"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been corrected and its theories perhaps superseded by others which make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.