Discuss how the incest prohibition is the cornerstone of the alliance approach

The alliance theory in the study of kinship is also known as the general theory of exchange. It bears
its roots to the French structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss and hence is also known as the structural
way of studying kinship ties.

The alliance theory was first discussed in Lévi-Strauss’ monumental book named The Elementary
Structures of Kinship (1949). Strauss’s work became quite popular during the 1960s and went on to
be discussed and deliberated till the 1980s where the issue of incest taboo was taken up by not only
anthropologists but also by psychologists, political philosophers etc. Alliance theory tries to enquire
about how inter-individual relationships are woven and how finally they constitute society.

Lévi Strauss studied and observed the connections formed between consanguinity and affinity in his
investigation of non-European societies. According to him, these two are both opposed and
complementary to each other. Due to this, rules of preferential marriage and marriage prohibitions
are an incorporated part of this theory. Such rules in fact rise due to the connection between blood
ties and affinal ties. It is the marriage ties, according to Levi Strauss and many of his
contemporaries which create interdependence between families and lineages. According to Levi-
Strauss alliance theory is based on incest taboo and the prohibition of incest is recognised
universally. It is viewed as a fundamental condition of human social life.

Before delving into the problem of incest taboo, it is important to know that the alliance approach
believed that societies are found on the principals of reciprocity. Profoundly influenced by the work
of Marcel Mauss on the central role of reciprocal gift giving in “primitive” societies, Lévi-Strauss
held that the transition from the animal world of “nature” to the human one of “culture” was
accomplished through the medium of exchange.

Therefore the starting point of understanding the alliance theory is to reflect on the nature and
culture and the relationship between the two. Strauss believes that historically, the distinction
between nature and culture has been insignificant. However one cannot be dismissive about it as
these distinctions have a certain logic attached to it, that of being used as a methodological tool.

Strauss begins his argument by attempts to derive a logical premise to understand this distinction.,
however there is. Two-fold difficulty that arises.

According to him one method of analysing this nature culture distinction is to see if there is a level
of nature below the level of culture, on which culture is grafted and integrated with biology. This
fails, not only because it is impossible to isolate and maintain a human organism in its purely
"natural" state (newborn), but because man has no natural "species behaviour" to which he can be
said to revert when the constraints of culture are lifted.

Alternatively, Strauss believes that one can seek to see if there is a level of culture above the level
of nature by looking at superior levels of animals. Here research indicates that despite the presence
of certain basic components of a cultural model, there is a striking discontinuity between the
rudimentary outline and a truly universal cultural model which makes it difficult to make any
general conclusion.

Levi Strauss concludes that this discussion of superior mammals can however yield another
possible criterion. He states that absence of rules will become the surest criterion for distinguishing
a nature from culture.

Thus, while the mark of the cultural can be seen in the presence of rules, the mark of the natural can
be identified by universality which exceeds the scope of customs. Thus, this double criterion of
norm and universality is what allows one to distinguish natural from social.

This is where the prohibition of incest comes in. Strauss states that the prohibition of incest
combines the characteristics of both nature and culture. It has the aura of being natural, and indeed,
the magical fear associated in many cultures with natural phenomena, and yet it is through and
through cultural.

Unique and universal to the human species is incest. Incest taboo relates to forbidding marriage
between close blood relatives such as brother and sister, and of children and parents. Levi-Strauss
tries to find an explanation for the ubiquity of this rule and feels that explanations advanced by
earlier anthropologists cannot really explain this prohibition.

The usual arguments against the omnipresence of incest pertains to eugenics in which the primitive
man purposely avoids marriage of close blood born because in breeding will destroy the human
species.Levi Strauss clearly opposes the naturalistic explanation of incest taboo.

Levi Strauss says that if the human societies had this idea of recessive genes in consanguineous
marriages, consanguineous mean of the same blood; con means same and sanguineous means of
blood, then they would have applied similar principles of the plants they grew and animals they
bred. Hence there must be more to this.

Later day genetic research has shown that while in consanguineous breeding, recessive characters
may appear in the first few generations and thereafter characters would stabilise and thus flying in
the face of the belief that incest prohibition is primitive eugenics. Ancient philosopher like Plutarch
and Gregory both believed that the social rule of prohibition of incest was the reflection of the
natural in the social.

Levi Strauss cites certain instances from Australian aborigines in which marriage between a grand
daughter and her grandfather is preferred which upsets the blood connection in the incest
prohibition.

Apart from prohibition there is a horror among human beings of incest; one cannot imagine that
brothers and sisters would marry or that father and daughter and mother and son would marry.The
aspect of horror and the imagination that great disaster would befall the species if the incest rules
are abrogated across the human societies tell us that there is something which is common to every
human group. Levi Strauss’s research tried to uncover this universal principle that guides every
human society upon earth and hence tries to establish a species nature of humans.
There is yet another point of view advanced by some anthropologists like Lewis Morgan and Sir
Henry Maine which links incest to exogamy. Exogamy means that you marry outside the groups
and hence is a way of seeking diversity. This opinion has also been advanced by the geneticist,
Dahlberg who speaks of homozygosity and heterozygosity.

