Inbreeding Incest And The Incest Taboo

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? To reexamine these questions, this book brings together contributions from the fields of genetics, behavioral biology, primatology, biological and social anthropology, philosophy, and psychiatry.

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.

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.

This book examines Darwinian social science through the substantive topic of incest and inbreeding avoidance, a behavior forward by human sociobiology as the best example of sociocultural behavior naturally selected in humans. I first encountered Gregory Leavitt's work while I was myself researching incest avoidance and the incest taboo. Like many anthropologists with limited expertise in genetics, I had assumed that inbreeding was securely established as a source of genetic depression. To be sure, anthropologists have commonly identified other factors as also having causative influences on incest avoidance and taboos, but I had presumed that the deleterious consequences of inbreeding had to be one - if not the ultimate - causative factor in a full accounting of the phenomenon. At around this time, though, Leavitt published in the American Anthropologist a cogent challenge to the conventional wisdom, and it seemed to throw everything back up into the air. Accordingly, in my own writings, it seemed best to side-step the issue, pending further research by those qualified to conduct it. examination of the inbreeding theory. From lacunae in the special and general theory of evolution, through the ethological evidence commonly used to support the existence of inbreeding avoidance in sexual species, to the oft-cited kibbutzim data, he mounts what is surely the most comprehensive critique that has ever been addressed to a theory of incest. Marshaling a range of disparate, sometimes neglected sources scattered through several disciplines, he trains an impressive level of fire on what many have accepted as the standard explanation for the incest taboo. Leavitt's treatment of the inbreeding and incest issue is neatly folded into a second, more encompassing focus: a rigorous critique of sociobiology. Beginning with E. O. Wilson, sociobiologists have commonly claimed the genetic depression explanation for incest avoidance as one of the jewels - if not the canonical gem - in the sociobiological crown. Leavitt uses his critique of the inbreeding argument as a point of departure for exploring broader inadequacies and weaknesses in sociobiology. In a theoretical field that prides itself for its scientific approach to social behavior, Leavitt finds a disturbing level of 'unscientific' sloppiness and an unsettling absence of 'scientific' skepticism. Although not all Darwinian theorists of social behavior deserve to be tarred with the same brush, Leavitt uncovers more than enough cause for dismay. To begin with, he finds that parts of the evidence used to support the inbreeding hypothesis do not warrant the weight placed on it; other aspects have been tendentiously (and sometimes incorrectly) interpreted; and yet other elements can be accounted for with more parsimonious explanations. Furthermore, although the cornerstone of sociobiological theorizing is the idea that genes or gene complexes generate complex, flexible behaviors, Leavitt points out that there is as yet no unequivocal evidence to support this proposition. of unequivocal evidence for the existence of energy strings and multiple dimensions invalidate string theory. The difference is that string theorists explicitly designate strings and multiple dimensions as hypothetical; they regard their existence skeptically; and they make constant efforts to test these basic propositions by deducing empirical consequences, by analyzing them for theoretical inconsistencies, and by examining how they conform with other, better substantiated theory. By contrast, Leavitt argues, sociobiology routinely hypothesizes the existence of full-blown, generative gene complexes behind incest avoidance, cannibalism, sacrifice, war, and other complex behaviors, yet it rarely tries to demonstrate or test the hypothesis. Too little consideration is given even to detailing possible intermediate steps through which such complexes might have evolved over time. A plausible explanation of how and why an inbreeding species might make the transition to outbreeding practice, for example, would go a long way to shoring up the inbreeding theory and might open up ways of testing it. exercise is far from easy, but the difficulties can hardly be more thorny than those encountered by string theorists. Leavitt even musters a critique of Darwinian theory, a risky exercise given the difficulties of mastering such a specialized and sprawling field and the defensiveness that biologists no doubt feel in the face of the ill-informed attacks and sometimes deceptive tactics of creationists and proponents of intelligent design. Some of the critics he cites - Gould, Lewontin, and most especially Behe - have provoked controversy, and only evolutionists can judge the ultimate value of Leavitt's critique. For a social science audience, though, these chapters are useful reminders that evolutionary theory has yet to be nailed down in all of its particulars, and they are valuable summaries of the issues that are and are not still in dispute. The real value of this book, though, lies in what it is not and in what it offers to sociobiology as well as to its critics. There can be no doubt where Leavitt stands on the issues, but what makes this book so exceptional is the absence of shrillness and polemic. racism with which sociobiologists are usually tarred. Nor is there resort to the tired claim that sociobiologists are uncritically externalizing western cultural assumptions (in contrast to the critics who make this charge, from whose eyes the cultural scales supposedly have fallen). Instead, Leavitt has done what is too rarely ventured, both within and beyond sociobiology. Rather than lobbing polemics, he has endeavored to engage sociobiology on its own terrain, to apply the critical eye that one wishes sociobiologists themselves had more rigorously applied. He mounts a strong and exhaustive case for the prosecution in a hearing that is long overdue, and social science and sociobiology will be well served if sociobiologists seize the opportunity and organize a detailed case for the defense. Where Leavitt has identified lacunae in the paradigm, these need to be addressed. Where the data have been misrepresented or over-interpreted, either further observational work needs to be done or the data have to be jettisoned from the debate. weakness needs to be acknowledged rather than sidelined or ignored. And - to admit a criticism that is inevitable, whether it is true or not - if Leavitt has misconstrued the arguments or the data, the error needs to be explained in detail, not dismissed offhand. In fine, Leavitt's work offers a rare opportunity for us to advance social science in a manner commensurate with that of the physical sciences. There are two broader matters in social science to which Leavitt's inquiry also makes valuable contributions. The first concerns persistent attempts to apply Darwinian theory not to genes, as sociobiologists do, but to memes - culture. These endeavors have permeated social sciences as far apart as cognitive science and political science, but it is perhaps most prevalent in anthropology. In cultural anthropology, the most familiar manifestation is Marvin Harris's 'cultural materialism'. For many years, Harris stipulated that cultural complexes were adaptive and that they had evolved through some kind of Darwinian process. truly scientific archaeology it is now ascendant in archaeology in the form of Robert Dunnell's 'selectionism'. Here, as in sociobiology, Darwinian theory is applied to the understanding of complex human behaviors, but the evolutionary vehicle is the action of natural selection on cultural traits, which are explicitly treated as analogs of genes. If the underpinnings of sociobiology are as tenuous as Leavitt argues, how much more tendentious must be those of selectionism? To the problems Leavitt identifies in sociobiological theorizing must be added the further difficulties associated with treating cultural traits as gene equivalents - not least the problem of identifying the mechanism that fixes 'successful' cultural traits in a population in the way that the physico-chemical properties of the universe fix 'successful' genes in a population.

