Sociological Understanding of Sibling Incest: Power relations in an Intra-familial Context

1. Sociology of Kinship; Arpita Mitra Sociological Understanding of Sibling Incest: Power relations in an Intra-familial Context

2. Background Of the Research • Research conducted in association with the RAHI Foundation, which specializes in the arena of Child Sexual Abuse and Incest; • Reviewing narratives of victims of sibling incest; • Particular form of incestuous relationship existing between an older brother and a younger sister (siblings of a particular nature, sex and age) negotiating their sexual relationship, and the interrelated sphere of physical and emotional abuse, within the domain of the family; • Developing a module of understanding through critiquing the psychoanalytical frames of reference (pertaining to this issue); • Attempt to undertake a parallel process of theorization and review of anthropological works in the realm of sexuality, exploring how incest has been studied in anthropological arrangement to develop a methodological tool and process of analysis

3. Focus of the research • Exploring the aspect of ‘power relations’ that operate between siblings and how incestuous relations are to be viewed in the sociological understanding of the broader social environment it occurs in; • Social Learning Theory, which believes that violence or abuse is often a learned behaviour and is significantly contributed by an individual’s social conditioning; • Process of Socialization and Gendered context of social conditioning; • From studies specializing in the understanding of ‘incest as a taboo/form of prohibition’, to the concept of ‘Incest’;

4. Specialization and observations- The psychoanalytical theorization • Social learning theory under psychoanalysis (Albert Bandura): • “The more pre-adolescent interaction between siblings there is, the less need will there be for a strong incest taboo as part of the society's system of rules and sanction”, J. Fox • Westermarck's theory-that interaction within the family dulls the desire for sexual intercourse between family members • “Five types of incest behavior emerged from the analysis of data on these 425 cases: 1) a functional type of incest; 2) an accidental or disorganized type; 3) a pathological type; 4) an object fixation type; and 5) a psychopathic type”, Christopher Bagley

5. - The Anthropological theorization: the Incest taboo/prohibition • Levi Strauss’s theorization: • Complex nature of the ‘incest prohibition’ as a double criterion of both norm and universality; • Critique Westermark’s model: universality of the phenomenon lies not in the repugnance towards incestuous relationships, but on the contrary in the pursuit of the same; • stating that there is no point in forbidding what would not happen if it were not forbidden; since society expresses forbids only for that which it brings about; • Transition from nature to culture: A dynamic synthesis; • Incest prohibition and rule of exogamy operate side-by-side as forms of exchange and the basic fabric of kinship studies, incorporating it in the theorization of alliance approach; • Alliance between male members of socially scarce resources: A transaction involving a woman that forges a relationship—an alliance—between two men; • Marcel Mauss’s theory of The Gift: “that exchange in primitive societies consists not so much in economic transactions as in reciprocal gifts, that these reciprocal gifts have a far more important function than in our own, and that this primitive form of exchange is not merely nor essentially of an economic nature but is what he aptly calls 'a total social fact', that is, an event which has a significance that is at once social and religious, magic and economic, utilitarian and sentimental, jural and moral.”

6. Levi Strauss referring to Mead’s work among Arapesh: • “When she asked if a man ever sleeps with his sister, Arapesh replied "No we don't sleep with our sisters. We give our sisters to other men, and other men give us their sisters." Mead pressed the question repeatedly, asking what would happen if a brother and sister did have sex with one another. Lévi-Strauss quotes the Arapesh response: • What, you would like to marry your sister? What is the matter with you anyway? Don't you want a brother-in-law? Don't you realize that if you marry another man's sister and another man marries your sister, you will have at least two brothers-in-law, while if you marry your own sister you will have none? With whom will you hunt, with whom will you garden, who will you visit?”

