Anthropology: Incest Taboo - Essay Example

Essays- Anthropology Of all the laws drafted around the world, incest taboo seems to be unanimously agreed to be written in the constitutions withan indelible ink. Incest taboo is a social norm that forbids sexual relationships between culturally specified relatives (Schaefer and Lamm, 1995). To simply put it, this provision states that we must choose our mating partners outside the nuclear family, both consanguine and legal associations (e.g. adopted children, surrogate mothers,etc.) Hypotheses regarding this gripping notion of incest taboo converge within sociobiology, socio-environmental theories, and psychoanalysis theories. Social scientists draw a parallel line between human sciences and natural sciences by means of interspersing Darwinian’s model of natural selection into the realm of intricate humanly facet of life. These new hybrids of the sciences are termed sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and behavioral genetics. Proponents of the Darwinian model contend that incest taboo is the inevitable result of inbreeding avoidance. Incest taboo is considered by social scientists as a part of human behavior and just like species is similarly subjected to natural selection. Products of prohibited sexual unions are often inferior in nature and despicable in appearance. Following Darwin’s natural selection theory, if this is the case, then logically inbreeding will be outlived by outbreeding, thus favoring incest taboo. Adversaries of sociobiology, the socio-environmentalists, challenge that incest taboo is a practical solution for problems of human social life. As communities progress, structure of the family also changes. From preindustrial to postmodernism, and to go along with that, from extended to nuclear family. Alongside with these developments come setbacks. Survival becomes blight when industrialism kicked in, which developed into the intensification of incest taboo. To assure survival of a descent group, children were obliged to find mates outside their lineage; this is to accrue economic responsibility and military alliance from the other party which will be made possible by an exogamous sexual union. Sigmund Freud, a renowned psychoanalyst, interestingly declared that incest taboo is a product of regret of the sons who involuntarily developed a craving for a sexual relationship with their mothers. These sons planted seeds of hatred for their fathers because of jealousy. Yet, these sons are fearful of their fathers’ reprisal and fatal competition between the sons themselves. As a result of this fear, the sons circumvented their sexual sentiments for their mothers; thus, giving birth to incest taboo. If you will endeavor in analyzing these theories on incest taboo, you will, I presume, sensibly choose the arguments of the socio-environmentalists. The Darwinian model is flawed for traditional societies that do not possess a credible proof that inbreeding will produce appalling offspring. They are diffident to this scientific knowledge and rather turn to other factors such as the wrath of nature spirits to explain this occurrence. Besides, what Darwinians’ are pointing out is the fate of the products of incest taboo and not its origin. Incest taboo developed not because of natural selection but because of everyday human challenges. Humanity explored the possible frontier for survival hence they thought of an resourceful way to make surviving modestly painless; that is to forge marital unions between two lineages or clans to build economic and military ties. 2. At least 100,000 years ago, according to anthropological evidence, religion already subsisted and controlled much of humanity’s passion. The perpetual challenges and uniqueness of the world shifted humankind’s search for answers to an invention we termed religion. Perplexing questions such as “Does God exist?”, “What is my purpose in life?”, “Why do we die?” are accountable through religion. Spiritual concerns has long been subjugated our reality. Billions of people belong to many religious faiths. Different countries nurse their personal religious beliefs, values, experiences, and practices. Inevitably, akin to any other foundations of society, religion endured modifications or in a more scientific term, evolution. A prevailing social institution, to borrow the words of Herbert Spencer, is not excluded from natural selection. Religion was not selected to perish, but indeed to both flourish and dwindle. Religion earned a great adaptive mechanism throughout its existence. To exemplify this point, let us take as a case in point the advent of the Industrial Revolution. This noteworthy episode in history spawned factories, inflated the labor market, and created a myriad of social organizations. It also markedly altered all facets of life including religion. As technology advanced and scientific treatises prosper, religion took the backwaters toward secularization. Religion’s influence diffidently destabilized and its stronghold perseveres in the area of individual and family life. In 1904, sociologist Max Weber published