Abstracts and Reviews : FDB (Father's Brother's Daughter) Marriage: Further Support for the Westermarck Hypothesis of the Incest Taboo? by Justine McCabe. American Anthropologist 85 (1983): 50-59

AbstractIt is argued that traditional functional explanations of the incest taboo do not sufficiently supply causal conditions. It is widely acknowledged that the incest taboo, although universal among human societies, is largely a feature of human behavior. Husserl's investigations of intentionality are introduced to supply the particularly human element by which the taboo may be understood. So as to illumine the contrast between the conflicting intentionalities, a classical Aristotelian contrast between eros and parent/ child philia is drawn. Parent/child philia and eros, although both requisite for the survival of the species, are shown to be crosspurposeful in several ways. Husserl's understanding of 'negation,' as it applies to affective and practical intentionalities, is reconsidered. It is thereby explained how parental/child affection and erotic love, are 'incompossible' and not only conflict, but 'nullify' and 'cancel out' each other, generating the 'taboo'.

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Maimonides’s Rationalization of the Incest Taboo, Its Reception in Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah, and Their Affinity to Aquinas

Harvard Theological Review ◽

10.1017/s0017816021000249 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 114 (3) ◽

pp. 371-392

Author(s):

Leore Sachs-Shmueli

Keyword(s):

Thirteenth Century ◽

Incest Taboo ◽

Common Presentation ◽

The Common ◽

Jewish Philosophy

AbstractThis article discusses Maimonides’s rationale for the incest taboo and traces its reception in Christian and kabbalistic traditions in the thirteenth century. Tracing the reception of Maimonides’s view enables recognition of the resemblance between Maimonides and Aquinas, the ambivalent stance toward Maimonides’s explanation expressed by Nahmanides, and the incorporation of Maimonides’s reasoning in one of the most systematic and enigmatic works of kabbalistic rationalization of the commandments, the Castilian Kabbalist Joseph of Hamadan’s The Book of the Rationales of the Negative Commandments. R. Joseph’s acceptance of Maimonidean principles and his integration of them in the theurgic Kabbalah reveal a conflict in the heart of its system and teach us about an important aspect of the theory of sexuality in Kabbalah. The inquiry offered here examines the inter-relations between divergent medieval religious trends in constructing the role of sexuality. Instead of the common presentation of Kabbalah as diverging from the ascetic positions of Jewish philosophy and Christianity, this analysis will elucidate Kabbalah’s continuity with them.

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racial prejudice and the incest taboo

Psychiatric Annals ◽

10.3928/0048-5713-19720901-08 ◽

1972 ◽

Vol 2 (9) ◽

pp. 57-73

Author(s):

Karem Monsour

Keyword(s):

Racial Prejudice ◽

Incest Taboo

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Secularizing Effects of Christian Mission: Fifty Years After Elmer Miller’s “The Christian Missionary, Agent of Secularization”

Mission Studies ◽

10.1163/15733831-12341774 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 38 (1) ◽

pp. 59-76

Author(s):

Maryse Kruithof

Keyword(s):

Literature Review ◽

Decisive Role ◽

American Anthropologist ◽

Christian Mission ◽

Academic Literature ◽

The Past ◽

Primary Driver ◽

Christian Missionary ◽

Mission Field ◽

Made In

Abstract It has been suggested that Christianity is inextricably linked with secularization due to its emphasis on purification and rationalization. But if we believe secularization in Europe is at least partly caused by internal developments within Christianity, may we then assume that secularization emerges wherever Christian missionaries are successful? Has the Christian mission unwittingly instigated secularization in its mission fields? This literature review analyses the argument that American anthropologist Elmer Miller made in the article “The Christian Missionary, Agent of Secularization” (1970) and explores whether his thesis has been confirmed in academic literature during the past fifty years. Miller presents rationalization as the primary driver of secularization and explains how missionaries have played a decisive role in this process. This paper demonstrates that while rationalization has often been mentioned as an effect of the Christian mission in other sources, the process has rarely been linked to secularization in the mission field.

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W. R. Bascom and the Ife bronzes

Africa ◽

10.2307/1160114 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 60 (3) ◽

pp. 425-434 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Robert L. Tignor

Keyword(s):

American Anthropologist ◽

Department Of State ◽

The Us ◽

Eventual Return ◽

British Colonial ◽

Opening Paragraph ◽

The Third World ◽

Colonial Government ◽

The City ◽

Small Museum

Opening ParagraphIn 1938 an African building a house in the city of Ife, the cultural capital of the Yorubas and the mythical cradle of Yoruba civilisation, came upon an extraordinary cache of ancient Nigerian bronzes. In all, at least fifteen bronzes were uncovered in 1938 in a compound only 100 yards from the palace of the Oni of Ife. These bronzes were to prove of great historical and artistic significance. Until that time only two other bronzes had been unearthed in the Yoruba area, and one of those had disappeared, leaving Nigeria only a single original and a replica. In the disposition of the priceless new finds there ensued a tale of intrigue, prevarication, outraged nationalism, and narrow-minded ethnocentricism that drew into its maelstrom the British colonial government of Nigeria, the US Consulate in Lagos, and the USA's Department of State. Although the Ife bronzes, which today reside in a handsome if small museum in the city of Ife, are not so well known as, for example, the Elgin marbles or certain other antiquities taken from the Third World, the controversy surrounding their removal from Nigeria and their eventual return was filled with the same emotion and employed the same arguments heard today over the rightful location of national cultural treasures. The Nigerian dispute is made all the more poignant in that one of the major protagonists was not a money-seeking antiquities dealer, but a young American anthropologist destined to be one of the most astute and sympathetic interpreters of Yoruba culture.

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