ly been a moot issue given the lack of empirical evidence for either position in the past. ...... Wiley. The Kababish Arabs: Power, Authority, and Consent in a Nomadic Tribe. London: C. Hurst. .... Ruth Munroe, Robert Munroe, and B. Whiting,.
FBD Marriage: Further Support for the Westermarck Hypothesis of the Incest Taboo? JUSTINE
MCCABE
U n i v e r s i t y of C a l i f o r n i a , Davis
I n the past decade, several reports, including d a t a f r o m Taiwan on the sim-pua.form of marriage, have provided evidence f o r the Westermarck Hypothesis, a heretofore u n popular explanation of t h e incest taboo. This theory states that intimate childhood association breeds sexual disinterest. A p r e l i m i n a y study of FBD marriage in Lebanon reveals similar support f o r Westermarck’s theory. T h e Lebanese patrilateral parallel cousin marriages examined produced significantly f e w e r children and more diL’orces than nonpaternal first cousin unions. Given the quite disparate cultures f r o m which this ewidence comes, serious reconsideration of Westermarck’s Hypothesis is suggested. [incest taboo, FBD marriage, Lebanon, Middle Eastern sexuality]
INTRODUCTION ONEOF THE MOST SALIENT FEATURES OF MARRIAGE in the Arab Middle East is the preference for a man to marry his patrilateral parallel cousin, his father’s brother’s daughter (FBD). Various studies of Arab Middle Eastern communities indicate that FBD marriages constitute a statistically significant 9 % to 30% of all marriages contracted in these villages (Ayoub 1959:267; Barclay 1964:120; Cohen 1 9 6 5 : l l l ; Cunnison 1966:89; Goldberg 1967:189; Granqvist 1931:81;Hilal 1970:74; Khuri 1970:598; Marx 1967:225; Patai 1965:334). On the face of it, FBD marriage appears to support explanations of the incest taboo that assume women and men are naturally inclined to mate within the family. That is, patrilateral parallel cousins experience intimate childhood association, yet are the preferred marital partners in their society. In this respect, FBD marriage resembles the simpua or “minor” marriage form in northern Taiwan described in a series of papers by Wolf (1966, 1968, 1970). S i m - p u a marriage permits a baby girl to be adopted into and reared by a family as the future bride for their son; this s i m - p u a and her future husband experience intimate childhood association as sister and brother yet, as adults, they enter into a (prearranged) conjugal relationship. However, on closer scrutiny, s i m - p u a marriage and- as I shall demonstrate - FBD marriage actually suggest evidence for the opposing explanation of the taboo, the Westermarck Hypothesis, which proposes that familiarity breeds sexual disinterest. In this paper, I will present data from southern Lebanon on the relationship between patri-
JUSTINE MCCABE is Staff Research Associate. Departmrnt of Apicultural Economics, University of California. Davis. CA 95616.
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lateral cousin spouses which corroborate Wolfs Chinese evidence supporting the Westermarck Hypothesis of the incest taboo. T H E WESTERMARCK HYPOTHESIS The many and varied explanations for the incest taboo have generally divided along one of two underlying motivations: (1) that women and men are naturally inclined to mate within the family, that is, with those with whom they experience intimate childhood association, or (2) that such propinquity or familiarity breeds sexual disinterest/aversion. Most sociological and biologicai theories of the taboo’ (Aberle et al. 1963; Ember 1975; Frazer 1910; Freud 1946; Harris 1971; Levi-Straws 1969; Lindzey 1967; Murdock 1949; Parsons 1954; Sahlins 1960; White 1949) have been based on the first assumption. Only the psychological theory of Edward Westermarck (1889), supported by Havelock Ellis (1906), proceeded from the latter assumption that intimate childhood association breeds sexual disinterest/aversion. The preeminence of the sociological theories of the taboo over that of Westermarck appears to represent an emphasis in cultural anthropology on dichotomizing learning and instinct (Parker 1976:286) and on maintaining a rigid distinction between nature/biology and culture (D’Aquili 1972:2; Ember 1975:250). Criticisms of Westermarcks position have been due, at least in part, to a disciplinary focus on defining the differences between nonhuman primates and “man.” For example, the incest taboo has been viewed as the crucial step in the genesis of culture and the transition from (infrahuman) primate to human society. According to Demarest (1977:323), in the minds of those opposed to Westermarck’s theory, the incest taboo is a watershed separating human and nonhuman evolution, a view which is exemplified by Lkvi-Strauss (1956:278) in the following paragraph: “Indeed. it will never be sufficiently emphasized that, if social organization had a beginning, this could only have consisted in the incest prohibition since, as we have just shown, the incest prohibition is, in fact, a kind of remodeling of the biological conditions of mating and procreation (which know no rule, as can be seen from observing animal life) compelling them to become perpetuated only in an artificial framework of taboos and obligations. I t is there, and only there, that we find a passage from nature to culture, from animal to human life, and that we are in a position to understand the essence of their articulation.”
In keeping with this view, Sahlins (1960:78) has described the incest taboo as evidence of culture’s usurpation of the evolutionary task from biology . . . [ b y which] . . . it was forced to oppose man‘s primate nature on many fronts and to subdue it. I t is an extraordinary fact that primate urges often become not the secure foundation of human social life, but a source of weakness in it.
By contrast, Edward Westermarck concluded (19223195-196, 223-224) that outbreeding (i.e., incest avoidance among nonhuman animals) existed prior to its symbolization (incest taboo) : In support of my theory . . . [ i ] t explains a world-wide institution by a mental characteristic which may be presumed to be common to all races of men. It traces the origin of this mental characteristic to the needs of the species. I t coordinates three parallel groups of facts which seem intrinsically to belong together: the exogamous rules. the avrrsion to sexual intercourse between persons living together from childhood, and the injurious consequences of inbreeding. And it finds the same general law governing analogous phenomena in the two great kingdoms of the organic world: the cross-fertilization of plants, the various arrangements to prevent inbreeding among animals, and the exogamy in mankind. [ 1922:239]
In Demarest’s words (1977:323), Westermarck was contending “that there was an
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antecedent set of behaviors upon which the taboo was built [which] allows the construction of a nondisjunctive evolutionary sequence.” Thus, it appears that the frequent dismissal of Westerrnarcks views (e.g., Aberle et al. 1963; White 1949) derives from two interrelated concerns: (1) the intervention of culture (i.e., the incest taboo) in the “natural” behavior (to mate within the family) of early humans; and (2) the concomitantly clear distinction made between nonhuman and human primates, hence, between nature and culture. Moreover, the most salient ideological objections to Westermarcks position appear to be due less to its content than to its representation of the view that a type of behavior that characterized prehuman or earliest human society could also continue to characterize present human society. One further example of this ideology is White (1949:316), who describes the prohibition of incest as “a centrifugal force” to overcome a “centripetal tendency [to mate within the family] .” He continues: If persons were forbidden to marry their parents or siblings they would be compelled to marry into some other family group-or remain celibate, which is contrary to the nature of primates. The leap was taken; a way was found to unite families with one another, and social evolution as a human affair was launched upon its career. It would be difficult to exaggerate the significance of this step. Unless some way had been found to establish strong and enduring social ties between families, social evolution could have gone no farther in the human level than among the anthropoids. [emphasis in the original]
However, given this interpretation of the ideological prejudice of anthropologists to Westermarcks views, there exists a paradoxical parallel - from an evolutionary perspective - between Westermarck and his critics with regard to their divergent positions on the underlying motivation for the incest taboo (Figure 1). Taking the perspective of Figure 1, and putting aside the content of the two views for the moment, one sees that despite the strong emphasis of Westermarck’s critics on a necessarily disjunctive evolutionary sequence by way of the imposition of the incest taboo in early human society, these critics also assume a basically nondisjunctive sequence to describe the underlying motivations of human mating behavior. That is, the underlying motivations and inclinations for the mating behavior of prehumadearly human society are also seen to persist for the mating behavior of present human society. This incongruence between what Westermarcks critics claim to be saying about the origins of the incest taboo and what they are actually saying (Figure 1) only serves to confuse the issue for me rather than to provide good evidence for rejecting Westermarck. An examination of the content of the criticisms of Westermarck’s theory reveals one particularly consistent objection: Why taboo something that women and men are “naturally” disinclined to do anyway? (Aberle et al. 1963:258; Frazer 1910:97; Freud 1946:160; LCvi-Strauss 1969:18; Lindzey 1967:1055; White 1949:309). This is a rather predictable objection from those, described above, who believe that a cultural rule was the necessary about-face from the biopsychological tendency for infrahuman and human primates to mate within the family. That is, if one determines retrospectively, as these critics have, that the incest taboo functioned to, and also was necessary to (1) a society beyond the family for the purposes of mutual economic, defensive, and other aid (e.g., INFRAHUMAN PRIMATE/ EARLY HUMAN SOCIETY
MODERN HUMAN SOCIETY
ORIGIN OF INCEST TABOO
Westermarck
Early, intimate association sexual disinterest/aversion
Early, intimate association sexual disinterestlaversion
Normative reflection of biopsychological reality
Westermarck‘s Critics
Early, intimate associationt strong sexual desire
Early, intimate association strong sexual desire
Normative intervention in biopsychological reality
Fig. 1 . Evolutionary perspectives of the underlying motivations for the incest taboo.