his masterwork entitled Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In this book, he revealed the study he had done with European nations with both Protestant and Catholic citizens. Stunningly, data showed that large numbers of business proprietors, capitalists, and skilled laborers were Protestant. Weber elucidate on this find. These economy-enthusiasts were followers of John Calvin, the leader of the Protestant Reformation, who put forth a disciplined work-ethic, materialism, and a life guided by rationality. Thus the end result of such principle is the stimulation of concern on accumulated profits and savings. The social organization of these bourgeoisies is ruled by the belief on predestination, which embraced the dogma that people will either go to heaven or hell. But the decision doesn’t depend on the numbers of accumulated sins but on the heaps of profit reaped in one’s lifetime. Hard-work will be rewarded in heaven, so they suppose. However, for underdeveloped countries and for those subsisting on the fringes of civilizations, religion dole out as a survival mechanism. Lack of advanced technology and scientific knowledge, these areas heavily rely on religion for answers and for good fate. A case in point is Melanesian traditional religion. Specifically in the island of Papua New Guinea, it was discovered that most of the inhabitants were followers of animism and polytheism. They have quite a few ideas of God; they believe in culture heroes, sky Gods, and nature spirits. Apparently, this belief in many Gods has its significance to their mode of subsistence and social organizations. Melanesian inhabitants are commonly foragers, hunters-and-gatherers, farmers, and herders, which made them a terrific case study asset for anthropologists. These traditional occupations demand complete commitment for in these depend their meager survival. Since there is no place for alienation in this lifestyle, these people were able to put their energy in fashioning ideas of Gods and spirits for bountiful harvest, productive hunt, and abundant foodstuff. Their social organization is gorgeously simple; they choose only spiritual leaders for their bands. Conclusively, religion and society’s mode of subsistence and social organization share an understandable correlation. 3. There are two principal ways of determining descent, the bilateral and the unilateral. Descent is a code that places people to kinship groups according to their relationship to an individual’s mother or father. In bilateral descent, both the father’s and the mother’s lineage are regarded as equally important; whereas unilateral descent gives preference to one lineage, either the father’s which is termed as patrilineal, or the mother’s which is named as matrilineal. The complexity of the concept of descent does not end here. Under the main types of descent, dangles the notions of parallel cousins and cross cousins. Parallel cousins is defined as your first cousin in the same-sexed line of both your father and the mother. It is simply your first cousins from your father’s brothers and from your mother’s sisters. On the other hand, cross cousins are your first cousins in the opposite-sexed line of both your father and your mother. To simply illustrate it again, cross cousins are your first cousins from your father’s sisters and from your mother’s brothers (Schaefer and Lamm, 1995). These kin terminological systems were devised for the purpose of understanding descent patterns of the three North American Indian cultures, the Omaha, Crow, and Iroquois. This is specifically helpful for anthropologists who are endeavoring in family structures. The primary importance of distinguishing between parallel cousins and cross cousins lies in the concept of incest taboo. To put it graphically, parallel cousins are prohibited to engage in sexual unions while cross cousins are not. If, in case the father and his brother have sexual contact to the wife of one of the other, it will logically produce parallel cousins that are born by the same mother, making them half-siblings. Similarly, mothers and their sisters can possibly share sexual access to a particular man that will again logically produce parallel cousins that were conceived from the sap of the same father. This danger of incest in parallel cousins are absent in cross cousins because it is not viable for cross-cousins to have the same mother or father even by open or hidden sexual relationship. The time communities learned how to plant and harvest, to produce surplus, to settle in permanent homes, and to build social organizations for protection, is the time descent system developed into an intricate branch of kinship groups. Family structures were redefined and remodeled repeatedly, so as incest taboo. The significance of the concepts parallel cousins and cross cousins is merely a mechanism that will abide by the rule of incest taboo and at the same time maintain the beneficial alliances created by marital unions of two different lineages. Reference: Schaefer, R.T., and Lamm, Robert P. (1995). Sociology. USA: McGraw-Hill Inc. Read More