Why do most people never have sex with close relatives? And why do
they disapprove of other people doing so? "Incest Avoidance and
Incest Taboos" investigates our human inclination to avoid incest
and the powerful taboo against incest found in all societies. Both
subjects stir strong feelings and vigorous arguments within and
beyond academic circles. With great clarity, Wolf lays out the
modern assumptions about both, concluding that all previous
approaches lack precision and balance on insecure evidence.
Researchers he calls "constitutionalists" explain human incest
avoidance by biologically-based natural aversion, but fail to
explain incest taboos as cultural universals. By contrast,
"conventionalists" ignore the evolutionary roots of avoidance and
assume that incest avoidant behavior is guided solely by cultural
taboos. Both theories are incomplete.
Wolf tests his own theory with three natural experiments:
"bint'amm" (cousin) marriage in Morocco, the rarity of marriage
within Israeli kibbutz peer groups, and "minor marriages" (in which
baby girls were raised by their future mother-in-law to marry an
adoptive "brother") in China and Taiwan. These cross-cultural
comparisons complete his original and intellectually rich theory of
incest, one that marries biology and culture by accounting for both
avoidance and taboo.
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