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Murdock 1949; Sahlins 1960; Tylor 1889; White 1949); (2) maintain families devoid of sexual competition, which would thereby sustain the authority of parents over children, preserve social order, and allow for the socialization of children and the transmission of culture (e.g., Freud 1924; Malinowski 1927; Parsons 1954; Seligman 1950); or (3) prevent the genetically deleterious results of inbreeding (e.g., Aberle et al. 1963; Burton 1973; Ember 1975; Lindzey 1967)-then the presumption of a tendency for primates to mate within the family could be seen to require formal (cultural) intervention, such as a taboo. By contrast, Westermarck regarded the taboo generally as a formal expression or reflection of the “fact” that early, intimate, and prolonged association in prehuman and human primates breeds sexual disinterest/aversion. Furthermore, he theorized that the origin of incest avoidance and the incest taboo (which he consistently confused with “exogamy”) could be explained by the operation of natural selection in limiting inbreeding, which he believed to be injurious to the species. Westermarck was not advocating an instinctive (“voice of the blood”) abhorrence of mating with close relatives, but “a remarkable lack of erotic feeling between persons who have been living closely together from childhood. . . . Persons who have been living closely from childhood are as a rule near relatives” (1922: 192- 193). Thus, Westermarck viewed incest avoidance/taboo as existing to prevent the ill effects of inbreeding, and its existence was facilitated by the psychological tendency for early, intimate, and prolonged association to encourage sexual disinterest/aversion. In fairness to Westermarck, whose ideas have been, at times, disregarded, I quote his response to Frazer’s (1910[4]:9) version of the criticism cited above: Sir James G. Frazer has argued against me that if exogamy had resulted from a natural instinct there would have been no need to reinforce that instinct by legal pains and penalties: the law only forbids men to do what their instincts incline them to do, and hence we may always safely assume that crimes forbidden by law are crimes which many men have a natural propensity to commit. This argument which has been quoted with much appreciation by Dr. Freud, implies a curious misconception of the origin of legal prohibitions. Of course, where there is no transgression there is no law. But Sir James cannot be ignorant of the variability of instincts and of the great variability of the sexual instinct, nor of the fact that there are circumstances in which a natural sentiment may be blunted or overcome. Would he maintain that there can be no general aversion to bestiality because bestiality is forbidden by law, and that the exceptional severity with which parricide is treated by many law-books proves that a large number of men have a natural propensity to kill their parents? T h e law expresses the general feelings of the community and punishes acts that shock them: but it does not tell us whether an inclination to commit the forbidden act is felt by many or by few. [1922:203-2041
Another substantive criticism of Westermarck suggests that his theory fails to explain the wider extensions of the incest taboo, the assumption being that Westermarcks position refers to sibling incest only. For example, Ember (1975:252) raises the point that if childhood familiarity breeds sexual disinterest for siblings, why is there also a universal parent-child incest taboo? A close reading of Westermarck counters this objection. First, Westermarck implicitly includes parent-child incest in his theory by stating in at least one paragraph of his History of Human Marriage (1922:194): “The normal want of inclination for sexual intercourse between persons who have been living together from the childhood of one or both ofthern is no doubt a world wide phenomenon” (emphasis added). Again, several paragraphs later (ibid.: 198), while alluding to the psychological mechanism by which familiarity-bred sexual disinterest comes about, Westerrnarck makes a statement that may also be construed as pertinent to parent-child relationships: What I have here spoken of is a lack of inclination for, and a feeling of aversion associated with the idea of sexual intercourse between persons who have lived in a long-continued intimate rela-
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tionship from a period of life when the actzon of sexual desire, in its acuterforms at least is naturally out of the question. [emphasis added]
Unfortunately, although these allusions of Westermarck indicate an inclusion in his theory of parent-child incest, they are sufficiently imprecise to leave one guessing whether it is the parent, the child, or both who are sexually disinterested as result of intimate association. In seeking what he terms an “adequate” theory for the origins of the familial incest taboo, Ember (1975) also considers the cultural variation in the extension of the taboo to marriage between first cousins as a way to assess Westermarck’s hypothesis. Using data from the Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock 1967) on 717 societies, Ember tests “childhood familiarity” theory against two others (“inbreeding” and “cooperation”) on the basis of its ability to predict whether first cousin marriage is permitted in a society. The two hypotheses Ember employs in his investigation are expressions of the assumption that the smaller, more endogamous a society is, the greater the likelihood that first cousins will be living in the same community, and hence be known to each other and prohibited from marrying. Ember (1975:260) ultimately rejects Westermarck’s childhood familiarity theory in favor of inbreeding theory on the grounds that the former is not only illogical (Ember interprets Westermarck’s thesis as pertaining to a sibling incest taboo only, as discussed above), but also because it fails to consistently predict the prohibition of first cousin marriage in a society, as demonstrated by the lack of sufficient support for his two hypotheses. I disagree with Ember’s rejection of Westermarck’s position for a few reasons. First, Ember creates, from the outset, an artificial choice between childhood familiarity theory on the one hand, and inbreeding theory on the other-artificial since they are, in fact, considered interdependent in Westermarck’s view (1922:218, 239). Both Ember and Westermarck attribute the origin and universality of the incest taboo to the operation of natural selection in preventing the deleterious effects of inbreeding. The difference between them is with regard to the mechanism by which the avoidance of incest is facilitated. Ember believes that early on, people were able to recognize the disadvantages of inbreeding and consciously tabooed it; Westermarck believes that intimate, childhood association breeds sexual disinterest/aversion, and since those who experience intimate childhood association are, as a rule, the closest relatives, the ill effects of inbreeding are generally avoided. Second, Westermarck’s theory of the incest taboo refers essentially to the universal cultural prohibition on sexual intercourse between parents and children or between any sibling pair. Although Ember has gone to greater lengths than most researchers to actually consider and to test Westermarck‘s theory, to have done so