Arthur P. Wolf

Why is incest widely prohibited? Why does the scope of the prohibition vary from society to society? Why does incest occur despite the prohibition? What are the consequences? To reexamine these questions, this book brings together contributions from the fields of genetics, behavioral biology, primatology, biological and social anthropology, philosophy, and psychiatry.

The State of Knowledge at the Turn of the Century

Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo

William H. Durham

The State of Knowledge at the Turn of the Century : [papers Presented at a Conference Held at Stanford University, Feb. 24-25,2000]

Why do most people never have sex with close relatives? And why do they disapprove of other people doing so? Incest Avoidance and Incest Taboos investigates our human inclination to avoid incest and the powerful taboo against incest found in all societies. Both subjects stir strong feelings and vigorous arguments within and beyond academic circles. With great clarity, Wolf lays out the modern assumptions about both, concluding that all previous approaches lack precision and balance on insecure evidence. Researchers he calls "constitutionalists" explain human incest avoidance by biologically-based natural aversion, but fail to explain incest taboos as cultural universals. By contrast, "conventionalists" ignore the evolutionary roots of avoidance and assume that incest avoidant behavior is guided solely by cultural taboos. Both theories are incomplete. Wolf tests his own theory with three natural experiments: bint'amm (cousin) marriage in Morocco, the rarity of marriage within Israeli kibbutz peer groups, and "minor marriages" (in which baby girls were raised by their future mother-in-law to marry an adoptive "brother") in China and Taiwan. These cross-cultural comparisons complete his original and intellectually rich theory of incest, one that marries biology and culture by accounting for both avoidance and taboo.

Two Aspects of Human Nature

Incest Avoidance and the Incest Taboos

Joint Committee on Chinese Studies (U.S.)

Susan B. Hanley

Joint Committee on Japanese Studies

"Based on a conference sponsored by the joint committees on Chinese Studies and Japanese Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council.".

Family and Population in East Asian History

Studies in Chinese Society

Theo Engelen

This volume results from a conference on the 1965 Hajnal hypothesis at Stanford University in 1999. Scholars from all over the world reviewed the contribution Hajnal's hypothesis made to our knowledge of historical demography. First, the hypothesis is placed in its historiographic context. Geography comes next. Hajnal distinguished Western Europe from the rest of the world because marriage there was late and non-universal. By contrast, in Eastern Europe, but even more so in Asia, young and universal marriage dominated. The second part of this book explores these geographic divisions, covering Western, Eastern, and Southern Europe, Japan, India and China. The third part of the volume introduces new issues and thus revises and even extends Hajnal's hypothesis into patriarchy, the role of children, women's labor, servants, and illegitimacy. This volume is the first in the series Life at the Extremes. The demography of Europe and China edited by Chuang Ying-Chang (Academia Sinica, Taiwan), Theo Engelen (Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands) and Arthur P. Wolf (Stanford University, U.S.A.). Book jacket.

Arthur P. Wolf

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