Primitive Classification, Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss.

• Where does a classificatory system emerge from? It is enough to examine the very idea of
classification to establish that man could not have found its essential elements within himself.
From another angle: the question of classification is not merely one of assigning borders,
establishing rhythms of sameness and difference together creating 'identity', i.e. not simply
forming groups, but also arranging these groups in particular relationships.
• Every classification implies a hierarchical order for which neither the natural world nor our
mind gives us the model.

➢ Australia – Port Mackay near Queensland – tribes are typically divided into two moieties.
Each moiety in turn, comprises of a certain number of clans: groups of individuals with the
same totem. All members of the tribe are classed in this way in definite categories which
enclose one another – the classification of things reproduces the classification of men. All
nature is divided into class names, said to be male and female. The sun and moon and stars –
the universe in its entirety is classified. Alligators are Youngaroo, kangaroos are Wootaroo;
the wind to one, the rain to the other – fire to one and thunder to the other.
➢ Totemism is, in one aspect the grouping of men into clans according to natural objects, it is
also however, inversely – the grouping of natural objects in accordance to social groups.

➢ The same division of moeties, marriage clans and totemic clans is not everywhere to be found
- where these are not immediately evident, we can attempt to trace the changes in social
structure that have altered the economy of these systems. Ideas are organized as a model
which is furnished by society – but once a collective mind exists as a social fact, it is capable
of reacting against its cause and contributing to its change. Here Durkheim and Mauss echo
Geertz – we are hopelessly caught up in the webs of signification we ourselves have spun.
➢ Over time, thus, a sub-totem may become a totem and a division of a tribe may split off and
become a tribe in its own right. This need not even be revolutionary seccession – simply a
budding off. (Analogous, in symbolic terms, to the genalogical segmentation Fortes or Evan-
Pritchard would describe)
➢ Where there is conflict regarding what exactly is sub-totem or totem – i.e. following much
segmentation, the old classification has given way to a simple division without organization
(here organization refers to the construction of relationships – and hierarchy). This is the
situation with the Arunta. There are species of things whose rank on the totemic hierarchy is
unknown, groups in mobile states. On the other there sometimes exist links today between
putatively independent clans showing former evidence of past clanhood.
➢ The point being – if we no longer find a symbolic universe with the Arunta – it does not point
to there never being one. Rather, it disintegrated with the fragmentation of the clans.
(Implicitly then, the follow up to this would be the construction of new symbolic universes
within the new unitary entities?) i.e. the social and logical systems are intertwined.

➢ Amongst the Zuni there is a divison of space (N, S, E, W, nadir, zenith, centre) – to which
everything in the universe is accorded a position. To each direction is assigned meaning – the
North is the winter, the water, spring and its damp breezes, the pelican, crane, grouse,
sagecock and the evergreen oak, force, destruction, war and hunting.
➢ The division of the world parallels the division of the clans within the pueblo. Think Taussig –
the cosmological universe reflects both a way of seeing and tied to it indissolubly – a way of
doing, being and acting. What is divided is not merely cosmic space, but the space of the
camp. The local is a microcosm of the universe.
➢ The attributions offered by the Zuni have very little to do with the 'intrinsic' nature of the
object – take the Badger (of the south). The south is red, red is neither white or black – which
is what the badger is.
➢ For instance, look at Rome. Mundus means both the world and where the comitia gathered.
Rome stands in as the universe in miniature. Kashi is also helpfully demonstrative.

➢ The last instance picked up is China: it has all the essential characteristics of the preceding,
except for a relatively tenuous link to social organization. (Needham in his critique in the
Introduction is insistent that the problem of this work is that doesn't demonstrate the causal
relation between societal classification and organization. Would disagree with him here,
specifically mentioning China – feel that D and M's point is that the fundamental categories
of thought, perception and knowledge are socially derived schemata [Bourdieu makes for a
great reading in particular, but lets not go there right now] – in this model 'society' is to some
extent unitary, the collective conscience is not oppressive, evil or doxic [in the perjorative
sense of the word])
➢ The Tao (i.e. nature) and Taoism – a unified cosmology – composed of intermingled
systems (note that D and M are not arguing that all systems need be unified/structured into
one system – space for throwing in some Bourdieu, success). A division of space – 4 cardinal
points, subdivided into 8 – each with its own guardian – the Azure Dragon of the East, and so
on. All spaces are therefore relative and heterogenous – this is precisely wherefrom the idea
of Feng Shui emerges. Time is similarly divided through the conjunction of two calendars –
the year of the Rat and so on. In contrast to capitalist cosmology, time and space are
heterogenous and non-uniform.
➢ A cosmology is not merely a curiosity – it implies a way of conceiving things. The universe is
in fact referred to as individual – things are expressed by it, in a sense, as functions of a living
organism – it is again, a theory of the microcosm. Every divinatory rite however simple, rests
on a pre-existing sympathy between certain things – a relationship between sign and signifier.
Each rite is not an isolate, but part of an organized whole. Every mythology, thus, is
fundamentally a classification.

➢ Primitive classification thus, is not singular or exceptional. On the contrary, there is a

connectedness, a continuity, between them and the first scientific classifications.
➢ Like all sophisticated classifications, there are systems of hierarchirized notions. Things are
not simply arranged by them in the form of isolated groups, but these groups stand in fixed
relationships to each other and form a single whole.
➢ These systems, like science, have a purely speculative purpose. Their object is not to facilitate
action, but to advance understanding, to make intelligible the relations between things. Note
here, the complete lack of functionalism and an explicit focus on meaning.
➢ “The Australian does not divide the universe between the totems of his tribe with a view to
regulating conduct or justifying practice, it is because, the idea of the totem being cardinal for
him, he is under necessaity to place everything else he knows in relation to it,”
➢ Far from it being the case that the social relations of men are based on the logical relations
 between things, in reality it is the former which have provided the prototype for the latter.
➢ “We have seen indeed, how these classifications were modelled on the closest and most
fundamental form of social organization. This, however, is not going far enough. Society was
not simply a model which classificatory thought followed; it was its own divisions which
served as divisions for the system of classification. The first logical categories were social
categories; the first classes of things were classes of men, into which these things were
integrated.”
➢ “And if the totality of things is conceived as a single system, this is because society itself is
seen in the same way. It is a whole, or rather it is the unique whole to which everything is
related. Thus logical hierarchy is only another aspect of social hierarchy, and the unity of
knowledge is nothing else than the very unity of the collectivity, extended unto the universe.”
➢ “It is possible to classify other things than concepts, and otherwise than in accordance with
the laws of pure understanding. For in order for it to be possible for ideas to be systematically
arranged for reasons of sentiment, it is necessary that they should not be pure ideas, but that
they should themselves be products of sentiment.” … “Thus the history of scientific
classification is, in the last analysis, the history of stages by which this element of social
affectivity has progressively weakened, leaving more and more room for the reflexive thought
of individuals.”