Mathematical formalism applied to cultural concepts is more than an exercise in model building, as it provides a way to represent and explore their logical consistency and implications. We describe a set of computational tools and services, and the logic that underlies these, developed to improve how we understand both the fundamental facts of kinship and how people use kinship as a resource in their lives. Kinship is a fundamental feature and basis of human societies. Third, there is no evidence of a link between the presumed folk model and frequency of cross-cousin marriages. Second, no evidence is demonstrated for a persistent or transmitted folk model of aversion.
First, the evidence for the supposedWestermarckian aversion is equivocal.
There are several problems with this study. consistent with the Westermarck hypothesis,” with the provision that “impal are cosocialized” since “early life association leads to erroneously view one another as siblings” (2011:443). The authors claim that “impal have a stated aversion to intermarriage. Impal marriages are reported to be rare (Singarimbun 1975). The Karo are patrilineal Batak from North Sumatra practicing clan exogamy with marriage between matrilateral cross cousins (known as impal) valued for maintaining proper kinship relationships (Singarimbun 1975).
reveal Westermarckian patterns” (2011:443). "Kushnick and Fessler (2011) invoke Westermarck’s (1891) hypothesized origins of sexual aversion and incest taboos and use existing ethnography to assert that “cousin marriage among the Karo of Indonesia. Conceptually the transition depended upon the evolution of mental capacities such as a theory of mind and recursion, both of which are absent or occur only in minimal form among the non-human primates. The shift entailed a change from evolution driven by individual fitness to evolution driven by the structural coherency of a conceptual system for social organization that is, to selection based on group, rather than individual, level traits. Increased individualization introduced a conflict with coherent and stable social integration that was only resolved among the hominid ancestors to modern Homo sapiens by shifting to a cultural/conceptual, rather than a behavioral/biological, basis for social organization.
The impetus for the transition arises from increased individualization among the non-human primates that can be observed as one moves phylogenetically from the Cercopithecoids and Ceboids (Old and New World monkeys) to the hominoids, especially the African apes. In this paper I sketch a model for the transition from biologically to culturally based forms of social organization. Yet the matter is not so simple and requires rethinking of what we mean by kinship and how our ideas about kinship relate to the widespread occurrence of incest taboos and the extensive variability in their content. For those focusing on the biological consequences, the sexual aversion hypothesis of the anthropologist Edvard Westermarck has played a central role through seemingly providing an empirically grounded, causal link from the phenomenal level of behavior to the ideational level of culture. Correspondingly, theories regarding the origin of incest taboos vary from those that focus on the biological consequences (were marriage-based procreation allowed to include inbred matings) to those that focus on social consequences such as confounding social roles, especially within the family, or restricting networks of interfamily alliances, were marriages to take place between close relatives.
Kinship manico allition full#
This universality suggests a biological origin, yet the considerable variation across societies in the full range of prohibited marriage relations implies a cultural origin. In most, if not all, societies, incest taboos-perhaps the most universal of cultural taboos-include prohibitions on marriage between parent and child or between siblings.
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