Incest taboo

The incest taboo is a cultural prohibition against sexual relations or marriage between people regarded as close kin. Its rules vary across societies and distinguish permitted from forbidden kin relationships.

Claude Lévi-Strauss: French anthropologist who argued that kinship systems and marriage exchange organize social relations. His alliance theory treats prohibitions as rules that redirect marriage beyond the immediate family.
Kinship: A system of social relationships based on descent, marriage, adoption, or other recognized ties. Incest rules depend on which relationships a society recognizes as kinship.
Westermarck effect: A proposed sexual aversion between people who spend early childhood in close proximity. It offers a developmental explanation for incest avoidance without requiring explicit teaching.
Ancient Egyptian royal incest: Marriage among close relatives practiced in some ancient Egyptian royal families. Royal unions demonstrate that kin prohibitions can have exceptions tied to dynastic power.
Alliance theory: An anthropological theory that explains kinship systems through marriage exchanges linking social groups. It interprets some incest prohibitions as requiring alliances beyond the immediate family.
Edward Westermarck: Finnish sociologist and anthropologist who proposed that people raised closely together tend to develop sexual aversion. His hypothesis explains taboo-like avoidance through childhood co-residence rather than formal rules.
Consanguinity: A relationship of shared biological ancestry between people. Many incest prohibitions target consanguineous relatives, though their exact boundaries vary.
Inbreeding depression: Reduced biological fitness caused by increased expression of harmful recessive genetic variants in offspring of related parents. The genetic risks of close-kin reproduction are one proposed basis for prohibitions.
Hawaiian royal incest: Sibling unions among some Hawaiian chiefs, associated with exceptionally high rank and sacred status. This case shows how status systems could permit relationships prohibited for most people.
Marriage law: Legal rules governing who may marry and the rights created by marriage. Legal systems often translate cultural kinship prohibitions into enforceable restrictions.

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