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… Expand
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According to Westermarck’s widely accepted explanation of the incest taboo, cultural prohibitions on sibling sex are rooted in an evolved biological disposition to feel sexual aversion toward our… Expand
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We thank Maryanski, Sanderson, and Russell (henceforward MSR) for their engagement with our article and for their critical evaluation of our argument. We are happy to see that our article (Shor and… Expand
The Westermarck Hypothesis and the Israeli Kibbutzim: Reconciling Contrasting Evidence
  • Eran Shor
  • Psychology, Medicine
  • Archives of sexual behavior
  • 2015
TLDR
The case of the kibbutzim is reassessed, reevaluating the findings and conclusions of these recent research endeavors and calling for a synthetic theoretical framework that produces more precise predictions and more rigorous empirical research designs. Expand
Cripping Incest Discourse(s)
In this article, I chart the ableist presuppositions associated with the incest taboo. Specifically, I interrogate two ways in which incest is deployed as a particular form of knowledge (and… Expand
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Among the Karo Batak of North Sumatra, Indonesia, marriages between matrilateral cross cousins (impal) are the ideal, yet rarely occur. Further, ethnographic accounts reveal a stated aversion to… Expand
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… Expand
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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,… Expand
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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:… Expand
The Westermarck effect revisited: a psychophysiological study of sibling incest aversion in young female adults
Abstract Research on human inbreeding avoidance has uncovered at least two central cues to the detection of siblings: witnessing an infant being taken care of by one's mother (i.e. maternal perinatal… Expand
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