primarily on the basis of its consistent prediction of one type of marriage rule, which is not universal, is not appropriate and valid in my opinion. Again, if we examine this issue from Westermarck’s perspective, we may interpret Ember’s unexpected finding that local exogamy was most likely (not the least, as hypothesized) to be associated with the prohibition of first cousin marriage, in another way. That is, the existence of such an exogamous prohibition (against first cousin marriage) in communities where members of the group (i.e., first cousins) do not live near one another, may be, as Westermarck writes: a natural consequence of the fact that the aversion to sexual intercourse between persons living closely together from childhood has been expressed in prohibitions against unions between kindred. The exogamous rules, though in the first place associated with kinship because near relatives normally live together, have come to include relatives who do not live together-just as social rights and duties connected with kinship, although ultimately depending upon close living together, have a strong tendency to last after the local tie is broken. [1922:214]
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T o elaborate, Westermarck’s response to Ember’s criticism would be that although the exogamous rules may generally be Considered as extensions of his theory of the nuclear family incest taboo, and that “the extent to which relatives are forbidden to marry is nearly connected with their close living together” (1922:207, emphasis added), there are intervening cultural circumstances that vary from society to society which, for example, “may lead to cross-cousin marriage in cases where other kinds of cousin marriage are regarded as incestuous; and there are further circumstances in which cross-cousin marriage may be considered the most desirable kind of marriage, whether other cousin marriages be allowable or not” (1922:78). Third, in testing the two hypotheses derived from Westermarck’s theory, Ember’s use of the Ethnographic Atlas data does not include either estimating or specifying the presence, level, or duration of the intimacy actually experienced between first cousins in childhood. Instead, Ember assumes for every society in this sample that the greater the degree of endogamy in a community, the more likely its first cousins would be known to each other (1975:258). I object to his implicitly equating cousins being “known to each other” for every case, with Westermarck’s idea of a “long-continued intimate relationship” (1922:198). Therefore, I feel that Ember has not successfully invalidated Westermarck’s hypothesis. Somewhat similar to Ember’s criticisms of Westermarck is the type of objection raised by Murdock (1949:291), who regards Westermarck’s thesis as inconsistent with many ethnographic examples of preferred marriage between housemates and cousins, the practices of the sororate and levirate, and the lifelong sexual relationships between husbands and wives “in most societies.” Like Murdock, Ih4-Strauss also questions the apparent discrepancies in Westermarck’s hypotheses in the following paragraph: Nor is it certain that familiarity is always regarded as being fatal to marriage. Many societies judge otherwise. “The desire for a wife begins with the sister,’’an Azande proverb says. T h e Heke justify their custom of cross-cousin marriage by the long intimacy between the future spouses, which is seen by them as the true cause of sentimental and sexual attraction. [1969:17]
In response to these criticisms in general, and in particular to those of Murdock, I agree with Wolf (1966:896) who points out: T h e parties to the levirate or sororate union rarely grow up as members of the same family, and this is certainly not the situation of husband and wife in “most societies.” Murdock has also noted that Westermarcks suggestion “does not harmonize with the not infrequent ethnographic cases where marriage with a housemate is actually favored.” But Murdock fails to ask a crucial question: favored by whom? Many Chinese parents do favor a form of marriage involving the union of housemates. but this preference cannot be cited as evidence against Westermarck’s position. It is the children, not the parents, who actually marry, and the children are opposed to this type of marriage.
This distinction between the type of marriage parents/society favors and the type of marriage the potential partners actually favor is a significant one. Like Wolf, I will attempt to demonstrate later in this paper that despite their kin and society’spreference for patrilateral parallel cousin marriage, the partners to FBD marriage in Lebanon may not favor that type of marriage any more than the “children” alluded to above favor the simp u a form of marriage in China. The final criticism of Westermarck to be discussed is both substantive and ideological. As described at the beginning of this paper, most competing theories of the origin of the incest taboo - including those “origin” theories that are actually theories of the taboo’s functions or maintenance -oppose Westermarck by their acceptance of Freud’s theory of the Oedipal complex and psychosexual development, which assumes that all humans have strong incestuous desires towards parents and siblings that generally become re-
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pressed. Freud contradicts Westermarck’s views on human sexuality with his own facts on the matter: the experiences of psychoanalysis make the assumption of an innate aversion to incestuous relations altogether impossible. They have taught, on the contrary, that the first sexual impulses of the young are regularly of an incestuous nature and that such repressed impulses play a role which can hardly be overestimated as the motive power of later neuroses. [1946:160]
Evidence for Freud’s theory of the motivations of the incest taboo is questionable, given its basis in the unverifiable data of psychoanalytic practice, Clearly, it would be no small task to demonstrate empirically that people have unconscious incestuous wishes while they consciously abhor the idea of incest, Yet, the generally consistent ideological acceptance of Freud rather than Westermarck which is represented by this issue, may be due in part to the primary position of Freud’s view of incest to the whole of psychoanalytic theory. Lindzey (1967:1056-1057), for example, emphasizes the significance of the incest taboo for psychoanalytic theory in the following paragraphs: The most essential features of psychoanalytic theory . . . are inextricably linked to the assumption that there are powerful incestuous impulses present in all humans and that the core developmental problem, faced by parent and child alike, is the redirection of these impulses. One need only remember that the Oedipus complex does nothing more than identify the universal and vital importance of incestuous motives and their fateful confrontation with the taboo inhibiting them, to accept this intimate association between the theory and matters pertaining to incest. . . . If the incest taboo has indeed created a basic conflict and consequent development frailty that characterizes all mankind, and if only Freud successfully identified this state of affairs, it should come as no surprise that psychoanalytic theory possesses a kind of transcendental vigor that guarantees wide applicability, pertinence, and impact.
