Incest and Exogamy Issues - Essay Example

The ambiguity of the incest taboo that has for so long confused anthropologists is still not revealed whilst it is seen as establishing a structure of exchanges among separate groups. As it is practically universal---some constraints on marriage are found in every society---the incest taboo has the impulsiveness of a natural desire.  However since it is not a biological need (and Lévi-Strauss demonstrates this extremely convincingly via the case of cross-cousin marriage, which is a  desire and not a need, while parallel-cousin marriage is a better choice as that could be done to fulfil the need and just a desire) it partakes of law, of a cultural obligation. The incest taboo is not so much a harmful restriction on the pool of marriage partners as an assurance that one group will give its daughters to another group to fulfil their needs, as long as the other group does the same. For Lévi-Strauss---and this is for the most part vital for family theory --the incest taboo prevents the marital family from dying in on itself as well as gives assurance to the fact that the wider society will take preference over the family using marrying outside the family this group could be called non-family groups.

 Philosophically, incest asks an essential question of our changing mores: not just what is normal as well as what is deviant,  it also asks if such a thing as deviance exists at all in the relationships which humans have, if they give the impression of being acceptable to those who share them (Janeway, p.1). The course impact of the incest taboo in prehistoric society is not inward toward relations among the immediate family; it is outward to the bigger society. It does not in any way refer to the sexual interests of the individual, what it refers to is the requirements of the society as a whole. The limit of sexual activity and marriage partners builds a society at large as the most important field of sexual objects as well as undercuts the autonomy and the power of the family that which immediately. Lacan and psychoanalysis give emphasise the fact that the incest taboo tends to set what is commonly known as emotional relationships inside the family. This process takes place in the family’s final structure.

Lévi-Strauss's alliance theory states that there are two diverse structural "models" of marriage exchange. Moreover, the women of ego's group are presented to a different group that is "explicitly defined" by social institutions: this structure is called the "elementary structures of kinship". In other words, it can also be called the group of probable spouses intended for the women in ego's group is "undetermined and always open", to the elimination, nevertheless, of assured kin-people (for instance nuclear family, aunts, uncles)  as in the Western world. According to Lévi-Strauss, the latter is known as the” complex structures of kinship".

Levi-Strauss' model tried to offer a distinct explanation for cross-cousin marriage, sister exchange, and dual organization with rules of exogamy. Marriage rules over time create social structures, as marriages are mainly forged among groups and not only between the two individuals concerned. When women are exchanged by groups ordinary basis they marry collectively, with every marriage making a debtor/creditor relationship which ought to be fair during the "repayment" of wives, either directly or otherwise in the next generation. Using necessitating wife-exchange preparations, exogamy consequently promotes inter-group alliances as well as serves to form structures of social networks.