Incest Taboos And Kinship: A Biological Or A Cultural ... - EScholarship

Skip to main contentUCLAUCLADepositManageSubmissionsMenu

• About eScholarship
• UC Open Access Policies
• Journals
• Academic Units

• eScholarship
• UCLA
• UCLA Previously Published Works

Download PDF

• Main
  • PDF

ShareEmailFacebook

Incest Taboos and Kinship: A Biological or a Cultural Story?

2014

• Read, Dwight W

...Main ContentMetricsAuthor & Article InfoAbstract

In most, if not all, societies, incest taboos -- perhaps the most universal of cultural taboos -- include prohibitions on marriage between parent and child or between siblings.  This universality suggests a biological origin, yet the considerable variation across societies in the full range of prohibited marriage relations implies a cultural origin.  Correspondingly, theories regarding the origin of incest taboos vary from those that focus on the biological consequences were marriage-based procreation allowed to include inbred matings, to those that focus on social consequences such as confounding social roles, especially within the family, or restricting networks of interfamily alliances, were marriages to take place between close relatives.  For those focusing on the  biological consequences, the sexual aversion hypothesis of the anthropologist Edvard Westermarck has played a central role through seemingly providing an empirically grounded, causal link from the phenomenal level of behavior to the ideational level of culture.  Yet the matter is not so simple and requires rethinking of what we mean by kinship and how our ideas about kinship relate to the widespread occurrence of incest taboos and the extensive variability in their content.

Many UC-authored scholarly publications are freely available on this site because of the UC's open access policies. Let us know how this access is important for you.

Article

• Abstract
• Main Content

• Metrics
• Author & Article Info

• An Extended Bout of Kaluresis

  • Kwak, Jamie;
  • Olson, Lindsay;
  • Kupiec-Weglinski, Sophie;
  • Patel, Satya

• Historical roots of depressive symptoms in older adults: Gam Saan songs

  • Woo, Benjamin KP;
  • Chung, Jamie OP

• Ocean alkalinity enhancement in an estuary

  • Ho, Minna;
  • Molemaker, Jeroen;
  • Damien, Pierre;
  • Long, Matthew C;
  • Bianchi, Daniele;
  • McWilliams, James C

• Effects of urban eutrophication on pelagic habitat capacity in the Southern California Bight

  • Frieder, Christina A;
  • Kessouri, Fayçal;
  • Ho, Minna;
  • Sutula, Martha;
  • Bianchi, Daniele;
  • McWilliams, James C;
  • Deutsch, Curtis;
  • Howard, Evan

• Things We Do for No Reason™: Routine use of postoperative incentive spirometry to reduce postoperative pulmonary complications

  • Larsen, Tyler;
  • Chuang, Kelley;
  • Patel, Satya;
  • Betancourt, Jaime

Top