7. Malinowski’s anthropological analysis: • Critiquing Freud on the universality of the Oedipus Complex and assumed notions about the nature of ‘family’ • Applying to each society a terse, though somewhat crude formula, we might say that in the Oedipus complex there is the repressed desire to kill the father and marry the mother, while in the matrilineal while in the matrilineal society of the Trobriands the wish is to marry the sister and to kill the maternal uncle; • Understands how Power— not sexual jealousy — is the source of Oedipal conflict; whereby Malinowski reported that boys dreamed of feared uncles, not of beloved fathers; • Traces roots of sexual desire toward a family member usually within the prohibited/ distanced relation with a kin member in power dynamics. • Culture, not instinct – the latter describing behavioural symptoms of animals; • Makes observations regarding the various stages of social development of the child: - INFANT – Physiologically bound up by the family; dependent on mother for nourishment - BOYHOOD - Reduction in dependence, learns to move away from family - CHILDHOOD – Independence and relations with other children - ADOLESCENCE – Full initiation to social maturity • Explores the equation between the biological adjustment of instinct governed by the social forces of custom, morals and manners: Understanding ‘repression’ in this context; • At the stage of Childhood, as the children begin to play independently and develop an interest in the surrounding work and people, sexuality makes its first appearance in forms accessible to outside sociological observation and directly affecting family life. The two categories of things, ' decent ' and ' indecent ‘, ' pure ' and ' impure ‘, begin to crystallize, categories destined to remain throughout life. In some people the ' indecent’ becomes completely suppressed, for the indecent ' always carries with it a sense ofguilt.

8. Excerpts from the text • “..a man is sometimes sad, ashamed, and ill- tempered. Why ? Because he has dreamt that he had connection with his sister…’This made me feel ashamed,’ such a man would say. I found that this is, in fact, one of the typical dreams known to exist, occurring frequently, and one which haunts and disturbs the dreamer… the brother-sister incest is the most reprehensible form of breach of the rules of exogamy… • “The sister remains a mysterious being, always near yet never intimate, divided by the invisible yet all powerful wall of traditional command which gradually changes into a moral and personal imperative. The sister remains the only spot on the sexual horizon permanently hidden. Any natural impulses of infantile tenderness are as systematically repressed from the outset as other natural impulses are in our children, and the sister becomes thus ' indecent ' as an object of thought, interest and feeling, just as the forbidden things do for our children. Later on, as the personal experiences in sexuality develop, the veil of reserve separating the two thickens. • Though they have constantly to avoid each other, yet, owing to the fact that he is the provider of her household, they must constantly keep one another in thought and attention. Such artificial and premature repression must have its results.   • This taboo also, since it makes even an accidental contact in sexual matters a crime, causes the thought of the sister to be always present, as well as consistently repressed.”

9. Foucault’s conceptualization of ‘The History of Sexuality’ • The concept of ‘repression’ having close link with ‘power’ • “Sexuality isn't a "thing" that is then repressed by power, or that must be discovered through careful investigation. Sexuality is a social construct that channels a variety of different power relations. Our concept of sexuality is built by the strategies that make use of it: it serves as a network that joins together physical sensations and pleasure, the incitement to discourse, the formation of specialized knowledge, and political controls and resistance.” • All four strategic centers deal with family relations. Foucault concludes that the family does not repress sexuality, but nurtures it. The deployment of alliance focuses specifically on family relations, so it is in the family that the deployment of alliance and the deployment of sexuality have the most contact. Foucault suggests that the deployment of alliance maintains some control over family relations and thus on the deployment of sexuality by means of the taboo it places on incest. • Emphasis on two parts: “pedagogization of children's sex" sees children as highly sexual creatures, and sees this sexuality as something dangerous that needs to be monitored and controlled. Third, the "socialization of procreative behavior" sees reproduction and therefore sex as a matter of public importance, and disapproves of non- procreative sex; • Specifically, Foucault identifies sexuality as a multi-faceted interface that connects a number of ideas about pleasure and physical sensation to knowledge, discourse, and politics. How we understand certain concepts has a lot to do with what other concepts we link them to.

10. Margaret Mead: Sex and Temperament – The idea of cultural conditioning • Masculine and feminine characteristics are based mostly on cultural conditioning; • Analysis of the role of male and female in several different primitive societies, which tend to have different ideas about what is or isn’t masculine or feminine;  • Men and women differ as a consequence of nurture (process of social and cultural conditioning) as against nature (something innate; heredity) • “Culture is able to shape each new born child to the cultural image”, referring to malleability of human nature • Arapesh: Men and women showing relatively ‘feminine’ characteristics, which further were linked to broader cultural beliefs about people's relationship to the environment, and the lack of ownership notions around land, thereby facilitating no ground for conflicts over possession of property; • Mundugamor: associate with traits of masculinity – assertiveness, emotional inexpressiveness, insensitivity to others. Mundugumor women, according to Mead, were just as violent, just as aggressive, and just as jealous as the men, and equally virile; • Tchambuli did distinguish between male and female traits, their gender expectations were the opposite of what we expect in modern societies. Women were dominant, shrewd, assertive, and managerial; while men were submissive and emotional and were seen as inherently delicate.

