ABSTRACT
Understanding the nature of human kinship has been a virtual obsession of many of the twentieth century’s most prominent social scientists (Bailey, Chapter 3, this volume). In this pursuit, Sigmund Freud (1953/1913), Claude Levi-Strauss (1969), and others maintained that a cultural rule, the incest taboo, was the cornerstone of kinship. Without this cultural mandate, incest would be common and bonds of kinship would rupture. Culture would disintegrate. The incest taboo was the essential element defining humanity (Levi-Strauss, 1969; White, 1948).
