Incest Avoidance, the Incest Taboo, and Social Cohesion: Revisiting Westermarck and the Case of the Israeli Kibbutzim1

@article{Shor2009IncestAT,
  title={Incest Avoidance, the Incest Taboo, and Social Cohesion: Revisiting Westermarck and the Case of the Israeli Kibbutzim1},
  author={Eran Shor and Dalit Simchai},
  journal={American Journal of Sociology},
  year={2009},
  volume={114},
  pages={1803 - 1842}
}
During the past 50 years, a consensus has been forming around Edward Westermarck's idea that incest avoidance results from an aversion that develops when individuals are brought up in propinquity. The argument here presented counters this emerging consensus. Reexamining the case of the Israeli kibbutzim, the authors show that individuals who grew up in the kibbutzim's communal education system were in fact often attracted to their peers, and only rarely did they develop sexual aversion toward… 
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41 Citations

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Incest, for which there have traditionally been fearsome penalties in numerous cultures around the globe, has been claimed as the only universal taboo; but others insist that the practice—or…
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Incest Taboos and Kinship: A Biological or a Cultural Story?
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. This universality suggests a…
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The paper critically reexamines the well-known ``Julie and Mark'' vignette, a stylized account of two college-age siblings opting to engage in protected sex while vacationing abroad (e.g., Haidt,…
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A vast amount of diverse works in various genres have described, analyzed, and interpreted the experience of childhood, parenting, and family life in the kibbutz's hundred years of existence:…
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Background: The notion that incest is an extremely widespread problem in contemporary society has been rejected by most of the scientific community until the last couple of decades. Therefore, legal…
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TLDR
Sibling sexual abuse accounts for a significant minority of child sexual abuse and has the potential to be as harmful as sexual abuse by a parent and a deeply held perspective of sibling relationships as non-abusive offers a more profound explanation.
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