Specific Punishment Research Articles

IN every society certain patterns of sexual behavior are accepted as proper and approved ways of expressing sexual urges, while alternative forms of behavior are rejected. Members who act in accordance with the mores are rewarded by social approval, but individuals who deviate from the mores receive social censure or other more specific punishments. In general, anthropologists interested in the mores have emphasized the conformity of behavior of members of simple societies and have been chiefly concerned with the manner in which the approved patterns are maintained and transmitted to later generations. The present study, however, stresses deviations from the mores and the means which societies employ to discourage and punish such nonconformity. In order to determine which forms of behavior are most generally forbidden, quantitative techniques are utilized to measure the frequency with which specific types of behavior are considered deviant by a sample of primitive societies, and to estimate the severity with which these forms of sexual behavior are punished. Specifically, the following problems are considered:

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