Thus, in the past, it may have been that to reject Freud’s assumption of the general existence of human incestuous impulses in favor of the opposite view (exemplified by Westermarck), was tantamount to rejecting Freudian theory as a whole. And, while the influence of psychoanalytic theory in anthropology has risen and declined largely with the popularity of the subdiscipline “culture and personality,” it also appears, as LeVine (1981:63) argues, that despite “decades of empirical attack,” psychoanalytic theory has continued to appeal to biological and sociological scientists, including anthropologists (e.g., Shweder 1980), “as a major source of theoretical inspiration for research.” Despite the divergent views of Freud and Westermarck, they both recognized the importance of childhood intimacy: for Freud, the relevant context for this intimacy was family life, and for Westermarck it was prolonged childhood association. The proof of Westermarcks hypothesis, rather than that of Freud and other critics’ theories, has largely been a moot issue given the lack of empirical evidence for either position in the past. Nonetheless, in spite of the lack of good evidence for either position, Westermarcks theory- until recently- has generally been dismissed or overshadowed by the positions of such influential theorists as Freud and Levi-Strauss. However, in the past decade especially, there has been an accumulation of evidence from studies of human and nonhuman primate societies which not only warrants a reexamination of Westermarcks position, but also appears to provide support for his theory of the incest taboo. EVIDENCE SUPPORTING WESTERMARCK The aforementioned position that the incest taboo represents an about-face or deliberate break from lower primate behavior believed to be devoid of incest avoidance has been challenged by several studies of the social life of nonhuman primates. Evidence for the inhibition of mother-son mating has been reported for rhesus macaques (Sade 1968), despite the fact that among rhesus monkeys, close relatives are the preferred
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grooming partners (Demarest 1977:327); for Japanese macaques (Imanishi 1961; Itani 1972; Tokuda 1962; for savannah baboons (Demarest 1977); and chimpanzees, about whom van Lawick-Goodall (1971) also reports a pattern of sibling incest avoidance despite occasional sexual interaction. Turning to studies of human societies, we find that in Taiwan, there are two contrasting types of marriage, the “minor” or sim-puaform of marriage (described in the introduction), and the “major” form in which the bridal pair do not meet until their wedding day. These two types of marriage provided Wolf with a “natural” test of the Westermarck Hypothesis because, according to Wolf (1970:504), “The major form of marriage forges a conjugal bond between strangers; the minor form [sim-pua]unites a couple whose experience of one another is as intimate as brother and sister.” Wolf (1970) theorized that if familiarity did indeed suppress sexual desire, there would be noticeable differences between major and minor marriages in frequencies of divorce, separation, extramarital relations, and fertility rates. In fact, by examining registration records in Taiwan, Wolf (1970) found that major marriages produced 30% more children than minor marriages, and that 46.2% of minor marriages ended in divorce or involved adultery by the wife, compared to 10.5% of the major marriages surveyed. Wolfs conclusions are supported by several other pieces of data. For example, in the Israeli kibbutzim, children who are socialized in the same peer groups like siblings, are permitted-even encouraged- to marry one another as adults, if they choose. Spiro (1954) and Talmon (1964) found that in the three kibbutzim studied between them, there was not one case of marriage between people reared from birth in the same peer group. In a more comprehensive study, Shepher (1971) analyzed census data from all the Israeli kibbutzim: of the 2,769 marriages which took place within the collective settlements, only 13 couples had been reared in the same peer group. However, in eight of these marriages, the couples joined the same peer group after the age of six, while in the other five the partners had never spent more than two years in the same peer group between birth and six years of age. In summarizing these reports of incest avoidance among human and nonhuman primates, Demarest (1977:332) and Parker (1976:290) indicate that the crucial variables involved in discouraging inbreeding are early, long-term, and close association, about which Demarest (1977:332) writes: In both groups, disinterest in inbreeding develops after several years of close association; both groups share the components of social organization which make close association inevitable; both have maturation periods lasting many years; and both share a great deal of the neuro-physiological substrata which govern reproductive behavior. The enormous complexity which underlies the similarities of all these traits attests to the validity of making substantial comparisons between human and nonhuman incest avoidance while searching for an explanation for the complex. [1977:332]
The main purpose of the present paper is to present data from yet another human society (southern Lebanon) which may be added to the data accumulating in favor of Westermarck. FBD MARRIAGE IN BAYT AL-’ASIR The data to be reported in this article were collected during fieldwork conducted from August 1974 until September 1975 in a southern Lebanese village which shall be referred to as Bayt al-’asir. This Sunni Muslim community of approximately 600 people is located near the coastal city of Sidon, about 300 m above sea level, and overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. In this modernizing peasant community, farmers of all types and landowners represented only 14.5% of employed men in the village; the remaining 85.5% were wage
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laborers in the surrounding villages and towns, and in the cities of Sidon and Beirut. Only four village women were employed outside the home: all of these unmarried women worked in Beirut where three were secretaries and one was an elementary schoolteacher. Only 49.4% of all village females of school age or older were literate in contrast to 77.2% of all males. The traditional veiling of Middle Eastern women has declined steadily in Lebanon since the 1930s. and has disappeared in the country except for some old village women who have retained the white kerchief head covering (mundil) of their youth. Of the 92 existing households censused during the period of fieldwork, 8 were extended family living situations (8.7% of all households), and 2 were stem family situations (2.2%); the majority of households (78.3%) were nuclear families. Finally, there were 23 FBD marriages in this community (excluding two engaged couples). Although the patrilocally extended family in Bayt al-’asir was in the minority, there was a penchant for siblings, especially brothers, to live in close proximity within the village. For example, each of the three neighborhoods within this community was residentially dominated by clusters of one of the three main families. Consequently, family members were closest neighbors and friends, and spent most of their time together. Typically, brothers were best friends, often relying on one another for emotional and economic support. In turn, their children were in one another’s constant company from birth. Although village women tended to be emotionally close to their own mothers, sisters, and first cousins, they spent incalculable hours in the company of those immediately around them-often their husbands’ kin. This was largely due to the communal nature of housekeeping and child rearing in Bayt al-’asir. Whether washing clothes, baking bread, cleaning, or chatting with one another, the wonien invariably had some of their young children playing in or around their work areas. Consequently, these first cousins grew up in an association as close as that of siblings. In fact, because first cousins spent so much time together at one another’s houses and were considered the common responsibility of their relatives, it was rather difficult for me initially to specify where the children in my immediate neighborhood actually “belonged.” The consistent similarity between the relationship of siblings and that of patrilateral parallel first cousins who live in close proximity is illustrated in Table I. During the period of fieldwork, I observed much intimate play among same- and opposite-sex first cousins, particularly as babies and small children. Although village children’s activities became increasingly sex-segregated with age,2 those opposite-sex first cousins close in age often had a confidantlike relationship, essentially that of a brother and sister. Even those patrilateral parallel cousins who lived farther apart in this community were drawn together daily by the priority of their fathers’ relationship. Indeed, there were several households in which the husband’s brother’s son resided for extended periods of time while growing up. I also observed maturing and grown (unmarried) opposite-sex first cousins to be extremely caring and friendly with one another. For example, they would sit and watch television together in the evenings at their own or neighbors’ homes. Occasionally they would stop their work to sit and chat together in someone’s courtyard where they might tease each other or simply engage in verbal sparring. Their conversation topics (at least in my presence) included assessments of the qualities of this or that young man or woman, what kind of spouse each wanted, while simultaneously- although semi-affectionately-degrading one another, again, as siblings would do. I found a girl’s ibn ‘umm (father’s brother’s son) played an identical role in her life as her brother. These males were equally responsible (normatively and, to a great extent, in fact) for keeping her “in line” sexually; they both had as much to lose with regard to honor and personal worth if her virtue wavered. Thus, it was common to see such
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TABLE I . COMPARISON OF SISTER-BROTHER AND FED-FBS RELATIONSHIPS.
