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The Incest Prohibition and Food Taboos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2024

Laura and Raoul Makarius
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One does not have to be an ethnologist to know that fear of incest—a fear whose influence on modern man's behavior psychoanalysis has so ably demonstrated—is as ancient as human society. The overwhelming majority, if not all, of those primitive societies that it has been possible to study have revealed an organization governed by the law of exogamy —that is to say, by the obligation to marry solely outside the kinship group to which one belongs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 8 , Issue 30 , June 1960 , pp. 41 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © 1960 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1. W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (London, 1927), p. 274.

2. É. Durkheim, "La Prohibition de l'inceste," Année sociologique, I (1897), 52.

3. L. Fison and A. W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai (Melbourne, 1880), pp. 156-57.

4. See our "Essai sur l'origine de l'exogamie et de la peur de l'inceste," Année socio logique, 1955-56, p. 188.

5. Op, cit., p. 274.

6. The Mothers (London, 1952), II, 489.

7. Op. cit., p. 270.

8. A. Richards, Hunger and Work in a Savage Tribe (London, 1932), p. 190. G. Davy has indicated that the primitive basis of the pact and of the contract is found precisely in "the blood brotherhood and the food brotherhood between human-beings" (La Foi jurée, p. 47). He cites Glotz to the effect that people who eat and drink together establish among themselves a sacred bond. The blood covenant is achieved through the bond of food. The formula of the oath puts one in mind of the Greeks, for whom the pact of hospitality, true treaty of alliance, had of old as an essential condition the clause, "the table and the hearth," "the salt and the table." The primitive idea rests then even more visibly in the peaceful repasts than in the sacrifice (La Solidarité de la famille dans le droit criminal en Grèce, p. 160). This is a paraphrase of the French.

9. D. Paulme, L'Organisation sociale des Dogons (Paris, 1940), p. 275.

10. E. Westermarck, The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas (London, 1906), I, 589.

11. Smith, op. cit., p. 271, n. I.

12. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer (Oxford, 1940), p. 158.

13. These terms, which are unsatisfactory from many standpoints, must be looked upon as purely conventional.

14. S. Comhaire-Sylvain, Food and Leisure among the African Youth of Leopoldville ("Communications from the School of African Studies" [Cape Town: University of Cape Town, 1950]), p. 70.

15. E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose (London, 1932), p. 144.

16. William Ellis, Polynesian Researches (London, 1829), I, 129. This is a paraphrase from the French edition used by the authors.

17. W. Robertson Smith, Marriage and Kinship in Early Arabia (London, 1903), p. 261.

18. George W. Murray, Sons of Ishmael (London, 1935), p. 85.

19. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer (Oxford, 1951), p. 55.

20. J. G. Frazer, Native Races of Africa and Madagascar (London, 1938), 53.

21. M. Manoukian, "Akan and Ga-Adangme Peoples of the Gold Coast," Ethnographic Survey of Africa, Part I (London, 1950), p. 77.

22. G. Wagner, The Bantu of North Kavirendo (London, 1949), I, 387.

23. W. H. R. Rivers, The History of Melanesian Society (Cambridge, 1914), I, 256.

24. B. Malinowski, The Sexual Life of Savages (New York, 1929), p. 335.

25. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (New York, 1935), p. 62.

26. J. W. M. Whiting, Becoming a Kwoma (New York, 1941), p. 68.

27. Ian Hogbin, "Sex and Marriage in Busama, North-Eastern New Guinea," Oceania, XVII (1946-47), 134.

28. Ian Hogbin, "Marriage in Wogeo," Oceania, XV (1944), 327.

29. R. W. Williamson, The Ways of the South Sea Savage (London, 1914), p. 215.

30. G. Landtman, The Kiwai Papuans of British North Guinea (London, 1927), p. 248.

31. E. F. Williams, Drama of Orokolo (Oxford, 1940), p. 51.

32. V. Elwin, Bondo Highlander (London, 1950), p. 25.

33. Sumner Keller, The Science of Society (London, 1927), IV, 943.

34. Catégories matrimoniales et relations de proximités dans la Chine ancienne (Paris, 1940), p. 148. W. Robertson Smith also has touched upon the law of food exogamy. He commented upon the Bani Harith, who did not permit themselves to receive food from the hands of women. This custom, he thought, seemed to point to a time when men and women were not allowed to eat the same food; and totemism combined with exogamy or dained that a man and a woman must always obey different laws in regard to forbidden foods (Marriage and Kinship in Early Arabia, p. 261).

35. M. Wilson, Nyakyusa Kinship: African Systems of Kinship and Marriage, ed. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (London, 1950), p. 129.

36. M. Wilson, Good Company (London, 1951), p. 85.

37. "Marriage in Wogeo," op. cit., p. 327.

38. A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South East Australia (London, 1904), p. 262.

39. Crawley, op. cit., p. 327.

40. Paulme, op. cit., pp. 275-76.

41. Hoernlé, "The Importance of the Sib in the Marriage Ceremonies of the S.E. Bantu," South African Journal of Science, XXII (1925), 481. Other examples go back to antiquity. Herodotus tells of the women of Caria who were accustomed to eat separately from their husbands. In ancient India the Code of Manu decreed that "one must not eat in the company of one's wife." In a clause of the peace treaty that authorized the abduction of the Sabine women, the Romans promised not to ask these women, whom they married, to mill the wheat, knead the dough, or cook, and this promise was always kept. There are examples which are survivals of taboos in modern Europe: in Brandenburg and in the region that once belonged to Serbia, it is said that lovers and married couples who eat or drink from the same receptacle will suffer a diminution in their love for each other; near Potsdam, engaged couples or young married people still observe the prohibition against biting into the same piece of bread.

42. Rev. G. Dale, "An Account of the Principal Customs and Habits of the Natives In habiting the Bondei Country," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, XXV (1895), 200.

43. E. M. Loeb, "Mentawei Social Organization," American Anthropologist, XXX (1928), 428.

44. Briffault, op. cit., I, 557.

45. W. Foote White, "Sicilian Peasant Society," American Anthropologist, 1944, p. 70.

46. Don Talayesva, Sun Chief, pp. 215-21.

47. W. E. H. Stanner, "Ceremonial Economics of the Mulluk-Mulluk and Mandgella Tribes of the Daly River, North Australia," Oceania, IV (1934), 469.

48. Les Gens de la Grande Terre (Paris, 1937), p. 134.

49. Crawley, op. cit., p. 355.

50. An example of this "sacré de transgression" is defined by Roger Caillois in L'Homme et le sacré, pp. 127 ff. and 54-55.

51. Op. cit., I, 556-59.

52. Crawley, op. cit., p. 149.

53. F. G. Hardy and Ch. Richet, L'Alimentation dans les colonies françaises, p. 303.

54. Crawley, op. cit., p. 354.