Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo: The State of Knowledge at the Turn of the Century - Hardcover

Wolf, Arthur P.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080474596X ISBN 13: 9780804745963

Verlag: Stanford University Press, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

Is inbreeding harmful? Are human beings and other primates naturally inclined to mate with their closest relatives? 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? After one hundred years of intense argument, a broad consensus has emerged on the first two questions, but the debate over the others continues.

That there is a biological basis for the avoidance of inbreeding seems incontrovertible, but just how injurious inbreeding really is for successive generations remains an open question. Nor has there been any conclusion to the debate over Freud’s view that the incest taboo is necessary because humans are sexually attracted to their closest relatives—a claim countered by Westermarck's argument for the sexually inhibiting effects of early childhood association.

This book brings together contributions from the fields of genetics, behavioral biology, primatology, biological and social anthropology, philosophy, and psychiatry which reexamine these questions.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Arthur P. Wolf is David and Lucile Packard Foundation Professor of Human Biology at Stanford University. William H. Durham is Bing Professor of Human Biology at Stanford University.

Arthur P. Wolf is David and Lucile Packard Foundation Professor of Human Biology at Stanford University. William H. Durham is Bing Professor of Human Biology at Stanford University.

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Is inbreeding harmful? Are human beings and other primates naturally inclined to mate with their closest relatives? 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? After one hundred years of intense argument, a broad consensus has emerged on the first two questions, but the debate over the others continues.
That there is a biological basis for the avoidance of inbreeding seems incontrovertible, but just how injurious inbreeding really is for successive generations remains an open question. Nor has there been any conclusion to the debate over Freud’s view that the incest taboo is necessary because humans are sexually attracted to their closest relatives—a claim countered by Westermarck's argument for the sexually inhibiting effects of early childhood association.
This book brings together contributions from the fields of genetics, behavioral biology, primatology, biological and social anthropology, philosophy, and psychiatry which reexamine these questions.

Aus dem Klappentext

Is inbreeding harmful? Are human beings and other primates naturally inclined to mate with their closest relatives? 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? After one hundred years of intense argument, a broad consensus has emerged on the first two questions, but the debate over the others continues.
That there is a biological basis for the avoidance of inbreeding seems incontrovertible, but just how injurious inbreeding really is for successive generations remains an open question. Nor has there been any conclusion to the debate over Freud s view that the incest taboo is necessary because humans are sexually attracted to their closest relatives a claim countered by Westermarck's argument for the sexually inhibiting effects of early childhood association.
This book brings together contributions from the fields of genetics, behavioral biology, primatology, biological and social anthropology, philosophy, and psychiatry which reexamine these questions.

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Inbreeding, Incest, and the Incest Taboo

THE STATE OF KNOWLEDGE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2004 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-4596-3

Contents

List of Tables and Figures...........................................................................................viiIntroduction ARTHUR P. WOLF.........................................................................................11. Inbreeding Avoidance and Incest Taboos PATRICK BATESON...........................................................242. Genetic Aspects of Inbreeding and Incest ALAN H. BITTLES.........................................................383. Inbreeding Avoidance in Primates ANNE PUSEY......................................................................614. Explaining the Westermarck Effect, or, What Did Natural Selection Select For? ARTHUR P. WOLF.....................765. Ancient Egyptian Sibling Marriage and the Westermarck Effect WALTER SCHEIDEL.....................................936. From Genes to Incest Taboos: The Crucial Step NEVEN SESARDIC.....................................................1097. Assessing the Gaps in Westermarck's Theory WILLIAM H. DURHAM.....................................................1218. Refining the Incest Taboo: With Considerable Help from Bronislaw Malinowski HILL GATES...........................1399. Evolutionary Thought and the Current Clinical Understanding of Incest MARK T. ERICKSON...........................16110. The Incest Taboo as Darwinian Natural Right LARRY ARNHART.......................................................190List of Contributors.................................................................................................219Index................................................................................................................221

Chapter One

Inbreeding Avoidance and Incest Taboos

Patrick Bateson

I have never much liked the way some of my colleagues in the biological sciences have applied terms such as rape or marriage to animals. I appreciate that this is sometimes done to lighten the normally dull language of scientific discourse. However, these terms have established usage in human institutions with all their associated rights and responsibilities of individuals and culturally transmitted rules on what people can and cannot do. Problems of communication between disciplines are compounded when, having found some descriptive similarities between animals and humans and having investigated the animal cases, biologists or their popularizers use the animal findings to "explain" human behavior. Such arguments rely on a succession of puns, which are usually unconscious, but which are especially unfunny to those social scientists who feel threatened by an apparent takeover bid of the biologists.

