Coming too Close, Going too Far

Theoretical and Cross-cultural Approaches to Incest and its Prohibitions

Bibliographic Data

ID3311230
AuthorsMary Patterson (0000-0001-6907-8111, Sage (United Kingdom), corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume16
Issue1
Pages95-115
Publication date2005-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Australian Journal of Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1035-8811 • E-ISSN: 1757-6547
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1835-9310.2005.tb00272.x
OpenAlexW3152025468
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited47

Although interest in cultural explanations of topics like incest waned among Anglo anthropologists along with the abandonment of kinship theory in general, other paradigms provided a renewed interest in some older theories about the prohibition of incest. The approach presented in this paper gives due critical consideration to both evolutionary and ‘cultural’ explanations of incest and its prohibition suggesting their mutual involvement, but the necessity of a close analysis of the specificity of the cultural forms in which shared substance, connection, difference and nurture are expressed as reproductive ontology. Particular cases are discussed in the light of recent suggestions that the cross-cultural incidence of incest and its prohibition is to be understood via theories of dissociative disorders in the West that allegedly illuminate a wide range of practices claimed to be linked to sexual abuse in childhood

Criminology · Epistemology · Kinship · Nature versus nurture · Political science · Sociology · Anthropology · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior · Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse · Law · Marriage and Sexual Relationships · Psychology

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