Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo: The State of Knowledge at the Turn of the Century

Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo: The State of Knowledge at the Turn of the Century. Arthur P. Wolf and William H. Durham, eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. 228 pp.

In the early 1980s, scholars declared the discussion of inbreeding, incest, and the incest taboo at a stalemate. The problem seemed to hinge on whose argument about inbreeding avoidance in humans, incestuous impulses, and the reasons for incest taboos was most convincing-Sigmund Freud's or Edward Westermarck's. Freud's position that humans are innately incestuous led to explanations formulated around the Oedipus complex and the overcoming of incestuous impulses to create order in families and society. Westermarck proposed that natural (hence, biologically based) inbreeding avoidance in humans produced sexual aversion among those raised in close association in early childhood and that these innate aversions were expressed socially and culturally as incest taboos. This book, the outcome of a conference (2000) marking the inauguration of the new Department of Anthropological Sciences at Stanford University, focuses renewed attention on Westermarck's hypothesis in light of recent findings from genetics, biological anthropology, primatology, ethnography, history, psychiatry, and philosophy.

Most of the chapters examine the logic of and evidence for Westermarck's propositions. They consider questions such as the following: Are the elements of Westermarck's proposition causally related? Do biological and behavioral research...