Prohibition of the inceste

The various Anglo-Saxon and French-speaking currents are intended to interpret this concept as being a social rule, of management and control of the relations, this aiming in function at creating an alliance between distinct groups.

The Inceste thus becomes absurd socially. The definition of this prohibition would be finally the following one: the individuals intend themselves not to put at the contact the identical one to itself.

Thus, according to Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, the difference of the produced sexes a dynamic radical difference, but of German are capable being of identical because produced of the same filiation (cf Germanité), consequently, their relation is prohibited.

It goes from there thus with all the " relationship nodale" , some is the mode (blood, milk, fiction,…), as long as the relationship remains maintained and thought like active, since one recognizes relative with others, the bond (mode) which make relationship implies us in certain identical and thus prohibits us any incestueuse relation.

On the dynamic principle, Claude Lévi-Strauss conceives the prohibition of the inceste like the positive shape of exchange of the women, towards a pacification of the relations, granting to alliance for a complementarity social and emotional…, consequently, according to this structural approach, the prohibition of the inceste would be this phenomenon making pass from nature to the culture. The Anthropologue will be repudiated thereafter by it…

Maurice Godelier, as for him, distinguishes this taboo as being a standard established by the company (regular agreement of the individuals), which thus implies that the company preexists to prohibition; while for the structural step, the phenomenon developed in the context of nature, and thus affirmed itself only in the culture.

Taboo of the inceste

There are several theories which explain how and why the taboo appears. Certain ethnologists affirm that all the companies have a form or the other of this taboo of the inceste, whereas others dispute the universality of it.

Ethnology

The quotations below come from Notes and Queries , one of the Anglo-Saxon works most recognized in ethnographic research and gives an idea of the studied field.

“ the inceste is the sexual relationship between individuals bound by a certain degree of Parenté. In all the companies there are rules which prohibit the incestueuses unions, as well in the form of Sexual relationships as in the form of Mariage S official. The two prohibited ones necessarily do not coincide. The degree of relationship related to the interdict is not recognized in a uniform way. The rules relating to the inceste must then be studied in each company by the methods of the Généalogie (or genealogical method). Prohibition can be as narrow as by including only one type of relation parent-child (that remains rare), or inside the elementary family; or as broad as by including all those whose genealogy or relationship can be rebuilt. The most current practice is that the unions with certain parents are regarded as incestueuses, these relations being chosen by the type of descent highlighted in the company. In certain companies, the unions with certain people bound by affinity are also regarded as incestueuses.

the sanctions fall in one from the following categories: (A) individuals concerned; (b) community as a whole?

are These sanctions imposed by an authority or is there a belief according to which they are guaranteed by a supernatural force?

Y does it have a correlation between the severity of the sanction and the proximity of the relation of relationship of the culprits?

Comment the children being born from a incestueuse union are treated?

Y does it have methods, ritual or legal, by which the people who are in the prohibited categories and who wish to marry can become again free to link themselves?”

As this extract suggests it, the anthropologist S are interested in the difference between the rules of the culture and the practices real, and of many ethnologists observed that the inceste takes place in companies which have interdicts of the inceste.

One can notice that in these theories the anthropologists are not only concerned with the inceste between brother and sister, and do not affirm absolutely who all the forms of inceste are taboos (these theories are even more complicated by the fact that various companies define the relationship in different ways, and sometimes in a distant way). Moreover, the definition is limited to the formal sexual relationships. That does not want to say that other forms of sexual contacts do not take place, or are prohibited or authorized.

In these theories, the anthropologists are interested in the rules of the marriage and not in the sexual behavior (to the full extent). In short, the anthropologists do not study there the inceste itself; they ask to define the term inceste , to indicate which are the consequences, with an aim of describing the social relations in the community.

This extract also suggests that the bond between the sexual and marital practices are complex and that the companies distinguish several kinds of prohibitions.

In other words, even if an individual should not marry or to have sexual relationships with some other people, other sexual relationships can be prohibited for other reasons and with other sanctions.

For example, the inhabitants of the Îles Trobriand as well prohibit the sexual relationships between a man and his mother as enters a woman and her father, but they describe these interdicts in a very different way. The relations between a man and his mother belong to the relations prohibited between members of the same clan; the relations between a woman and her father do not form part of it.

That comes from what the bonds of this companies are matrilinéaires and thus the children belong to the clan of their mother and not to that of their father. Thus, the sexual relationships between a man and the sister of his mother (or the girl of the sister of its mother) are regarded as incestueuses, but the relations between a man and the sister of his father are not it.

Thus a man and the sister of his father will often have a form of flirt, and a man and the girl of the sister of her father will be able to choose to have sexual relationships or to marry.

The examples in other companies still reveal other variations on the comprehension and the local definition of the concept of inceste.

In the Chinese companies, the taboo against the marriage of people bearing same family name is very strong (whatever the distance in the relationship).

There are also many taboos against the marriage of people bearing certain family names because these names belong to clans which were close in the past.

In the same way, the marriage between first cousins is interdict in certain contemporary jurisdictions, but it is legal and acceptable in others.

