifically human things and activities. ... Moreover, to the eyes of men organized into mutually disparate and internally homogeneous social units, the kingdom of animals and only to a less degree that of plants present a spectacle of strange congeniality: forjust as in their own social system, these kingdoms embrace beings ... that belong to the same general kind, but are subdivided into categories that are disparate while internally homogeneous. Now... all of these experiences, relations and attitudes belong to the range of the common human: they are found in most primitive communities and many of them reach far into the historic period including modern life itself. This point deserves special emphasis. For, whereas a ... clan system ... must .. . be regarded as a relatively late form of social organization, the greatest antiquity must be ascribed to the psychic and cultural phenomena referred to above. The minimum requirement for their origination embraces no more than the psyche of man furnished with the very rudiments of culture, and nature. Therefore we find that those phenomena are omnipresent in primitive society and also extend, in attenuated forms, into . .. modern culture, as witnessed animalistic metaphor and allusion used in connection with human countenances, characters [and] affairs. [1918:291-294] There are, I think, four considerations here that need to be stressed: First, Goldenweiser has now liberated the notion of totemism from exclusive association with clan organization and extended it so as to include other forms of metaphorical connection between human and animal taxonomies. This is just what Levi-Strauss does in The Savage Mind (1966), wherein the illustrations are especially telling. Thus Plate 6, a "Society of Animals" 'a la Walt Disney, exemplifies "the... tendency to anthropomorphize the life of animals"; whereas Plate 3, showing "hawk-nosed" and "fox-faced" men, psychic instances "the rich store of animalistic metaphor and allusion used in connection with human countenances" (Goldenweiser 1918:294). Second, the expression "beings ... that belong to the same general kind, but are subdivided into categories that are disparate" suggests Levi-Strauss's notion of a "totemic operator," whereby the "members" of a clan are analogized to the anatomical or behavioral "members" of its totemic representations (Levi-Strauss 1966:135ff.). This conclusion is supported by Goldenweiser's remarkable analysis of Iroquois personal nomenclature (1913:366-368), wherein he draws a distinction between naming schemes that pertain to clan eponyms and those that, though associated with clan organization, do not. Third, there are imageries of "innateness" in this formulation. Goldenweiser observes that certain "experiences, relations and attitudes belong to the range of the common human" (1918:293-294). These have "the greatest antiquity"-presumably the use of temporal metaphor to convey the notion of "inherency" (Shapiro 1990). They are able to emanate from "no more than the psyche of man furnished with the very rudiments of culture," and an unelaborated input from "nature." Even more modern renditions than this of the innate/learned dichotomy are no longer taken seriously by ethologists (Hinde 1982:85ff.); and some anthropologists (e.g., MacCormack 1980; Strathern 1980; Wagner 1981:71ff.) regard it as no more than a folk categorical pairing. In any case, most social theory has proceeded independently of these developments. Certainly this is true of Freeman (1983) and other "biosocial" anthropologists (e.g., Ardrey 1966:29-31; Fox 1975), who, without any real appreciation of the context of Kroeber's classic exposition on "The Superorganic" (Kroeber 1917a), have drawn remarkably overblown anti-innatist caricatures of a (largely) Boas-derived American anthropological establishment.3
by the. .. tendency to anthropomorphize the psychic life of animals, . .. or by the rich store of

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Finally, Goldenweiser's innatism is a relatively strong formulation: it specifies both the of taxonomy and homology-as well as the "conlogical operators or "form"-principles or most likely content, namely, animal species and attributes. This should be content," trasted both with his earlier renditions and with Livi-Strauss's avowedly innatist program. In the latter, at least, only the operators are held to be innate: there is no particular inclination to employ them on certain external stimuli rather than on others.

Goldenweiser's Later Contributions

Goldenweiser's first treatment of totemism subsequent to the classic "form and content" statement occurs-in decidedly truncated form-in a section of his first introduc-

tory textbook (Goldenweiser 1922:282-291). He observes that "the complex of ideas, atacteristic of it" (1922:284). But he proceeds to ask: "Has totemism .
titudes and practices which is totemism is congenial to early mentality and therefore char. .

been left definitely

behind? or can certain adumbrations of it be discerned in modern society?" (1922:289). Here is his answer: animals still inhabit a region where fact and fancy are peacefully wedded together .... One thinks of the eagle's eye, the lionine heart, the dogged perseverence, the bull's neck. Current metaphor... has introduced the fox and the beaver, the bear and the rabbit, the cat and the cow, the hog and the ass, the ape and the shark, as characteristic of the human scene. Some mothers treat their children with an affection we think ape-like, while others make children of apes, and of cats, dogs and parrots as well. And it is typical that psychic qualities-intellect, affection, understanding, sensitiveness-are wont to be ascribed to these creatures by their masters. [1922:289-290]4 This is an expansion of part of Goldenweiser's 1918 argument, and it too bears comparison with some of the illustrations in The Savage Mind. Furthermore, Goldenweiser here refers to: the ... tendency on the part of equivalent social units to adopt as classifiers names, badges, pins, flags, tattoo marks, colors. One thinks of highschool and college classes, baseball and football teams, political parties, the degrees of the Elks and Masons and the regiments of our armies. [1922:290] In the last decade of his life Goldenweiser published three more major statements on totemism (Goldenweiser 1931; 1933:213-356; 1937:321-329). In the main, these recapitulate his 1918 and 1922 formulations, with numerous passages repeated verbatim.5

