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From: repnomar@leland.Stanford.EDU (Janet M. Lafler)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Incest avoidance
Message-ID: <1991Apr5.233453.3577@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 5 Apr 91 23:34:53 GMT
References: <8987.27f748d9@jetson.uh.edu> <1991Apr2.035304.11461@leland.Stanford.EDU> <21487@crg5.UUCP>
Organization: AIR, Stanford University
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In article <21487@crg5.UUCP> szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes:
>In article <1991Apr2.035304.11461@leland.Stanford.EDU> repnomar@leland.Stanford.EDU (Janet M. Lafler) writes:
>
>>[Structuralist et. al. schools of anthropology theory]
>>some still hold to socio-biological explanations, which I find, um, uncon-
>>vincing.  
>
>Whoa, that went by a bit fast.  Slow down here.
>
>"Still"?  Sociobiology, at 16 years old, as far newer than Structuralism 
>and most of the other schools you describe.  I would bet most anthropologists 
>have not read the works by any of Wilson, Dawkins, Symons, et. al. 
>even by 1991.

You're right.  I should have phrased it differently.  But while the particular
theoretical position known as Sociobiology is relatively recent, the general
idea that some forms of social behavior can be explained biologically has been
around far longer.  The explanation you describe below, for instance, is 
similar to the Westermarck hypothesis;  unfortunately, I can't find the ref-
erence for this, but Westermarck was pretty early in this century.  Please 
note that I am not trying to present this as an argument against the theory!  
I'm just pointing out that while Sociobiology as a school is relatively recent,
it has its history in older theories, as do Structuralism, etc.

>
>Also, you failed to describe the sociobiological explanation, which
>is as follows:
>
>The proximate cause of the incest "taboo" (more properly called
>incest avoidance) is the behavioral development, upon sexual 
>maturity, of sexual avoidance between children who shared proximity 
>and a common caretaker between the ages of 2 and 5. This has been 
>confirmed by observations of various human societies, both where the 
>caretaker and/or children are related by genetics and/or adoption.

Do you know about the traditional Chinese practice of young men marrying
an adopted sister (who was adopted specifically to be his wife?  I don't
know much about this practice - how young the girls are adopted and so forth.
Do you know of any recent research on this?  (This question is a request
for information, not a challenge.)

>
>The ultimate cause is the harm caused by inbreeding, as has been
>discussed.  Genes which produce the above behavioral development
>tended to perpetuate themselves more often than their alleles 
>through human evolutionary history.  Note that evolution does not 
>require the behavior to be perfect, any more than evolution designed 
>bipedal creatures with a perfect back (ouch!).  It just has to benefit 
>the encoding genes more than its bad side-effects hurt them.
>
>The theory is further confirmed from behavior of other primates,
>which develop a similar incest "taboo" without the accompanying cultural 
>structures required by the Structuralist, Symbolic, Interpretive, and 
>other pure-culture schools.

Do species of different genuses (or whatever the appropriate taxonomical
category is) have similar problems with inbreeding?  Has there been any
research on incest avoidance behavior among non-primates?  Do you know of
any results from this?  (Again, I'm curious.)

>
>If sociobiology theory is right, Heinlein is fighting not only
>human cultural prejudice, but prejudice encoded in our genes.
>No wonder so many people hate him.  :-)
>
>Taboos involving cousins, et. al,, are more sophisticated, and 
>the various cultural schools have more relevence for these,
>though it is not clear that biology is totally out of the picture.

Where would you place parent/child incest in this picture?

One of my problems with sociobiological explanations for incest is that if
there's a biological avoidance mechanism in place, why do we have codified
taboos (e.g. as in the Bible)?  Would we need to codify something that was
instinctive?

BTW, I don't hate Heinlein.  I have problems with a lot of his views (inso-
far as they can be determined), especially regarding women.  But I've en-
joyed many of his books and find him interesting, if often infuriating.

Please note.  I'm not, repeat _not_, interested in getting involved in a
flame war.  I have tried to make it clear in this posting that I'm respect-
fully differing with you.  If I get flamed, that's the end of my partici-
pation in the discussion.

/Janet

-- 
send mail to:	repnomar@leland.stanford.edu
(In answer to your first question, Repnomar is a character in
M.J. Engh's The Wheel of the Winds.)
            ----------------------