Mc Lennan and Spencer say that incest prohibition is a manner to promote exogamy which
increases the tribe while Lubbock believes that there might have been an evolutionary movement
from endogamy to exogamy. However, Levi Strauss believe that this these cannot explain the
universality of the prohibition of incest.

Westermarck and Havelock Ellis, evolutionary psychologist and sociologist respectively say that
consanguineous marriages often go against the natural bonds among kins. Due to familiarity among
blood relatives, sexual interest declines. This is also not borne by facts because Freud points out in
his thesis on psychoanalysis that human personalities are warped because they repress their sexual
desires for the closest kins.

• Indeed, the Azande Indians say that the desire for a wife emanates out of the desire for a sister and
that of a husband from the desire of a brother.

• The Hehe Indians justify the success of consanguineous marriages due to love for familiarity to
the degrees beyond the incest taboos.

• The Chuckchee Indians who practise child marriage say that when couples grow up as siblings
they are so attached to each other that when one dies the other dies as well. Child marriage
emerges out of a desire for incest rather than a horror of it.

• Among the Indians of British Columbia older men may want to have brides twenty years younger
to them only in order to have a parent like affection towards them.

Instances such as the ones outlined above tell us that incest prohibitions cannot be generalized on
the aversion to have sex with close relations.

Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of the discipline of sociology says that incest must be studied
from the point of view of the horror associated with its possible abrogation. Durkheim says that
incest occurs around blood and the horror of incest draws from the horror of having killed the
Totem, the horror of menstrual blood of women, the horror of the act of reproduction itself. Once
again this horror of blood is not universal across human societies because among many tribes the
menstrual period during which women are entitled to seclusion and privacy becomes an opportune
time for her husband to visit her. The data from some Australian tribes reveal that women are
supposed to guard her own mother or sometimes other women against her menstrual blood and in
some tribes the menstrual blood of women spell doom upon her if her father sees it; the danger is
for her and not for him. Blood seems to be a horror of women by other women rather than of men
for women as Durkheim seems to have proposed.

Thus Levi Strauss concluded within his study that sociologists have failed to make sense of the
incest taboo.
Levi Strauss suggests that the universality of incest has only one purpose; it is to maintain the unity
of group against the individuality of the human being; it is the first imprint of culture upon nature,
the first step by which humans create the group as an institution and hence it is the very foundation
of culture as something that tries to reign in nature.

Thus for Levi Strauss the alliance theory is based on incest taboo and the prohibition of incest is
recognised universally. It is viewed as a fundamental condition of human social life. According to
Strauss it is this process of incest taboo where a daughter or sister is sent to a different family that
commences the circle of exchange of women It is this prohibition of incest that led human groups to
follow exogamy.

Thus for Lévi-Struass the conclusion remains that this prohibition is beyond any sociological
explanation and clearly shows a difference between consanguinity and affinity as the basis of
kinship system

Louis Dumont amongst many other thinkers provided an analytical assessment of the Alliance
theory. Dumont suggests that Strauss’s theory is not without it’s flaw.

1. Strauss’s arguments are based on societies about which he has given examples of, which are
clearly viripotestal and also that his ideas of marriage was simple.

2. The fundamental character and explanatory value of exchange as defined by Levi Strauss faced
some extreme criticism.

3. For supporters of consanguinity as a self-explanatory system, the prohibiton of incest as the

basis for the difference in consanguinity and affinity is redundant. Marriage as been seen as a
form of exchange was also questioned, one because women were seen as possessions, private
properties and also because exchange was used in too wide a sense that it lost its meaning.

4. Strauss’ main confronter, R. Needham tried to make clear cut distinction between prescription
and preference in rules of marriage. For Needham, prescription on its own has structural
involvements in the whole social system. He states that if prescription rules are seen not only as
a marriage rule but as significant in the entire system, then the danger arises in underrating the
importance of other types, like preferential marriage. These too have structural elements and the
distinctions are sometimes not visible at all

5. Needham further criticizes Levi-Srauss’ structuralism by calling the mediating concepts of

reciprocity and exchange as facing distinctive opposition. The basic assimilation is not of
groups but of categories as is viewed by the social mind, where marriage rule is nothing but a
gamut of ideas.
6. Louis Dumont like Needham states that structural entailments which are observed are diverse
from the group scheme on which attention was initially given. The phrase ‘marriage alliance ‘
hence includes both a generic phenomenon of intellectual assimilation and a particular fact of
group integration. Dumont further states that this structural theory in its limited arena on its
own rises above the prejudices in our own culture. For him words like cross-cousin marriage
maybe useful in theory but in real life is deceptive.

7. A concrete comprehension can be reached according to him when the marriage rule which is
known as marriage alliance is viewed as offering a diachronic aspect which is only connected to
descent or consanguinity. If this can be done then it will be possible to go beyond our margins
of thought built upon our own society and make evaluations and appraisals on the basis of the
key perceptions involved, in this case consanguinity and affinity.

Thus, in conclusion Levi Strauss’s study of the incest prohibition has been intrsumental to the
development of the Alliance approach and has emerged as an alternate approach opposed to the
theory of descent. However, the application of these theories in the contemporary setting remains
questionable. However, the knowledge that both decent and alliance theory provides remains
important for the study of kinship within sociology and anthropology.