11. From incest as a prohibition to incest as an experience • During most of anthropology's history the problem of explaining the incest taboo has taken priority over understanding incest; • 'The meaning of incest', puts it even more strongly, asserting that '. . . the massive amount of attention paid to the subject of the incest taboo has meant a denial of incest' – Willner (I986: 4) • Both Willner and Arens were clearly alerted to the deficiency in anthropological knowledge by the emergence of the social problem. • Sibling Incest narrative(s): venture into the domain of Sociology of law and legal – criminological discourse; • Revert to Social Learning theory (As a sociological theory of crime causation): - Juveniles engage in crime, primarily through their association with others – peers and family; - Violence or abuse is often a learned behaviour/behavioural response

12. Questions and observations: Narrative analysis • Interpenetrating forms of physical and emotional abuse with that of sexual abuse; • Unlike other forms of incestuous relations, and in legal-criminological terms, both the victim and the perpetrator of the ‘crime’ are children, thereby opening new horizons and unexplored locales of analyzing not only the motivational behaviour, but the various dimensions of power relations and strategies of suppression used within such relationships; • Victimization of children: equations of power in one situation may not correspond to similar sense of achievement in another, whereby the perpetrator per se can also be a victim, the response of which often manifests itself as the cause of the incestuous relation within the home; • General pattern of observation: Socialization, Gender stereotyping within intra-familial context, Role play of brother as protector; family environment and overt expression of violence between parents sought to be imitated in interactions between brother-sister.

13. Systematic and previously conceptualized: Brother creating conditions/environment of isolation, usage of trickery, emotional manipulation, threat, violence, concept of guilt; • Routinized and the narrator observes difficulty in differentiating experience of incest from other events; • Perplexity in understanding the dynamics of incestuous relation: dichotomy between ‘expected normative’ understanding of a brother-sister relation and incestuous relation – do not coincide; • Reasons for keep silence: Threat, self blame, not wanting to disturb the harmonious relation base of the family; • Ignorance of family members: failing to distinguish concepts of sexual exploration, sibling rivalry and incest; • Concept of force and sexual involvement against will/by force is what constitutes the foundation of power relations between siblings.

14. Limitations of the research • Inadequacy of sources on this subject, in order to draw generalizations of a particular nature; • Basing the study on narratives of victims of sexual abuse can be a risk, considering how objective and unbiased would such a description be; • Nature of the narratives (especially those which were published) appeared to have a pre-set purpose and conclusion– ‘to end the narration on a note of hope’, makes the researcher even more attentive to the content of the narrative; • Sibling incest narrative from only a victim’s point of view – restricted; • Potential of Inadequacies in terms of translating experiences of incest, and to what extent can the resource developed thereafter justify to the actual experience?

15. References • Ailawadi, Ashwini (2000), The House I Grew Up In’, RAHI Foundation • Wiehe, R Vernon (1997), Sibling Abuse: Hidden Physical, Emotional and Sexual Trauma, SAGE Publications • Patton, Q Michael (1991), Family Sexual Abuse: Frontline Research and Evaluation, SAGE Publications • Mead, Margaret (1935), Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, HarperCollins • Malinowski, Brownislaw (1927), Sex and Repression in Savage societies, Routledge & Kegan Paul • Foucault, Michel (1976), The History of Sexuality, Editions Gallimard • Leavitt, C Gregory (2007), “The Incest taboo? A reconsideration of Westermarck”, Anthropological Theory, SAGE Publications • La Fontaine, S.J (1988), ‘Child Sexual Abuse and the Incest Taboo: Practical Problems and Theoretical Issues’, Man New Series, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain • Fox, R.J (1962), Sibling Incest, The British Journal of Sociology Vol.13 No.2, Published on behalf of the London School of Economics and Political Science • Naples, A. Nancy (2003), Deconstructing and Locating Survivor Discourse: Dynamics of Narrative, Empowerment, and Resistance for Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol.28,no.4, The University of Chicago.