Boasian Anthropology and the Study of Totemism I claimso far to have shownthe following: 1. In Boasiananthropology therewasa striking of totemism. diversity viewsregarding This diversitywas exhibitedby Boas himself,and by all threeof his majorstudents,in received as of opinion,in whatmaybe regarded his firstgeneration tenureat Columbiaa Kroeber, Lowie,and Sapir.Hence, the notionof a "Boasschool"presupposes unityof viewson this singlesubject,whichpresupposition, patently,is absurd. 2. The mostproductive contributor this diversity neitherBoasnorKroeber to was nor Lowienor Sapir,but AlexanderGoldenweiser.6 themselves,Goldenweiser's contriBy
butions cover much of this span of opinion. Moreover, they reveal a fairly regular pro-

gression from particularistic to universalistic concerns. vamen of which is anticipated in Goldenweiser's writings. The French Connection I have already noted that Lfvi-Strauss (1973:155-164) gives special credit to RadcliffeBrown's "second theory of totemism" in developing his own formulation. This theory was propounded in the Huxley Memorial Lecture for 1951, which, in its published form (Rad3. Concerns of the latter kind underlie Lfvi-Strauss's thought on totemism, the gra-

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cliffe-Brown 1952), spanned eight pages. The title of the article-"The Comparative the kind of deliberately truncated programMethod in Social Anthropology"-suggests matic utterance which Radcliffe-Brown was wont to proffer as "theory." This impression is sustained by the fact that, in the opening and closing segments, Radcliffe-Brown at this late date still found it necessary to distance "social anthropology" from "ethnology" and kindred forms of "conjectural history"-a project to which he had given classic statement three decades earlier (Radcliffe-Brown 1958[1923]:3-38), and which in British anthropological circles was by mid-century the deadest of horses. The meat of the article is an attempt to install a sort of synchronic "comparative or Frazer devoid of historical imagery-in contrast to "conjectural method"-Spencer history," ethnographic particularism ("functionalism"), and the "controlled comparison" exemplified by Radcliffe-Brown's well-known statements of Aboriginal Australian social theory (e.g., Radcliffe-Brown 1931). The ethnographic particulars consist of conceptual oppositions such as Australian moiety systems, the Chinese yin/yang, and athletic and other rivalries between Cambridge and Oxford, as well as examples of archetypical "societies of animals." The links with Levi-Strauss's own fascination with contrastive pairs and "socialized nature" are clear. Nonetheless, there is only a passing reference to clan totemism, and much of the analysis, consistent with the bulk of RadcliffeBrown's writings (indeed, with most of British anthropology), is carried out from a "social action" perspective-what Fortes (1987:121ff.) would later call an "actor-oriented theory," as opposed to the "message-oriented theory" he correctly ascribes to LeviStrauss. This abbreviated and largely self-presentational exercise of Radcliffe-Brown's hardly rates comparison with the earnest and substantial corpus on totemism authored by Goldenweiser. Especially remarkable here is Goldenweiser's consistent stress on classification, as opposed to Radcliffe-Brown's "actor-orientation." That Levi-Strauss thus shares Goldenweiser's emphasis and not Radcliffe-Brown's is no proof that his thought on totemism is derived from the former and not the latter. But this strikes me as more than likely, for the following reasons: 1. Levi-Strauss is familiar with the "analytical study" and freely acknowledges its anti-typological importance (Levi-Strauss 1973:73). We have seen that the earliest of Goldenweiser's publications on totemism contains the germs of later developments in his thinking. 2. There is some indication that Levi-Strauss is familiar also with Goldenweiser's brilliant 1918 contribution (1973:73-74), which, as we have seen, has a very different tone from the 1910 study-one in which Levi-Strauss's own formulations are foreshadowed in bold relief. 3. More generally, Levi-Strauss shows an affinity for Boasian anthropology that is unrivaled among present-day theorists. In view of the immense range of his scholarship and his special interest in "primitive classification," I find it inconceivable that the bulk of Goldenweiser's theoretical writings escaped his attention. 4. This affinity was buttressed by a close personal relationship with Boas-indeed, Boas apparently died virtually in Levi-Strauss's arms (Lesser 1981:20), an image of truly heroic proportions. Whether the same sort of relationship was maintained with the elder man's students is unclear. But L~vi-Strauss seems, however unwittingly, to have followed Boas's example, noted above, in ignoring acknowledgment of Goldenweiser's bolder formulations on totemism and assimilating them onto himself. 5. Goldenweiser and Lfvi-Strauss both held positions at the New School for Social Research in New York City, though not at the same time: Goldenweiser's ended in 1926 (Wallis 1941:250), while Livi-Strauss's did not begin until 1941 (Leach 1970:x). The suggestion thus presents itself that, by the later date, "the pattern theory" was "in the air" at the New School.