Characteristics common to sister-brother relationships 1. Constant interaction from birth, including
Characteristics common to FBD-FBS relationship 1. Constant interaction from birth including
eating, sleeping and performing other bodily functions in each other’s homes, if these are not one and the same. 2. Intimate heterosexual exploratiodplay as 2. Intimate heterosexual exploration/play as babiedvery young children. babiedvery young children. 3. Little FBDs are often caretakers of their 3. Little sisters are often caretakers of their (even slightly) younger FBSs. (even slightly) younger brothers. 4. The childhood through adolescence relation- 4. T h e childhood through adolescence relationship is affectively characterized by informalship is affectively characterized by informality, candor, teasing, tattling, quarreling, ity, candor, teasing, tattling, quarreling, laughing, joking. laughing, joking. 5. FBSs are physical guardians of their FBDs. 5. Brothers are physical guardians of their sisters. 6. Brothers are moral guardians of their sisters 6. FBSs are moral guardians of their FBDs. 7. Brothers’ personal/family honor varies with 7. FBSs’ personal/family honor varies with their sisters’ virtue. FBDs’ virtue. 8. A degree of respecddeference is accorded 8. A degree of respect/deference is accorded brothers by their (particularly younger) FBSs by their (particularly younger) FBDs. sisters. 9. Brothers and sisters close in age are often 9. FBSs and FBDs close in age are often conficonfidants. dants. eating, sleeping, and performing other bodily functions in the same house.
opposite-sex first cousins, as well as brothers and sisters, bantering about one another’s indiscretions, and the like. I must emphasize that although a degree of respect characterized the relationship between a girl and her brother or ibn ’umm (especially if the latter were her elders), my field data indicate that a sense of informality, jocularity, and intimacy predominantly described these relationships. This intimate, siblinglike relationship I have described between patrilateral parallel cousins in Bayt al-’asir differs from the picture provided by Khuri (1970:612-613) of such cousins in suburban Beirut: Paternal cousins of different sexes rarely interact with each other intimately, the more so if they are marriageable. Yet despite this lack of interaction, they are well informed about each other’s character, temperament, tastes, and general reputation in the community . . . cousins of marriageable age see each other relatively frequently, exchange smiles, greetings, and formal conversations about family affairs. At the same time, they avoid informal talk, gossip, jokes, or gestures that might suggest mutual desire or sexual attraction. They do so not only because they are preferential marriage mates, but also because the nephew, in the absence of the paternal uncle or the uncle’s son, assumes responsibility for the conduct of the uncle’s daughter (his cousin) which is endangered if she displays open sexual attraction. In the Middle East, sexual attraction and informal relationships between opposite sexes are cultural synonyms; hence, the avoidance of informality between cousins of the opposite sex.
While Khuri and I obviously disagree on the nature of the relationship of father’s brother’s daughters and father’s brother’s sons as they are growing up, the more significant and relevant disagreement concerns our individual understanding of Lebanese heterosexuality and its expression in FBD marriages. From Khuri’s (ibid.:6 13) viewpoint, the conjugal relationship he describes below for FBD-FBS spouses epitomizes the cultural ideal and model for marriage and heterosexual relations in the Middle East today: The formality proper between cousins of different sex continues after they marry and become
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husband and wife, Manliness requires that a man should dominate his wife sexually; and sexual domination, when it is successfully accomplished, requires that the wife should appear chaste, incapable of sexual desire, and even disinterested in intercourse. I was told by an old women in Chiyah that a “good wife never denies intercourse to her husband whenever he desires it.” According to tradition, however, offering intercourse is not equivalent to a show of love. If a woman loves her husband, she is afraid to show it, lest she offend his sense of propriety. T h e ideal wife, it follows, is difficult to arouse, and acts only as a passive partner for her husband’s pleasure. Her aim in intercourse is the bearing of children. From this point of view, FBD marriage helps the husband and the wife both to achieve their expected roles successfully. Sexual desire between cousins is deliberately suppressed. Cousins cautiously avoid passion or sexual desire, lest they violate the rules of modesty which, as cousins, they should observe sincerely. The wife’s expectation of sexual satisfaction after marriage, and the husband’s expectation to establish his potency, are accordingly ignored. Failure on the part of the wife to respond positively to the husband’s advances, or on the part of the husband to arouse the wife, would then, more likely, be considered marriage norms. [emphasis added]
The conjugal reality Khuri describes as characteristic of FBD marriages and normative for Arab marriages in general is not supported by my data from Bayt al-’asir. As a female anthropologist, I had excellent access to my female neighbor-informants especially during the period of fieldwork. Their opinions and behaviors today apparently disregard the “traditions” to which Khuri refers and lead me to disagree3 with the picture he paints of Arab female sexuality in marriage, regardless of whether the women in question are partners to FBD marriages. The ideal he describes of the proper Arab wife as dispassionate, obeisant, and sexually disinterested (modeled after the FBD wife) was never expressed by the people of Bayt al-’ash.‘ While I have described Arab female sexuality in some detail elsewhere, (McCabe 1979), it is sufficient to note here that as far as I could observe, and from what male and female informants told me individually and collectively about the sexual attitudes and behaviors of women and men in this particular community, the striving for, or the achievement of, an asexual response among Lebanese wives, as Khuri depicts, is not the case. It is difficult to reconcile these different observations made by Khuri and myself about the relationships between Lebanese paternal first cousins. Perhaps the discrepancies may be largely attributed to urbadrural and/or class differences. However, it is interesting that when people from Bayt al-’ask migrate to Beirut, the area to which they have congregated for some time (a typical Lebanese urban migratory pattern) is the very suburb Khuri describes. Or, perhaps, the discrepancy between these observations may be explained by Firth’s (1936:28) distinction between “formal” and “informal” behavior toward relatives; that is, it is quite possible that Khuri may have been presenting the formal normative behavior of partners to FBD marriages while my description represents the informal normative behavior. In any case, the fact that the data I have gathered from a close look at Lebanese wives of all ages is contradictory to those presented by Khuri leads me to wonder and to doubt whether the suppression of sexual desire between paternal first cousin spouses is deliberate and for propriety’s sake, as Khuri suggests. Instead, my contractory evidence suggests that perhaps as in the Chinese situation described by Wolf, this “deliberate” suppression of sexual desire between FBD spouses is actually a reflection of sexual reticence, disdain, or disinterest on the part of these first cousins as mates. Khuri (1 970:613) himself predicts sexual discontent between paternal first cousin spouses in the following passage: It is my impression, however, that the suppression of sexual desire after marraige, while favouring the modesty of the wife, negates the potency of the husband, which is considered necessary for the demonstration of manliness. This is where marriage to outsiders or distant relatives strengthens the husbands position. He who marries an outsider gains a better chance of demonstrating his
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manliness for the simple reason that he will be less concerned about his wife’s modesty. So it seems as if the achievement of potency and manliness by a man opposes the requirements of modesty for women. He who marries his paternal uncle’s daughter suppresses the individual interests of his immediate family and risks his reputation. Some (not many) in Chiyah have indicated that “a manly man never marries his cousin.
