Bara endogamy and incest prohibition

Abstract

In this article, I describe the relationship between the preferences for marriage with kin and the prohibitions of sex with kin among the Bara people of the Malagasy Republic. It is paradoxical that in spite of the long-standing prominence of the topic of incest taboo in studies of kinship, there are rather few detailed ethnographic accounts.1 This has been attributed to the sensitive nature of the topic which makes it difficult to collect data or to discuss it freely in the field situation (Beidelman 1971). Certainly this is often the case with this and other topics that concern the anthropologist. But it seems as if there may be an additional impediment to the study of incest prohibitions, and that is the rather bizarre importance given to the topic in the structure of anthropological theory. A number of influential writers have presented the incest taboo in terms of either the origins of human culture or the definition of the essence of human society. Although today we associate this grand ap proach with the theories of L?vi-Strauss, it hardly originates in his work; and it is no detraction to note, with Needham (1971: 24), that L?vi-Strauss' approach to the incest taboo is in a sense a culmination of a long trend in anthropological thought. Many approaches, in spite of their diversity of explanation, focus on the problem of the integration of the variable complexity of human cultural forms with some more uniform biological imperative. It would be tedious to rehearse all the differences among the approaches to the issue, and for the present, it is sufficient to note that the concept of incest prohibition as a rule regulating mating (whatever its supposed source and/or function), serves as an important link between the organic and super-organic aspects of various Western perspectives on the nature of social man. Such theoretical weight adds an inevitable distortion to