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Conclusion I shouldmakeit plain that I am not accusingLevi-Strauss intellectualpiracy:his of is of specialacknowledgment Radcliffe-Brown duly recorded,and he professesdebts as well to Rousseau,Bergson,and othersin puttingforwardhis ideas on totemism(LeviStrauss1973:165-176). do I wish to undermine enormous Nor his erudition the boldand nessof his grandinquiryinto the natureof humancognitiveprocesses.Instead,my chief was Levi-Strauss, who with an assist from Radcliffe-Brown, salvagedthe (admittedly about by the "analytical it necessary) brought study"and transformed into a wreckage newsynthesiscirca 1965.Sucha production restson a minimization the importof that of later contributions. study, and a virtuallytotal ignoranceof AlexanderGoldenweiser's
The suggestion here is that Goldenweiser be moved much closer to center-stage.

contention is simply that it is nonsense to accept at face value the received view that it

Notes
This article is dedicated to the memory of Robert Francis Murphy, bricoleurextraordinaire.A preliminary version was presented at anthropology seminars at the University of Cambridge and the University of Kent at Canterbury in 1988 and 1989, respectively. I am indebted to several individuals for their remarks on these occasions, among them Ray Abrahams, John Davis, Roy Ellen, Rutgers University for providing me with a leave of absence, under the Faculty Academic Study Program, during which the original and initially revised versions of the article were written; to the London School of Economics and Political Science, for library privileges and memorable collegiality during my initial formulation of the article; to five anonymous AA reviewers; and to Janet

Stephen Hugh-Jones, Jeremy Kemp, Gilbert Lewis, and Triloki Pandey. Thanks are also due to

Dixon Keller, whose editorial efficiency is appreciated.

sertation was also published separately by JAF with identical typography and span but different pagination: it is this pagination that I employ. The particular copy most readily at my disposal during the preparation of this article is housed in the British Library of Political and Economic Science of the London School of Economics and Political Science. At its head, apparently in Goldenweiser's hand, is the following inscription: ProfessorE.A. Westermarck from A.A. Goldenweiser Nov 14, 1913
New York Goldenweiser corrected a number of printing errors in the body of the text, though none of these bears upon my arguments here. 21t is surely no accident that the Bororo clan system has engaged Levi-Strauss's attention (LeviStrauss 1963a:126-131, 141-147), occupied as it is increasingly with "structure" to the exclusion of "history" (Boon and Schneider 1974). A similar focus-which I hope to document in detail elsewhere-accounts for Kroeber's infatuation with Bororo congeners (Kroeber 1952:222-224). Abo-

'The "analytical study" was published in the Journal ofAmerican Folklore (JAF) in 1910. The dis-

riginal Australian "clan totemism" takes on a fresh layer of controversy by virtue of the distinction proposed here. Theorists from Radcliffe-Brown (1931) to Peterson (1986) advocate (if unwittingly) the "Boas model." I myself consider the evidence in favor of a "Kroeber model" to be very considerable (Shapiro 1979:21-26; 1990), but it is unnecessary to argue the issue here in any detail. I

of other Boasian anthropologists (e.g., Boas 1938:126; Kroeber 1955:200ff.; Lowie 1933; Sapir 1949:13-14). The point needs to be made that, just as the "classical evolutionists" were not uniformly "evolutionary" (Carneiro 1973), so the Boasians were not uniformly "particularist." "5The 1933 statement contains a "Final Note on Totemism" (Goldenweiser 1933:355-356). Its stress on the link between totemism and clan systems seems to signal a drawing-in of Goldenweiser's bolder formulations, but I suggest this is more properly seen simply as an accident derived from its cursory quality and abbreviated length. This precise link is mentioned in all his formulations, but the longer ones from 1918 onward readily transcend it.

return to it briefly below. have made this point elsewhere (Shapiro 1985), and I hope eventually to publish the results "3I of my research on innatist elements in Kroeber's thought. 4"Evolutionary" imagery, wherein coeval ethnographic materials are treated as a historical series, is especially remarkable here and appears frequently in Goldenweiser's writings, and in those

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6Boas became Professor of Anthropology at Columbia in 1899 (Lesser 1968:100). According to a pamphlet entitled "Graduate Study in Anthropology," published at the direction of the Department of Anthropology at Columbia, Kroeber's 1901 doctorate was the first awarded, with Lowie, Sapir, and Goldenweiser, respectively, receiving the degree in consecutive years beginning in 1908.

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