Therefore, I suggest that what Khuri describes as the ideal sexual relationship-including the suppression of sexual desire - that first cousin spouses should strive for and/or have achieved, may simply be the type of relationship they already have “naturally” as paternal first cousins. Hilal (1970) also alludes to this sexual apathy of men toward their sisterlike, firstcousin wives: Men, on the other hand, sometimes show coolness to their marrying a cousin. They say, of a cousin, that “she is like a sister.” Because the protective orientation is stronger at such a range, men are urged, when married, not to be bashful (sexually) of their female cousins. Men also say that a close cousin, as a wife, is disrespectful and a poor servant, while a stranger wife is usually on her best behavior. [1970:83]
Finally, even Robertson-Smith, writing on the development of marriage in Arabia, makes reference to the more romantic nature of nonfirst-cousin unions, as in the following (1903:lOO): “[When] a husband . . . is not a cousin the relation is closer and more endearing.” PATRILATERAL PARALLEL COUSINS AS SPOUSES Having witnessed continued, intimate childhood association between patrilateral parallel cousins in Bayt al-’asir, I predicted sexual dissatisfaction and disinterest between these cousin-spouses. Following Wolfs (1970) lead, I operationalized sexual dissatisfaction to mean that the FBD marriages would have a lower birth rate5 and a higher divorce rate than marriages in this community that were not between paternal first cousins. These indices of conjugal dissatisfaction were compiled from data derived from a census of the community. Data on extramarital relations of partners to all types of marriage in the community were derived from informal interviews; unfortunately, these data are not complete enough to validly use as a gauge of marital dissatisfaction. Table I1 presents the number and percent of FBD marriages and all other marriages that ended in divorce. This table indicates that the percentage of FBD marriages that ended in divorce is more than four times that of all other marriages. The comparison of the birth rates of these groups is depicted in Table 111. The average number of children per woman for these marital groups is presented in five-year intervals in order to control for the effect of marriages which have been terminated by death or divorce. That is, the intervals for each woman are calculated separately, the first beginning with the year of marriage. Marriages ended by death or divorce are excluded from that and all subsequent intervals. Thus, if a child is born during the interval when death or divorce terminates a union, this child and the marriage are excluded from the average of the remaining intervals. While an age-specific marital fertility measure is a preferable one, especially for ruling out cohort-specific and other biases, the described method was chosen because this is a preliminary test of the hypothesis and, more important, the number of cases for each type of marriage is simply too few to utilize an age-specific marital fertility rate for this sample. The reader will note that the average number of children presented in this table for each five-year interval includes all pregnancies, rather than just live births. The inclusion of miscarriages, abortions, and stillbirths in these figures was made to avoid biasing the sample in favor of only those women who had produced viable offspring.
6.636 ( N = 70)
4.944 (N = 90)
Total fertility rate
6.006 (N = 34)
FSD (N = 7) 1.714 (12) 1.142 (7 ) 1.600 (8 ) .800 (4 ) .750 (3 )
6.364 (N = 36)
MSD (N = 7) 1.714 (12) 1.500 (9 ) 1.600 (8 ) ,800 (4 ) ,750 (3 )
a “Children” refers to all pregnancies. including live births, miscarriages, abortions, and stillbirths.
MBD (N = 12) 1.833 (22) 1.166 (14) 1.727 (19) 1.625 (13) ,285 (2 )
FBD ( N = 22) 1.272 (28) 1.150 (23) .947 (18) ,875 (14) .700 (7 )
Years of marriage in five-year intervals 1st (1-5) 2nd (6-10) 3rd (11-15) 4th (16-20) 5th (21-25)
TABLE III. AVERAGE NUMBER OF C H I L D R E N ~ BY TYPE OF MARRIAGE
0
0
7(5.98%)b
7(5.98%)b 0 0
12(10.25%)b 0 0
23(19.65%)b 3 13.04
a Excluding “engaged” couples b Percent of all marriages
Total number of marriagga Number ending in divorce Percent endinp in divorce
MSD
FSD
MBD
FBD
6.460 ( N = 292)
6.365 (N = 432)
All non-FBD marriages (N = 93) 1.703 (150) 1.318 (112) 1.576 (86 ) 1.072 (53 ) .696 (31 )
94(80.34%)b 3 3.2
68(58.11%)b 3 4.41
Distant relatives/ no relation (N = 67) 1.552 (104) 1.464 (82 ) 1.378 (51 ) 1.066 (32 ) 1.000 (23 )
All non-FBD marriages
Distant relatives/ no relation
TABLE 11. NUMBER A N D PERCENT OF ALL FIRST COUSIN A N D OTHER MARRIAGES ENDING IN DIVORCE.
W
(0
+
uW
-
2Y
0
t-
0 b 0
%
$
b
2
2
5 z
b
M
Q,
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Table 111 shows the striking difference in the fertility of FBD marriages and all other types of marriage in this Lebanese community. In fact, FBD unions in Bayt al-’asir produced about 23% fewer children on the average than all other types of marriage during the first 25 years of marriage. This is similar to the szm-pua marriages in Wolfs (1970: 512-513) Chinese study which produced about 30% fewer children than major marriages. The significance of these data is based on the fact that they were gathered from a census of the entire community rather than from a sample of the community’s population. I make no claim that these findings from Bayt al-’asir, a village of 619 people, can be generalized to Arab Middle Eastern society as a whole, or even to other Lebanese communities. However, to the extent that each adult member of this community responded honestly, the data reported here are the marriage, divorce, and fertility patterns of this community as an entity. The data presented in Tables I1 and 111 also counter an objection that has been raised by Antoun (1975: 168) to the exclusive attention paid by anthropologists to the preference for FBD marriage, which represents only one of a number of marriage preferences, including MBD, FSD, and MSD marriage. Indeed, following Antoun, one could argue that the apparent sexual disinterest between patrilateral parallel cousin spouses demonstrated in this paper may be characteristic of the other three types of first cousin union. However, as the reader can see from Tables I1 and 111, among the four types of first cousin union, FBD marriage is statistically more popular than any other type, yet still produces significantly fewer children and more divorce than any other marriage type. The crucial question here, of course, is whether the intimate childhood association that I have argued as being characteristic of FBD marriage partners exists for the spouses of the other three types of first cousin marriage. The answer is a qualified no. That is, because of the (ideal and real) priority of the paternal line and the relationship of brothers as factors in determining where families reside within the village, patrilateral parallel cousins are typically physically much closer to one another growing up than are the other types of cousins. Thus, these data continue to support Westermarck. However, the qualification I must add is that I was decidedly biased by the literature’s exclusive focus (i.e., pre-Antoun’s 1975 critique) on FBD marriage in the attention I paid to the informal behavior of the other three types of first cousins as childhood associates. In examining the childhood relationships of FSD, MBD, MSD spouses further, it is useful to consider Fox’s (1962) treatment of the subject in a paper which attempts to reconcile the divergent views of Freud and Westermarck on the underlying motivation for the incest taboo. Fox combines Westermarck’s focus on the context of childhood association with Freud’s emphasis on infantile sexuality as a means for understanding this motivation. He proposes (ibid.: 132- 133) that the mutual stimulation between siblings (or childhood associates) during play leads to a heightened state of sexual excitement which these children cannot relieve by a successful act of coitus. The frustration engendered by the repetition of these childhood behaviors serves as a constant form of negative reinforcement even after sexual maturity is reached. Fox theorizes that, as adults, cosocialized children will continue to be reminders to each other of painful sexual experience and consequently try to avoid any sexual contact with each other. With this, he hypothesizes that “the intensity of heterosexual attraction between co-socialized children after puberty is inversely proportionate to the intensity of heterosexual activity between them before puberty” (ibid: 147). Whatever the actual biopsychological mechanisms are by which intimate childhood associates are encouraged to be sexually disinterested in each other as adults, Fox’s hypothesis is a potentially useful framework for testing Westermarck’s thesis more closely for the case of first cousin marriage (of all types) in the Middle East. My participant observations in Bayt al-’ask indicate that nonpatrilateral parallel first cousins generally