I believe that incest should be restricted to human social behavior where culturally transmitted proscriptions limit sexual contact and marriage with close kin (and others who might be deemed to be close kin). Inbreeding avoidance should be used for behavior that makes matings with close kin less probable in both humans and nonhuman animals. This separation then leaves open the question of whether these behaviors have evolved for similar reasons and whether the two phenomena have similar current functions.

This chapter briefly reviews the evidence that people unconsciously choose mates who are a bit different from those individuals who are familiar from early life but not too different. In a biological context this is often referred to as optimal outbreeding. Why did it evolve? The question invites examination of the concept of adaptation and the role of Darwinian evolution in generating such adaptations. Since evolution is thought to involve changes in genes, it is necessary to be clear about the role of genes in an individual's development. When development is considered, a quite different set of issues is raised. These need to be considered in relation to the formation of mating preferences. Finally, it is necessary to come to the heart of the matter: what relations, if any, can be found between the avoidance of inbreeding and incest taboos?

Optimal Outbreeding

The biological costs of inbreeding are evident enough in other animals. They are particularly obvious in birds. If a male bird is mated with his sister, and their offspring are mated together, and so on for several generations, the line of descendants usually dies out fairly quickly. This happens because some damaging genes are more likely to be expressed in inbred animals. Some potentially harmful genes are recessive and therefore harmless when they are paired with a dissimilar gene, but they become damaging in their effects when combined with an identical gene. They are more likely to be paired with an identical recessive gene as a result of inbreeding. The presence of such genes is a consequence of the mobility of the birds and the low probability that they will mate with a bird of the opposite sex that is genetically similar to them. Over time, the recessive genes have accumulated in the genome because they are normally suppressed by their dominant partner gene.

The genetic costs of inbreeding arising from the expression of damaging recessive genes are the ones that people usually worry about. However, recessive genes are less important in mammals than they are in birds because mammals generally move around less and may live in quite highly inbred groups. The most important biological cost of excessive inbreeding is that it negates the benefits of the genetic variation generated by sexual reproduction. If an animal inbreeds too much, it might as well make many copies of itself without the effort and trouble of courtship and mating.

On the other side, excessive outbreeding also has costs. For a start, excessive outbreeding disrupts the relation between parts of the body that need to be well adapted to each other. The point is illustrated by human teeth and jaws. The size and shape of teeth are strongly inherited characteristics. So too are jaw size and shape, as may be seen in the famous paintings of the Hapsburg family, scattered around the museums of the world. The Drer painting of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I reveals the large Hapsburg jaw, which remained as pronounced in his great-great-great-grandson, Philip IV of Spain, shown in the painting by Velasquez. The potential problem arising from too much outbreeding is that the inheritance of teeth and jaw sizes are not correlated. A woman with small jaws and small teeth who had a child by a man with big jaws and big teeth lays down trouble for her grandchildren, some of whom may inherit small jaws and big teeth. In a world without dentists, ill-fitting teeth were probably a serious cause of mortality. This example of mismatching, which is one of many that may arise in the complex integration of the body, simply illustrates the more general cost of outbreeding too much.

Some of the evolutionary pressures on mate choice arose from too much inbreeding, on the one hand, and from too much outbreeding on the other. A preference for an individual somewhat like close kin will minimize the opposing ill effects of breeding with individuals who are genetically too different. A sexual preference for individuals who are a bit different from close kin strikes a balance between the biological costs of inbreeding and those of outbreeding.

The suggestion is that individuals had greatest...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 080474596X
• ISBN 13: 9780804745963
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 238
• Herausgeber: Durham William H.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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