INCESThhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Taboo.ppt
- 1. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 1 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Marriage • What Is Marriage? • Incest and Exogamy • Explaining the Taboo • Endogamy • Marital Rights and Same-Sex Marriage • Marriage As a Group Alliance • Divorce • Plural Marriages
- 2. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 2 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. What Is Marriage? – Establishes legal parentage of children – Gives spouses rights – Genitor – biological father of a child – Pater – socially recognized father of a child • No definition of marriage broad enough to apply easily to all societies and situations
- 3. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 3 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Incest and Exogamy – Forces people to create and maintain a wide social network • Incest – sexual relations with a close relative – The incest taboo is a cultural universal – What constitutes incest varies widely from culture to culture • Exogamy – practice of seeking a spouse outside one’s own group
- 4. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 4 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Incest and Exogamy • In societies with unilineal descent systems (patrilineal or matrilineal), the incest taboo is often defined based on the distinction between two kinds of first cousins • In societies with unilineal descent systems (patrilineal or matrilineal), the incest taboo is often defined based on the distinction between two kinds of first cousins – Parallel cousins – children of two brothers or two sisters – Cross cousins – children of a brother and a sister
- 5. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 5 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Parallel and Cross Cousins and Patrilineal Moiety Organization
- 6. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 6 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Matrilineal Moiety Organization
- 7. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 7 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. – Cross cultural finding show incest and its avoidance shaped by kinship structures – Focus on risks and avoidance of father- daughter incest correlates with a patriarchal nuclear family structure Explaining the Taboo No universally accepted explanation for fact that all cultures ban incest
- 8. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 8 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. • incest taboos • A prohibition against incest exists in all current societies but the particular relationships prohibited varies with place and time. The most commonly prohibited relationships are a child and a parent such as father and daughter or two siblings such as a brother and sister. A marriage between cousins—
- 9. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 9 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. – This theory has been refuted • Specific kin types included within the incest taboo have a cultural rather than a biological basis Instinctive Horror Theory • Homo sapiens are genetically programmed to avoid incest
- 10. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 10 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. – Decline in fertility and survival accompanies brother-sister mating across several generations – Human marriage patterns based on specific cultural beliefs rather than universal concerns about biological degeneration several generations in the future Biological Degeneration Theory • Incest taboo developed in response to abnormal offspring born from incestuous unions
- 11. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 11 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. • Malinowski (and Freud) argued incest taboo originated to direct sexual feelings away from one’s family to avoid disrupting the family structure and relations Attempt and Contempt – Opposite theory argues that people are less likely to be sexually attracted to those with whom they have grown up
- 12. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 12 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Explaining the Taboo – More accepted argument is that taboo originated to ensure exogamy – Incest taboos force people to create and maintain wide social networks – Incest taboos are seen as an adaptively advantageous cultural construct • Marry Out or Die Out
- 13. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 13 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Endogamy • Endogamy can be seen as functioning to express and maintain social difference, particularly in stratified societies • Endogamy and exogamy may operate in a single society, but do not apply to same social unit
- 14. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 14 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Endogamy • Homogamy – practice of marrying someone similar to you in terms of background, social status, aspirations, and interests • Caste – India’s caste system is extreme endogamy – Although India’s varna and America’s “races” historically distinct, they share caste-like ideology of endogamy
- 15. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 15 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Royal Incest • Royal families in widely diverse cultures engaged in what would be called incest, even in their own cultures – Manifest function – reason given for a custom by its natives – Latent function – effect of custom that was not explicitly recognized by the natives – Royal incest, generally, had latent economic function
- 16. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 16 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Marital Rights and Same-Sex Marriage – Establish legal father and legal mother – Give monopoly in sexuality of the other – Give rights to labor of the other – Give rights over the other’s property – Establish joint fund of property – Establish socially significant “relationship of affinity • Edmund Leach argued that rights allocated by marriage include
- 17. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 17 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. – This does not mean same-sex marriages, like any other cultural construction, are not capable of meeting these needs, only that in U.S. laws prevent them from doing so – There are many examples in which same- sex marriages are culturally sanctioned • In U.S., since same-sex marriage is illegal, same-sex couples denied many of these rights Marital Rights and Same-Sex Marriage
- 18. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 18 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Bridewealth and Dowry – Bridewealth – gift from husband’s kin to the wife’s – Dowry – marital exchange in which the wife’s group provides substantial gifts to the husband’s family • Particularly in descent-based societies, marriage partners represent an alliance of larger social units
- 19. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 19 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Durable alliances • Continuation of marital alliances when one spouse dies – Sororate – may marry wife’s sister if wife dies – Levirate – right to marry husband’s brother if husband dies
- 20. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 20 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Sororate and Levirate
- 21. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 21 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Divorce – Marriages that are political alliances between groups harder to break up than marriages that are more individual affairs – Bridewealth discourages divorce – Divorce is more common in matrilineal societies as well as societies in which postmarital residence is matrilocal • Divorce found in many different societies
- 22. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 22 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Divorce • Divorce is harder in patrilocal societies as the woman may be less inclined to leave her children who, as members of their father’s lineage, would need to stay with him • Divorce is harder in patrilocal societies as the woman may be less inclined to leave her children who, as members of their father’s lineage, would need to stay with him – Contemporary Western societies stress romantic love as necessary for good marriage
- 23. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 23 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Divorce – Very large percentage of gainfully employed women – Americans value independence • U.S. has one of world’s highest divorce rates
- 24. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 24 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Plural Marriages – Even in cultures that approve of polygamy, monogamy tends to be the norm – Polygyny more common than polyandry because, where sex ratios are not equal, there tend to be more women than men • Multiple wives tend to be associated with wealth and prestige • No single explanation for polygyny • Polygyny
- 25. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 25 ©2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Plural Marriages – Polyandry quite rare, being practiced almost exclusively in South Asia • Polyandry usually practiced in response to specific circumstances, and in conjunction with other marriage formats • Among Paharis of India, polyandry associated with relatively low female population, due to covert female infanticide • In other cultures, polyandry resulted from the fact that men traveled a great deal • Polyandry