Joyce Weng

December 10, 2008

Cultural Anthropology
Final Exam: Part A, #1
Dr. Brook

List Murdoch’s six cross-cultural findings related to the incest

taboo. Discuss and evaluate three theories for the origin of
the incest taboo. What two positive functions are served by
the incest prohibition?

Among countless studies on the incest taboo are Murdoch’s six

universal facts concerning this specific prohibition that appear in all
cultures. First and foremost, the incest taboo is present in all cultures
everywhere and through all of history. There are defined exceptions
with royal families of certain cultures, like the Incas, who believed in
the “divine” right of power where the intent was to keep it within the
family. Other than that, the incest taboo has always been applied to
members of every culture. Second, the ban on incestuous
relationships does not stop within the immediate family. The
prohibition varies in its extent on how distant a family member must
be before a union is socially acceptable. This leads to the third point,
which is that the incest prohibition is not predictable. There is no
uniformed rule concerning the incest taboo; only that it exists at some
level in every culture. Fourthly, the specific rule against incest in each
culture does not always have a logical connection between ego’s
“biological closeness” and whether or not the marriage would be
socially recognized or not. For example, the daughter of a father’s
brother would be acknowledged. Where as, the daughter of a father’s
sister would violate the incest prohibition. However, the fifth point that
always holds true is that as the genealogical distance between blood
relatives grow, then the more lenient the incest ban becomes. The

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sixth fact reveals there is a breach of the incest taboo that can and
does happen in all cultures.
Of the many theories that have developed over the years
regarding the origins of the incest taboo, there are three theories that
are worth mentioning here. They consist of Freud’s Psychoanalytic
Theory, Tyler and White’s Cooperative Theory, and Mariam Slater’s
Demographic Theory. First, according to Freud in his Psychoanalytic
Theory, the ego has latent and unconscious desires for the mother,
which his superego finds unacceptable. Due to the desires for the
mother there develops a fear for the father who is seen as the alpha
male to whom the ego is competing with. Then the ego represses his
feelings as a result of this chain of emotions. Meanwhile, as the ego
grows and matures, he begins to identify with the father and forms
enough strength to find other women to fulfill his desires. This “liminal
response” is the ambivalence towards a demand that is both restrictive
and socially enviable. The problem with Freud’s theory is that it is only
from a male’s point of view and becomes unstable at best when
applied to the female child’s development.
Second, there is the Cooperative Theory by Tyler and White.
They attempt to explain the incest taboo’s origins by recognizing what
appears to be a systematic aim to trade women in ego’s family unit for
women from other kin groups. The thing that motivates such a custom
is the need to expand family units into multiple branches within the
kinship network that would obligate everyone to work together.
Theoretically speaking, this custom would increase the survival rate of
the family line because of the strengthened bond among a greater
number of contributors. In this thought process, people survive natural
hardships through cooperation, thereby making the incest taboo an
adaptable trait. As it has been observed, “brothers and sisters start
life together but end apart” because there is a need to find mates in
other networks. This applies to all societies. In this theory, the goal is
to adapt by forming as many alliances among different family units as
possible. However, this theory by Tyler and White is incomplete, as it
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does not fully explain the reason to look in other kinship networks. It
does not answer the question of why family units do not merely
procreate in larger numbers among themselves.
The third theory by Mariam Slater is the most plausible of all
theories to date. The Demographic Theory basically consists of the
idea that incest was near impossible before the advent of scientific and
technological advancements to further prolong the average human
lifespan. At the turn of the century in 1900, adults mostly lived to
approximately forty-four years of age. Therefore, “intergenerational”
sex and pregnancies were virtually impossible because of the age
difference between parents and children. The trend was that the
parents would die before children reached maturity. Meanwhile, if
siblings were to engage in intercourse with each other, there was the
possibility of having only one child before the older sibling would pass
away. This was mainly because it took parents approximately three or
four years before having another child. The age difference between
siblings prevented them from developing long lasting incestuous
unions together. As a result, intimate partners must be sought out
elsewhere other than within the family. At this point after considering
the Demographic Theory, only then did Tyler and White’s Cooperative
Theory make sense. In other words, because of the natural
phenomenon that the age difference between parents and children as
well as siblings among each other served as a natural deterrent to
incest, only then, did the incest taboo develop as a cultural
circumstance, which became established as an illicit act.
There are two main beneficial purposes for why the incest taboo
should be observed. First, people now know because of scientific
research that when incest is avoided, then so are the high risks of
having biologically deformed children avoided. Second, marriage and
pregnancies outside the immediate and extended family helps
promote the chance of creating new kinship alliances. The term
“exogamy” refers to the practice of marrying outside the kin group.
Furthermore, “endogamy” defines the act of marrying within the kin
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group. Though, to clarify again; the incest taboo is inconsistent from
culture to culture and definitions of kin groups vary. While
“endogamy” relates to the idea of marrying within a certain network, it
is possible to practice this without violating the incest taboo.
In summary, Murdoch concisely stated the six universal traits of
the incest taboo that occurs in all societies. The incest prohibition
consists of its universality among all cultures, its limits not ending with
the immediate family, its inconsistency from culture to culture, the
arbitrary line that is drawn in each culture, its correlation between
decreased intensity and genealogical distance, and the fact that the
incest taboo is violated in all cultures. Among many theories for how
the incest taboo came to be are three significant ideas, namely Freud’s
Psychoanalytic Theory, Tyler and White’s Cooperative Theory, and
Mariam Slater’s Demographic Theory. Meanwhile, the incest taboo
operates most effectively to prevent genetic mutations in pregnancies
and allow for the opportunity to form social alliances as an adaptive
form of survival.