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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.
Is inbreeding harmful? Are human beings and other primates
naturally inclined to mate with their closest relatives? Why is
incest widely prohibited? Why does the scope of the prohibition
vary from society to society? Why does incest occur despite the
prohibition? What are the consequences? After one hundred years of
intense argument, a broad consensus has emerged on the first two
questions, but the debate over the others continues.
That there is a biological basis for the avoidance of inbreeding
seems incontrovertible, but just how injurious inbreeding really is
for successive generations remains an open question. Nor has there
been any conclusion to the debate over Freud's view that the incest
taboo is necessary because humans are sexually attracted to their
closest relatives--a claim countered by Westermarck's argument for
the sexually inhibiting effects of early childhood
association.
This book brings together contributions from the fields of
genetics, behavioral biology, primatology, biological and social
anthropology, philosophy, and psychiatry which reexamine these
questions.
Is inbreeding harmful? Are human beings and other primates
naturally inclined to mate with their closest relatives? Why is
incest widely prohibited? Why does the scope of the prohibition
vary from society to society? Why does incest occur despite the
prohibition? What are the consequences? After one hundred years of
intense argument, a broad consensus has emerged on the first two
questions, but the debate over the others continues.
That there is a biological basis for the avoidance of inbreeding
seems incontrovertible, but just how injurious inbreeding really is
for successive generations remains an open question. Nor has there
been any conclusion to the debate over Freud's view that the incest
taboo is necessary because humans are sexually attracted to their
closest relatives--a claim countered by Westermarck's argument for
the sexually inhibiting effects of early childhood
association.
This book brings together contributions from the fields of
genetics, behavioral biology, primatology, biological and social
anthropology, philosophy, and psychiatry which reexamine these
questions.
In 1891, the anthropologist Edward Westermarck proposed that early
childhood association inhibits sexual attraction and that this
aversion was manifested in custom and law as the basis of the
universal incest taboo. Then, in 1910, in the essays later
published as Totem and Taboo, Sigmund Freud challenged the
"Westermarck hypothesis" on the ground that "the earliest sexual
excitations of youthful human beings are invariably of an
incestuous character." The incest taboo only existed, Freud argued,
because of this natural propensity.
Freud's challenge carried the day and became the standard view
throughout the social and biological sciences. Consequently, the
question was: why do all societies repress this natural
inclination? Biologists argued that the incest taboo protected us
from dangers of inbreeding; sociologists argued that it was
necessary to prevent sexual rivalry that would destroy the family;
and anthropologists saw the real purpose of the taboo as forcing
families to exchange women in marriage.
The book uses a wide range of research - from studies of nonhuman
primates to reports of incestuous child abuse - from African
divorce practices to animal behavior - to demonstrate that
Westermarck was right and Freud wrong. It shows that there is a
critical period in human development - approximately the first
thirty months of life - during which association permanently
inhibits sexual attraction. It concludes that the incest taboo is
unnecessary and cannot be explained in functional terms, and that
encouraging early association between father and daughter is
probably the best way of preventing sexual abuse.
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