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PART I
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ONE
INTRODUCTION
THE goal of this book is to learn why there are two distinct notions of liability in the legal systems of different societies; I propose to analyze this problem by an examination of the ways in which societies treat the transition from childhood to adolescence.
The relationships between the two sets of data — notions of legal liability, on the one hand, and the individual’s evolution from childhood to adolescence, on the other — can be stated simply. The concepts of legal liability with which I shall deal — the empirical question of who assumes the onus for actions committed within a particular sociological nexus — are going to be used as independent criteria of the sense of personal responsibility. The specific ways in which different societies cope with the transition from childhood to adolescence will be examined because it is during this passage that a sense of responsibility, consonant with the goals of the society, is implanted in the growing child.
These questions and my answers lead into a second empirical problem: the universality of the incest taboos. The reason for including incest taboos in the present context can also be stated simply. The ways in which the incest taboos are taught constitute one of the crucial modes by which a sense of responsibility is implanted within an individual during his transition from childhood to adolescence.
Thus, legal systems, the transition from childhood to adolescence, and incest taboos will be my principal empirical concerns. My theoretical concerns are with the ways in which human biology and human social structures meet with, and affect, each other. Biology and social structure are both complex phenomena, and from each I shall select only a few elements on which to focus.
On the biological side, I will concentrate on a few biochemical and hormonal occurrences that seem to affect all people in all societies. Some of these events — such as the biochemical and hormonal changes that take place at the end of childhood but before adolescence begins — are well documented by medical scientists; the conjectural part of the analysis will be my theoretical extrapolations from these findings and my postulation of two stages in puberty rather than one. Moving toward the social-structural side, I shall be concerned with the psychological effects of these biochemical and hormonal changes. But these remain within the biological sphere still; the mechanisms through which psychological manifestations take place — repression, projection, displacement, isolation, denial, reaction-formation, and the like — are themselves part of the biological inheritance of the individual. Their behavioral and symbolic representations are, of course, cultural.
One of my basic assumptions is that universal physical changes in the human body at certain stages of development are accompanied by universal psychological effects. Variations arise as the result of a series of sociological and physical manipulations to which the individual is exposed during his transition from childhood to adolescence. These manipulations vary from one society to another, in each placing a unique stamp upon the psychological effects of the biochemical and hormonal alterations. I am attempting to say more in the latter statement than merely that each culture molds personality differently from the next: The psychological effects of the physiological changes prior to adolescence are universal predispositions, or anlagen; these predispositions take their final forms in adulthood as a result of highly specific manipulations of the individual by the society in which he lives. Since the number of these manipulations is extremely limited, as I shall show with respect to the ways in which a sense of responsibility is inculcated, the number of psychological outcomes is also extremely limited.
In examining incest taboos, I postulate a universal gene-carried need for “privacy”. The universal incest taboos — and there are several of these, just as there are some incest taboos that are not universal — are largely designed to satisfy the need for privacy, as well as other needs. There is considerable evidence in support of the postulate of a need for privacy; this evidence also shows how a limited number of social-structural relationships, in their confluence with the need for privacy, give rise to a comparable number of universal incest taboos.
On the social-structural level, I shall be dealing with sociological boundary-maintaining systems; this general subject is my principal and continuing theoretical concern. While I am not now prepared to make any general statements on the theory of boundary-maintaining systems — much work remains before this can be done — it may be helpful to state briefly the range of the concepts involved as they are used here.
A sociological boundary-maintaining system can be described most simply by the analogy of a balloon, which is maintained by two sets of pressures in juxtaposition. If either set of pressures is changed, the balloon will collapse or expand into disintegration. Thus, the sphere maintains a boundary and becomes a boundary-maintaining system by virtue of pressures simultaneously external and internal to it. The same thing can be said of all other boundary-maintaining systems — a person, a family, a friendship, a business organization, a kin group, a community, a religion, a system of social control, and the like. Once we define the nature of the boundary and the nature of the pressures internal and external to the institution (or the person, or the community) we begin to gain insight into the dynamics of a given institution as well as various other institutions within a community.
A boundary is a limit or demarcation; events take place within it; a boundary sets off a unit (a person, a community, a group, an institution) from all other units; and individuals, influences, or objects can pass across it or be excluded by it. Boundaries vary in the extent to which they are open or closed; persons, communities, groups, and institutions may be classified into types of boundary-maintaining systems depending on the nature of the pressures that originally set them in motion and perpetuate them. But it may be stated without qualification that every thing that every person does, from birth to death, takes place within and with reference to at least one set of boundaries at any given time. This is why we speak of behavior that is “out of bounds,’ “beyond the pale,” “off limits,’ and the like. It can be said that we behave differently in different institutional contexts and in different statuses (which imply different roles), but our behavior can more usefully be described as varying with different boundary-maintaining systems — that is, with different pressures surrounding or inside us.