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have less opportunity to continually and intimately interact than do fathers’ brothers children. Unfortunately, however, these data are not sufficiently detailed to provide very specific information on the pre- and postpubertal relationships of each of the three other types of first cousins in order to predict a gradient of sexual disinterest among these cousins as spouses in other Arab communities as Fox’s hypothesis allows. Therefore, further research in this area is definitely warranted. CONCLUSIONS The Lebanese data presented here support Wolfs Chinese evidence for the Westermarck contention, that, for whatever reasons, intimate childhood association appears to suppress or inhibit sexual desire. Given that Westermarcks theory was essentially disregarded in anthropological considerations of the incest taboo until recently, these data are particularly interesting in that they draw additional support for his hypothesis from another cultural area, the Arab Middle East. I must emphasize, however, that these data are quite preliminary; they were acquired tangentially to my conducting another project in southern Lebanon. Like many other anthropologists who study the Middle East, I , too, was at least curious about the Arab normative preference for FBD marriage. And although in the field situation I had observed the obviously intimate, siblinglike relationship that paternal first cousins enjoy, it was not until I returned from Lebanon that I began to analyze the relationship of these first cousin spouses and to explore the connection with Wolfs Chinese data. Consequently, I feel that more extensive and direct research in Lebanon is warranted which would include the examination of large numbers of birth, marriage, and divorce records of FBD and other first cousin unions, as well as a detailed examination of the preand postpubertal relationship of partners to each of the types of first cousin marriage. With regard to the latter, it may be beneficial to the understanding of the mechanisms involved in the sexual attraction or disinterest between spouses reared together, to try (albeit retrospectively) to determine whether spouses to FBD marriages which ended in divorce, spent considerably more time together and/or were much more heterosexually active as children than spouses to intact FBD marriages. Unfortunately, given the volatile situation in Lebanon at this time, the data I have collected from that particular Arab society may have to stand for the time being. Moreover, it occurs to me that further substantiating these Lebanese findings in the Middle East may be better accomplished in another, more traditional and less Westernized Arab society, particularly one in which the residentially extended family persists to a greater degree than in the Lebanese situation investigated. Finally, while seeking to understand the origins and functions of the incest taboo, anthropologists must also confront the increasingly conspicuous fact that - at least in Western society-incest does occur and in relatively great numbers (DeVine 1980). Given this fact, can we assume support for Westermarck’s thesis from the datum that the overwhelming majority (97% or more) of reported cases of incest are father-daughter (Herman 1981) in a society where fathers traditionally interact very little with their girls/children (Ban and Lewis 1974; Kotelchuck 1978; Ped.ersen and Robson 1969; Rebelsky and Hanks 1971), while mothers, the main caretakers of children from birth in the same society, are virtually never (at least as reported) the perpetrators of incest? Or, may we assume that it is irrelevant to examine cases of the violation of the incest taboo in order to test competing theories of it, since those who commit incest are “insane” or “deviant” anyway? Or, is the fact that more and more cases of incest occur or are being reported in Western society (Herman 1981), simply a Western cultural phenomenon? It appears to
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me that questions like these must also be considered in future investigationsof how the incest taboo originated and what mechanisms operate to perpetuate it. NOTES Acknowledgments. I am indebted to Naomi Quinn for the discussions from which the ideas for this paper were conceived. I also wish to thank Arthur Wolf for his valuable criticisms of an earlier draft of the paper. An earlier version was presented to a Middle East Colloquium sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of California at Berkeley. I am grateful to the participants for their comments and criticisms. Finally, I take this opportunity to thank the people of Bayt al-’asir for their warmth and cooperation during the period of fieldwork. I wish them speedy relief from the atrocities endured this past summer (1982), and, ultimately, I wish them peace. I t is not within the scope of this paper to describe in detail the numerous theories of the incest taboo (see, e.g., Aberle et al. 1963; Ember 1975), which have generally been categorized as biological or sociological and include the following range of foci: origins, function, advantageddisadvantages, or underlying motivations of the taboo. I t is worth noting that the “biological” theory that human beings have an instinctive abhorrence of incestuous mating that “assumes something like a ‘voice of the blood’ which sounds a warning when relatives meet [Bischof 1975:39],” is one which has been generally disregarded as a naive, untenable theory. * The exception to this is the caretaker role of village girls toward their younger brothers and male cousins. My disagreement is supported by the anthropological literature, which consistently reports that in Arab society, women are perceived as very lustful creatures (Abou-Zeid 1966:253; Antoun 1968:678-679; Asad 1970:44-45; Barclay 1964:239; Barth 1961:93; Berque 1957:44; Fuller 1961:46; Goode 1963: 152-153; Gordon 1968:lO; Granqvist 1947:159; Gulick 1967:133; 1976:133; 1976:43; Hayes 1975: 624; Hilal 1970:89; Kotb 1953:650; Lerner 1964:177; Maher 1974:84-85; Mason 1975:650; Mernissi 1975:l-14; Miner and DeVos 1960:80; Mohsen 1967:153-154; Nouacer 1962:126; Schneider 1971 :20; Vinogradov 1974: 192- 193: Williams 1968:27). If and why this is the “ideal” Arab wife for some must be the subject of another paper. Nelson Graburn (personal communication) has suggested that fertility is not a valid index of frequency of coitus, the operational equivalent of sexual attraction. He argues that frequent sexual intercourse actually diminishes a man’s chances of impregnating a woman. In fact, medical research has established that for men at all age levels, the higher the frequency of intercourse, the greater the ease of conception (Behrman and Kistner 1975:2: McLeod and Gold 1953:26-29; Page et al. 1972:165). By way of explanation, this literature consistently reports that the most important aspect of semen with regard to ease of conception, i.e.. the degree and quality of sperm motility, is actually enhanced by frequent ejaculation.
’
REFERENCES CITED Aberle, D., et al. 1963 The Incest Taboo and the Mating Patterns of Animals. American Anthropologist 65: 253-265. Abou-Zeid, A. 1966 Honor and Shame Among Bedouins of Egypt. In Honor and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society. J. G. Peristiany, ed. pp. 245-259. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Antoun, R. 1968 On the Modesty of Women in Arab Muslim Villages: A Study in the Accommodation of Traditions. American Anthropologist 70:671-697. 1975 Anthropology. In the Study of the Middle East. L. Binder, ed. pp. 137-199. New York: Wiley. Asad, T. 1970 The Kababish Arabs: Power, Authority, and Consent in a Nomadic Tribe. London: C. Hurst.
