First published 1887; detailed account of totemism throughout the world; v.1; Survey of exogamous systems of Australia; p.7; Belief in descent from totem in W.A., relationship to totem among the Geawe-gal; p.8; Origin of W.A. clan names; p.8-9; Refusal to kill or eat totem except in emergency (Mount Gambier tribe); kinship with totem among Narrinyeri; p.14; Totemic animals kept as pets (Narrinyeri); p.18-19; Punishment for eating totem, general food taboos; p.19; Less respect for totem among Narrinyeri, Dieri; p.22; Warnings & help given by totem (Coast Murring, Kurnai); p.24; Inanimate objects as totem (Encounter Bay tribe, Dieri, Mukjarawaint, Wotjoballuk, Kamilaroi, KuinMurbara, Kiabara); p.27-29; Initiation of totem in tooth avulsion, nose ornaments, cicatrization; p.35; Burial ceremonies (Wotjoballuk); p.40; Totem figures in Yuin initiation rites; p.41-44; Initiation ceremonies in N.S.W., Vic. (Kurnai), the lower Murray & among the Dieri; p.47; Sex totems (Kurnai, Kulin, Coast Murring, Mukjarawaint, Tatathi, Port Lincoln tribe); p.54-55; Infringement of exogamy rule (Ta-ta-thi, Port Lincoln tribe, Kunandaburi); p.60-65; Division of tribes into phratries & subphratries (Turra, Wotjoballuk, Ngarego, Theddora, Kamilaroi, Kiabara) & associated myths (Dieri & W. Vic. tribes); p.65-71; Rules of descent; p.73-75; Cannibalism & blood-letting among kin p.76-77; Eaglehawk & crow as totems among the Dieri, Mukjarawaint, Ta-ta-thi, Keramin, Kamilaroi, Mycoolon, Barinji, Kuinmurbura, Turra, Mount Gambier, Kunandaburi, Wonghibon; p.78- 80; Classification of natural phenomena as subtotems in Mount Gambier, Wakelbura & Wotjoballuk; p.102-115; Central Australian totemism - food taboos, exogamy, increase rites for witchetty grubs, emus, hakea flowers, manna, kangaroos, ceremonies for people of other totems; quotes Spencer on religious aspect of totemism; distribution of religious & social aspects towards the S.E.; p.124-129; Association of soul with sacred objects (ritual objects, nurtunja); p.131.

This book explores human–animal relations amongst the Bebelibe of West Africa, with a focus on the establishment of totemic relationships with animals, what these relationships entail and the consequences of abusing them. Employing and developing the concepts of "presencing" and "the ontological penumbra" to shed light on the manner in which people make present and engage in the world around them, including the shadowy spaces that have to be negotiated in order to make sense of the world, the author shows how these concepts account for empathetic and intersubjective encounters with non-human animals. Grounded in rich ethnographic work, Totemism and Human–Animal Relations in West Africa offers a reappraisal of totemism and considers the implications of the ontological turn in understanding human–animal relations. As such, it will appeal to anthropologists, sociologists and anthrozoologists concerned with human–animal interaction.

"As a plain record of a curious form of society which must soon be numbered with the past, the book may continue to possess an interest even when, with the progress of its knowledge, its errors shall have been corrected and its theories perhaps superseded by others which make a nearer approach to truth." Despite having been criticised later, the book at hand is an important and interesting document of its time. It provided the first complete ethnographical summary of totemism and exogamy, dwelling on its religious and social aspects. Totemism is described as a religious and social system in which people or clans regard themselves as related to certain objects. Exogamy, which is often found in conjunction with totemism, is represented as a system which only allows marriage outside of a specific group. On the whole, Frazer's work includes the origins as well as an ethnographical survey of totemism and exogamy in Australian Aboriginal tribes. Sir James George Frazer was a Scottish social anthropologist who contributed mainly to the studies of mythology and comparative religion and was the first to detail the relations between myths and rituals. His work Totemism and Exogamy is also frequently cited by Sigmund Freud in his own study Totem and Taboo.

This book examines the figure of the returning warrior as depicted in the myths of several ancient and medieval Indo-European cultures. In these cultures, the returning warrior was often portrayed as a figure rendered dysfunctionally destructive or isolationist by the horrors of combat. This mythic portrayal of the returned warrior is consistent with modern studies of similar behavior among soldiers returning from war. Roger Woodard's research identifies a common origin of these myths in the ancestral proto-Indo-European culture, in which rites were enacted to enable warriors to reintegrate themselves as functional members of society. He also compares the Italic, Indo-Iranian, and Celtic mythic traditions surrounding the warrior, paying particular attention to Roman myth and ritual, notably to the etiologies and rites of the July festivals of the Poplifugia and Nonae Caprotinae, and to the October rites of the Sororium Tigillum.

"Ardener is the Czerny of anthropology, concerned with technical training, with how to think productively within the discipline. He should be read above all by postgraduates and postdoctoral researchers, whose formation is not yet 'completed.'...As exercises to form the anthropological mind, these papers are both unique and irreplaceable." . JRAI "The intellectual bequest of a brilliant and compassionate human being." . Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University "His voice is as deeply needed as ever. Ardener anticipated numerous central issues in the social sciences today...This publishing event will achieve something much more significant still: a long-overdue recognition that Ardener not only forged ahead of today's mainstream but bequeathed a legacy of ideas that can regenerate and redirect anthropological thought today. This new edition will allow a new and more receptive audience to come to grips with Ardener's distinctive mode of analysis and understanding, bringing it more clearly into the mainstream of anthropological thought not only as a historical contribution but also, and especially, as a source of new reflections." (From the Foreword) Edwin Ardener was one of the most important social anthropologists in Britain of his time, working on social, economic, demographic and political problems and particularly influential in his sustained effort to bring together social anthropology and linguistics in a highly original attempt to reconcile scientific and humanistic approaches to the study of society. This volume offers the best of Ardener's papers and forms a theoretically and conceptually coherent body of work by this innovative and profound thinker, which will continue to excite and stimulate new generations of students and researchers as it did in the past."

"Levi-Strauss continues his assault on the myth of the primitice as savage by turning to the phenomena of totemism an totoemix classification ... to show, contrary to this myth, that primitive thought rests upon a rich and complex conceptual structure." – Commentary