Throughout history humans have been fascinated with incest. Stories, fables, literature, philosophers, church officials, and scientists have explored this mysterious topic. The taboo is critical to human survival, as incest threatens the species and patterns of human social organization. Drawing upon the rich legacy of theory, empirical data, and speculation about the origins of the incest taboo, this book develops a new explanation for, not only the emergence of the taboo in hominid and human evolutionary history, but also for the varying strength of the taboo for the incestuous dyads of the nuclear family, the different rates of incest of these dyads, and the dramatic differences the psychological pathology incest has on its younger victims. Synthesizing findings from biology, sociobiology, neurology, primatology, clinical psychology, anthropology, and sociology, the authors weave together a scenario of how natural selection initially generated mechanisms of sexual avoidance; and then, as the nuclear family emerged in hominid and human evolution, how sociocultural selection led to the development of the incest taboo.

The role of parents in shaping the characters of their children, the causes of violence and crime, and the roots of personal unhappiness are central to humanity. Like so many fundamental questions about human existence, these issues all relate to behavioural development. In this lucid and accessible book, eminent biologist Professor Sir Patrick Bateson suggests that the nature/nurture dichotomy we often use to think about questions of development in both humans and animals is misleading. Instead, he argues that we should pay attention to whole systems, rather than to simple causes, when trying to understand the complexity of development. In his wide-ranging approach Bateson discusses why so much behaviour appears to be well-designed. He explores issues such as ‘imprinting’ and its importance to the attachment of offspring to their parents; the mutual benefits that characterise communication between parent and offspring; the importance of play in learning how to choose and control the optimal conditions in which to thrive; and the vital function of adaptability in the interplay between development and evolution. Bateson disputes the idea that a simple link can be found between genetics and behaviour. What an individual human or animal does in its life depends on the reciprocal nature of its relationships with the world about it. This knowledge also points to ways in which an animal’s own behaviour can provide the variation that influences the subsequent course of evolution. This has relevance not only for our scientific approaches to the systems of development and evolution, but also on how humans change institutional rules that have become dysfunctional, or design public health measures when mismatches occur between themselves and their environments. It affects how we think about ourselves and our own capacity for change.

Arguing against the conventional view--that the incest taboo developed in response to the act of incest--The Original Sin presents biological and anthropological evidence to demonstrate the innate avoidance of incest as a feature of pre-cultural organization. Arens shows how the taboo evolved as a unique human social mechanism to control the practice among certain social classes, thus drawing the conclusion that incest, rather than its prohibition, is the cultural invention. Arens directly confronts the origin and definition of incest while seeking to uncover the particular and general meaning of this negative form of behavior.