ABSTRACT
This book is focused on the issue of incest and its place in sociological theorising, in feminist theorising, and in British criminal law. A sociological riddle, a feminist issue and a category of law-incest is all these things. But is ‘incest’ the same at each of these sites? What is incest ‘about’ in each of the discourses in which it resides? In this chapter I will briefly sketch the problematics which provide both the inspiration for this book and the context in which it should be read: first, the feminist analyses of incestuous abuse, which have radically challenged previous sociological emphasis on the incest prohibition; secondly, the provocative work of Michel Foucault, in particular his arguments about the ways in which sex has been ‘put into discourse’; and thirdly, the developments in the sociology of law and crime to which both Foucault and feminism have contributed.
