incest taboo

incest

trivia

naming

junior

is a human-defining trait. Not a biological prohibition but a social one, one which promotes dealing with and integrating with outsiders groups.

For society to exist, humans must transcend the merely biological relation between individuals. Group members must not marry within the immediate group, but with members of other groups. This is the function of the prohibition of incest, the quasi-universal trait of human society which forbids the sexual union of biologically proximate individuals. The reason for this prohibition, argues Le vi-Strauss, is not a biological but a social one. What appears to be a wholly negative rule also has a positive dimension, the reverse side of the prohibition of incest being the prescription of exogamy, ensuring integration through intermarriage with other social groups. From this perspective, the prohibition of incest would be the most fundamental of rules, the first rule of social integration... in Le vi-Strauss' somewhat philosophical phrasing, it represents the passage from 'nature' to 'culture'. (Johnson in Simmons 'kant to levi-strauss' :230)

is a means of guarding against the rivalries, enmity, jealousy, and disturbance that incest would cause within the family.

sexual relations within family members would create many rivalries, enmity, jealousy, tension, and disturbance which effects the function of a good family'.

is a not at all ubiquitous practice, even if rather common. It is undertaken because the sexual drive is fundamentally asocial and must be constrained for society to exist at all.

Where does this leave the taboo on incest' Rather than insisting that it is ubiquitous in face of the facts of history, which show that brother-sister, father-daughter and mother-son relations have in some societies, such as Ancient Egypt or Achaemenid Persia, not only not been prohibited, but even enjoined Godelier suggests that what is actually universal is something simpler. The sexual drive is fundamentally asocial: notoriously no respecter of rules, it even particularly delights in breaking them. Hence for society to review be possible at all, it must be constrained. Any society requires therefore the existence of some sexual prohibitions as such. These, however, can take any number of different forms. If taboos on incest are far the most common of these, that is because they guard the door to the parenting unit that distinguishes human from primate societies: There nowhere exist a society where the individual is authorized to satisfy all his sexual desires (and so also fantasies). And it is always at the threshold of the social units within which men and women cooperate to bring up children, whether or not they have given birth to them, that the most extreme forms of sexual permissiveness have been halted. *(Goody labyrinth 2005 36)

is a practice arising out of familiarity whereby even people who have been brought up together treat each other like siblings.

People who have been brought up together from very early treat each other like siblings.'

is a social form which accelerates cooperation among family members and reduces suspicious and hostility among family members.

incest taboo is necessary for co-operation and healthy relationships among family members. Incest taboo accelerate cooperation among the members and if there is no restriction of sexual relations, it would lead to suspicious and hostility among members'

incest taboo, n.Definitions

incest taboo