He Puts the Steam in Kibbutzim

STONY BROOK , NY - According to Edward Westermarck, children develop a sexual aversion to those that they encounter regularly and are the same age – that’s why brothers and sisters are not normally attracted to one another. A genetic adaption has developed which triggers this aversion to deal with the biological malfunctions of incestuous pregnancies. In Westermarck’s estimation, the incest taboo is not something developed by humans to prevent these pregnancies (i.e. social structure), but rather the incest taboo is a result of a biological mechanism. This phenomenon is known as the Westermarck Effect. 

Edward Westermarck

The main evidence that Westermarck followers cite in their work is the Israeli Kibbutzim. A Kibbutz is a communal living arrangement native to Israel that is intended to deal with the problems associated with traditional forms of social arrangements such as economic and gendered inequalities. All materials are owned by the community, and children are raised by everyone. Originally, kibbutzim focused on agriculture, although today they also are involved in manufacturing and high-tech enterprises.

The evidence from the Kibbutzim that Westermarck scholars use to defend his thesis is the extremely small number of marriages between members of the same kibbutz. Anthropologist Joseph Scheper found that out of the 3,000 marriages between members of the kibbutz system, only 14 marriages came from the same peer group.  Scheper explained this low number of marriage through the Westermarck Effect. Since they grew up together, these children developed a sexual aversion to each other, and therefore married at very low rates.

Eran Shor, a graduate student in the Sociology Department, disagrees with this theory. Growing up in a Kibbutz in Israel, Eran did not experience this phenomenon as Westermarck describes it.

“When all these people were saying that all these people that were growing up together did not have an attraction to one another – this was simply not true.”

However, according to Eran, attraction to other teens in the Kibbutz was quite common, although relationships between those of the same peer group was heavily sanctioned.

One example supporting Eran’s critique of Westermarck concerns two people who could not have a relationship publicly in the Kibbutz. However, when they happened to meet years later in New York, they were able to enjoy a relationship. When they went back to Israel, the couple had to act as if they were never together.

“There’s a very large personal price to pay…if you have personal relationships in a very small group that has to stay together for a long time, what happens the day after?”

Eran Shor

So if this psychological/biological aversion mechanism does not explain the low marriage rate among peers in the Kibbutzim (and the strong incest taboo in general), what does?

“We argue that individuals in small non-voluntary groups, which have high levels of social cohesion, are less likely to be erotically attracted to their peers, and even less likely to act on such an attraction than individuals in groups with low levels of cohesion. We further contend that such avoidance is a latent consequence of the desire to maintain the status quo. The potential social and personal price of sustaining a dyadic relationship in a small, non-voluntary and highly cohesive group is high, as this jeopardizes the group’s cohesion.”

Despite Eran’s statement that the destruction of group cohesion is the major factor that prohibits incest, he does argue that when people get habituated to one another, they lose attraction.

“Look at married couples,” says Eran.

Eran argues that he’s claiming back a field that sociologists had previously owned, but has been dominated by psychologists and biologists for the past 40 years. However, he is not dismissive of their contributions.

“I don’t want to be a sociological determinist. I’m just saying that biology [alone] is not enough.”

Eran’s paper on the incest taboo won the best graduate student paper award for the Section on Sexuality at the 2007 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting. A co-authored paper with Dalit Simchai has been accepted at the American Journal of Sociology, one of the two most prestigious journals in the field of Sociology.

When asked about coming to the United States from Israel to be a graduate student, he was quite excited.

“I can’t believe that someone is actually paying me a nice amount of money to do research from a government that is not my own.”

Eran has served as the Secretary to the Graduate Student Organization, was a graduate student representative to the University Senate, and has served on many other University and department committees.