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Ayoub, M. 1959 Parallel Cousin Marriage and Endogamy: A Study in Sociometry. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 15:266-275. Ban, P . , and M. Lewis 1974 Mothers and Fathers, Girls and Boys: Attachment Behaviors in the One-Year-Old. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 20: 195-204. Barclay, H. 1964 Burri Al Lamaab. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Barth, F. 1961 Nomads of South Persia: Basseri Tribe of the Khamseh Confederacy. Boston: Little, Brown. Behrman, S., and R. Kistner 1975 Progress in Infertility. Boston: Little, Brown. Berque, J . 1957 Histoire Social d'un Village Egyptian au XXPme SiPcle. Paris: Mouton. Bischof, N . 1975 Comparative Ethology of Incest Avoidance. In Biosocial Anthropology. R. Fox, ed. pp. 37-67. London: Malaby Press. Burton, R. 1973 Folk Theory and the Incest Taboo. Ethos 1:504-516. Cohen, A. 1965 Arab Border Villages in Israel: A Study of Continuity and Change in Social Organization. Manchester: University Press. Cunnison, I. 1966 The Baggara Arabs: Power and Lineage in a Sudanese Nomad Tribe. Oxford, Eng.: Clarendon Press. D'Aquili, E. 1972 The Biopsychological Determinants of Culture. McCaleb Modules in Anthropology 13: 1-29. New York: Addison-Wesley. Demarest, W. 1977 Incest Avoidance Among Human and Nonhuman Primates. In Primate Bio-Social Development: Biological, Social, and Ecological Determinants. A. Chevalier-Skolnikoff and F. Poirier, eds. pp. 323-342. New York: Garland. DeVine, R. 1980 Incest: A Review of the Literature. In Sexual Abuse of Children, pp. 25-28, Washington, D.C.: National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, U . S . Department of Health and Human Services. Ellis, H. 1906 Sexual Selection in Man. Philadelphia: F. A. Davis. Ember, M . 1975 On the Origin and Extension of the Incest Taboo. Behavioral Science Research, HRAF Journal of Comparative Studies 10:249-281. Firth, R. 1936 We, the Tikopia. London: George Allen and Unwin. Fox, R. 1962 Sibling Incest. British Journal of Sociology 13:128- 150. Frazer, Sir James 1910 Totemism and Exogamy. 4 vols. London: MacMillan. Freud, S. 1946 Totem and Taboo. A. A. Brill, transl. New York: Vantage Books. Fuller, A. 1961 Buarij: Portrait of a Lebanese Muslim Village. Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs, No. 6. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Goldberg, H. 1967 FBD Marriage and Demography Among Tripolitanian Jews in Israel. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 23:176-191.
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Goode, W. 1963 World Revolution and Family Patterns. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. Gordon, D. 1968 Women of Algeria: An Essay on Change. Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs, No. 19. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Graburn, N. 1977 Incest and Exogamy in the Middle East;. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting; of the Kroeber Anthropological Society, Berkeley, California, May 7 , 1977. Granqvist, H. 1931 Marriage Conditions in a Palestinian Village, Parts 1 and 111. Helsingfors, Finland: Soderstrom. 1947 Birth and Childhood Among the Arabs. Helsingfors, Finland: Soderstrom. Gulick, J . 1967 Tripoli: A Modern Arab City. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1976 T h e Middle East: An Anthropological Perspective. Pacific Palisades, California: Goodyear. Harris, M. 1971 Culture, Man, and Nature. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. Hayes, R. 1975 Female Genital Mutilation, Fertility Control, Women’s Roles, and the Patrilineage in Modern Sudan: A Functional Analysis: American Ethnologist 2:617-633. Herman, J. 1981 Father-Daughter Incest. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hilal, J . 1970 Father’s Brother’s Daughter Marriage in Arab Communities: A Problem for Sociological Explanation. Middle East Forum 46:73-84. Imanishi, K. 1961 The Origin of the Human Mind-A Primatological Approach. Japanese Journal of Ethnology 25: 1 19- 130. Itani, J. 1972 A Preliminary Essay on the Relationship between Social Organization and Incest Avoidance in Non-Human Primates. In Primate Socialization. F. Pokier, ed. pp. 165-171. New York: Random House. Khuri, F. 1970 Parallel Cousin Marriage Reconsidered: A Middle Eastern Practice that Nullifies the Effects of Marriage on the Intensity of Family Relationships. Man 5:597-618. Kotb, S. 1953 Social Justice in Islam. Washington, D.C.: American Council of Learned Societies. Kotelchuck, M. 1976 The Infant’s Relationship to the Father: Experimental Evidence. In The Role of the Father in Child Development, M. Lamb, ed. pp. 324-344. New York: Wiley. Lerner, D. 1964 The Passing of Traditional Society. New York: Free Press. Levi-Strauss , C . 1956 T h e Family. In Man, Culture, and Society. H . L. Shapiro, ed. pp. 261-286. London: Oxford University Press. 1969 T h e Elementary Structure of Kinship. Translated from the French by J. Bell, J . von Stunner, and R. Needham, ed. Revised edition. Boston: Beacon Press. LeVine, R. 1981 Psychoanalytic Theory and the Comparative Study of Human Development. In Handbook of Cross-Cultural Human Development. Ruth Munroe, Robert Munroe, and B. Whiting, eds. pp. 63-72. New York: Garland. Lindzey, G. 1967 Some Remarks Concerning Incest, the Incest Taboo, and Psychoanalytic Theory. American Psychologist 22: 1051 - 1059.
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MacLeod, J.. and R. Gold 1953 The Male Factor in Fertility and Infertility. Fertility and Sterility 4:lO-33. Maher. V. 1974 Women and Property in Morocco. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Malinowski, B. 1927 Sex and Repression in Savage Society. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Trubner. Marx, E. 1967 Bedouin of the Negev. New York: Praeger. Mason, J. 1975 Sex and Symbol in the Treatment of Women: T h e Wedding Rite in a Libyan Oasis Community. American Ethnologist 2:649-661. McCabe, Justine 1979 The Status of Aging Women in the Middle East: The Process of Change in the Life Cycle of Rural Lebanese Women. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University. Mernissi, F. 1975 Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society. Cambridge: Schenkman . Miner, H., and C. DeVos 1960 Oasis and Casbah: Algerian Culture and Personality Change. Anthropological Papers, Museum of Anthropology, No. 15. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Mohsen, S. 1967 The Legal Status of Women Among Awlad 'Ali. Anthropological Quarterly 40:153-166. Murdock, G . P. 1949 Social Structure. New York: MacMillan. 1967 Ethnographic Atlas: A Summary. Ethnology 6: 109-236. Nouacer, K. 1962 The Changing Status of Women and the Employment of Women in Morocco. International Social Science Journal 14:124-129. Page, E., C. Villee, and D. Villee 1972 Human Reproduction. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. Parker, S. 1976 The Precultural Basis of the Incest Taboo: Toward a Biosocial Theory. American Anthropologist 78:285 - 305. Parsons, T. 1954 The Incest Taboo in Relation to Social Structure and the Socialization of the Child. British Journal of Sociology 5: 101- 1 1 7 . Patai, R. 1965 The Structure of Endogamous Unilineal Descent Groups. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 21:325-350. Pederson, F., and K. Robson 1969 Father Participation in Infancy. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 39:466-472. Rebelsky, F., and C. Hanks 1971 Fathers' Verbal Interaction With Infants in the First Three Months of Life. Child Development 42:63-68. Robertson-Smith, W. 1903 Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia. Boston: Beacon Press. Sade, D. 1968 Inhibition of Son-Mother Mating among Free-Ranging Rhesus Monkeys. Scientific Psychoanalysis 12:18-37. Sahlins, M. 1960 The Origin of Society. Scientific American 48:76-89. Schneider, J. 1971 Of Vigilance and Virgins: Honor, Shame, and Access to Resources in Mediterranean Societies. Ethnology 10:1-24. Seligman, B. 1950 The Problem of Incest and Exogamy. American Anthropologist 52:305-316.
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