The human sociobiological analysis of incest avoidance : the state of play and directions for future research

Abstract

The application of sociobiology to humans, a field to which I shall refer here as human sociobiology, gained recognition in the mid 1970s in Edward O. Wilson’s 1975 Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (ch 26). Ever since this book was published, a great debate, often acrimonious (e.g. Sahlins 1976), has flared over the academic and often even moral legitimacy of some of the propositions of human sociobiology (e.g. Kitcher 1985).

The study of incest avoidance is considered by some of its sympathetic observers as a major success of human sociobiology, a success which demonstrates the power of human sociobiological method and propositions (Ruse 1982, ch. 11 ; Wilson 1983; Dawkins 1989, 293-294). Less sympathetic observers of human sociobiology are critical of both the evidence and the propositions put forth by human sociobiologists (e.g. Leavitt 1990).

In this thesis I will try to avoid the general debate over human sociobiology and its acrimony. I will attempt a dispassionate assessment of the suggestions and propositions advanced by human sociobiologists concerning incest avoidance, and draw implications for future directions of anthropological research into human incestuous behaviour. Show more