The explanation of the taboo of the inceste

Even if the anthropologists observed and studied many violations of the taboo of the inceste (more simply, they observed cases of inceste), all the theories of anthropology are interested in the formal interdict against the inceste (such as definite locally), and not in the cases of inceste themselves (whatever is the definition). The inceste is prohibited also in the orthodoxe religion. The cousins do not have the right of marrier between them.

These theories are justified by two crucial questions:

firstly, being given the variability of the definitions of the inceste, the relations prohibited, are there a form common or a universal function to the taboo of the inceste?
secondly, since the people make the inceste, why do so many companies (possibly, all companies) prohibit certain forms of the inceste?

It will be noticed that these questions remain without relationship with the specific effects that the inceste can have on the people (a subject who is naturally left to the psychologists).

A theory affirms that the taboo expresses a psychological revulsion that the people feel naturally with the thought of the inceste. But the majority of the anthropologists reject this explanation, while being based on the fact that the inceste takes place indeed.

Another theory affirms that the respect of the taboo would reduce the rate of congenital defects caused by the sexual relationships between too close parents. Firstly, the proximity of the parents does not imply congenital defects directly, but it increases the frequency of the Homozygote S. A homozygote coding a congenital defect will produce children with defects with the birth, but the homozygotes which do not code a defect rather will reduce the frequency of the carriers in a population. So newborns with defects die (or are killed) before reproducing, one obtains the same effect of reduction of the frequency of defective gene in the population.

Secondly, the anthropologists pointed out in the case of the islands Trobriand that the genetic distance between a man and the girl of the sister of her father and between a man and the girl of the sister of her mother are the same one. The interdict against the relations thus does not rest there on strictly biological concerns.

Lastly, Claude Lévi-Strauss affirmed that the taboo of the inceste is an interdict against the Endogamie, its effect is to encourage the Exogamie. Through the exogamy, houses or lines differently without bond will form marital attachments which reinforce social cohesion and solidarity.

One can see an explanation of the taboo of the inceste in part of the Théogonie of Hésiode: the passage of Pandora . Pandora is not the first woman, but it is the woman by whom the statute of the woman in the Greek companies is fixed, this showing well the function of a Mythe, to explain an irrefutable fact by an account. In the Théogonie , the human ones lived without rules when Pandore was given to them by the gods, this one consequently symbolizes the essential function of the woman, to maintain the social links. Indeed, if each family preserves her women (i.e. if the women of a family marry only men resulting from the same family), there is no possible alliance between families, therefore not of human society. There are only groups. The function first of the women is thus to be given, exchanged, so that the families are allied , and that a company exists (see on this subject the system of the Don and counterpresent, founder of the relations in the primitive companies).

This theory was discussed intensely in the Années 1950 by the anthropologists. A great part of its attraction comes from what the study of the taboo of the inceste made it possible to treat simultaneously more fundamental centers of interest for the anthropologists of this time: how to describe the social relations in a community, how these relations they are favorable or unfavourable with solidarity in the group?

However, the consensus was done among the anthropologists et - with the War of Vietnam (especially for the American ) and the whole of the process of Decolonization of the Africa, the Asia and the Oceania (especially for the European ) - the interests of the anthropologists turned to other questions that the description of the social links.

Matriarchy, patriarchate and taboo of the inceste

By distinguishing three fundamental social organizations related to three relations from the woman to the man (Alice Schlegel: Male Predominance and Female Autonomy , 1972,66 studied “primitive” companies):

the husband with the authority on the woman;
it does not have there preponderance, between the husband and the brother, of authority on the woman;
the brother has an authority on his sister;

one will have:

- 1) while in a company where the husband holds the authority on the woman, as in the patriarchate who established the relation between the coitus and the pregnancy, taboo of the inceste which will go from the mother to the son and the father to his daughter;

- 2) when the authority on the woman is shared between her brother and her husband, it is there that it is freest because the two men cannot agree on the claim of this authority, a taboo of the indifferent inceste, i.e. he will appear according to two cases 1) and 3).

- 3) in the matriarchy (which does not know the Co-fertilizing virtue of the sperm) a taboo of the inceste which will go from the mother to the son, and of the brother of the mother to her niece,

In parallel, one sees a filiation of heritage which will go from the brother of the mother to the nephew into 3), who will go from the husband of the mother to the son into 1), and indifferent in 2). The heritage of mother with girl (the filiation ) exists in the three cases.

See too

Inceste

External bonds

Solomon Reinach, the prohibition of the inceste and the feeling of decency, Worships, myths and religions , Volume I, ED. Ernest Leroux, Paris, 1905, pp. 157-172.

Major theoretical work

Claude Lévi-Strauss, elementary Structures of the relationship
Paul-Claude Racamier, Inceste and Incestuel , ED. College of Psychoanalysis, 1995, ISBN 2911474007
George Homans and David Schneider, Marriage, Final Authority, and Causes: With Study off Unilateral Cross-country race-Cousin Marriage
Rodney Needham, Structure and Feeling: In Test Puts in Social Anthropology
Sigmund Freud, Totem and Tabou

Sources of the article

Claude capital Meillassoux, Women, attics and , 1975; Critical of the functionalist and structuralist design of the prohibition of the inceste

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