The ways in which people mature — as, for example, the transition from childhood to adolescence — and the consequences of maturation, may therefore be seen within specific sociological boundary-maintaining systems; how incest taboos arise — and why they do not arise — may also be understood in terms of boundary systems. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the abhorrence occurs whether it is a balloon or a child on the way to becoming an adult that is being dealt with. The antithesis of a vacuum is a boundary-maintaining system, at least in human activity and in sociological structure. It is therefore a factual error to discuss any process of individual change without a careful examination of the changing individual’s relationships to specific boundary-maintaining institutions and systems, whether we speak of learning role systems, of the surge of sexuality, of repression, of psychological stress and the like. When a balloon loses its boundaries, it is destroyed; when a human being loses his boundaries, he will become psychotic or die.1*
The specific sociological boundary-maintaining systems with which I shall deal in these cross-cultural studies are the nuclear family and the wider kin group, and the individual’s relationship to them. Every society has a goal with respect to each individual’s anchorage, and within which boundary-maintaining system he is to find his social-emotional identity. The kind of anchorage and identity that a person develops will determine the kind of sense of responsibility that will grow within him. The principal sociological nexus within which this anchorage, identity, and sense of responsibility occurs is either the nuclear family or the wider kin group. Underlying these sociological interconnections of the individual are different value systems, and evidence for the presence or absence of these value systems is to be found in each society’s legal system.
Most anthropological and sociological analyses of the phenomenon of identity attempt to base their formulations on psychological theories and hypotheses. Unfortunately, however, most psychological discussions of this matter focus almost exclusively on the individual isomorphically, with little apparent awareness of the essentially social nature of identity. A crystallized identity is congruent with the goals of the society as reflected in its value system, and is rooted as much in specific boundary-maintaining systems as it is in the individual personality. Once these boundary-maintaining systems are understood, the pressures which are brought to bear on pre-pubertal individuals, for example, can be grasped more fully and their impact on personal development appreciated.
My goals here are thus twofold — empirical and theoretical. On the one hand, I shall attempt to explain some of the reasons why certain institutions exist and others do not; on the other, I shall not only attempt to illustrate the notion of boundary-maintaining systems by reference to these empirical problems, but also demonstrate that these problems could not have been solved without boundary-system theory.
As Dobzhansky has said recently,
Man has both a nature and a ‘history.’ Human evolution has two components, the biological or organic, and the cultural or superorganic. These components are neither mutually exclusive nor independent, but interrelated and interdependent. Human evolution cannot be understood as a purely biological process, nor can it be adequately described as a history of culture. It is the interaction of biology and culture. There exists a feedback between biology and caltural processes. ... The fact which must be stressed, because it has frequently been missed or misrepresented, is that the biological and cultural evolutions are parts of the same natural process.2
Biological considerations in the study of society and culture are complex; we cannot assume an elementary one-to-one correspondence between messages transmitted through the germ plasm and cultural institutions or patterns. Biologists have been demonstrating recently, for example, that there is no simple or arbitrary relationship between one gene and one organ in the message codes which are transmitted from one generation to the next; instead, it is now generally accepted that each organ in the body contains — like a predisposition — the codes for creating all other organs, but does not carry out these messages because it lacks the necessary enzymatic structure. Thus, a human liver contains the potential to create an ear, but produces only liver tissue because it does not contain the necessary enzymatic environment to translate the “ear genes” into the organ we call an ear. It is this biological model which I shall use in the analyses of the incest taboos in Chapters 7 and 8.*
Biology is never manifest in culture in raw and pure form. Biology is always molded by culture and culture always has limits set for it by, among other things, human biology. To disregard biology in the study of culture is to disregard the humanness of the bearers of culture. In addition to setting limits of variation for culture to take, biology includes the predispositions that are transmitted from one generation to the next in the germ plasm; it is because some of these coded messages are universal that there are universals in culture. Without one we cannot understand the other.
The fact that wide variations do exist among societies in connection with certain types of incest taboos does not lead inevitably to the conclusion that there is no biological basis for the incest taboo. For one thing, the immediate impression of variability can be misleading; extreme differences between cultures in the same institutional realm, as between individuals, often reveal remarkable regularity and consistency when examined carefully. These regularities are to be seen in the cultural phenomena we shall consider here; and the assumption that biology and culture are inextricably bound up in their manifestations is fundamental in understanding their nature.
I am not unaware of the work of others in connection with the transition from childhood to adolescence. However, my preference is to present the results of my own research in this book and to discuss the contributions of other anthropologists elsewhere.3
*Reference notes appear on pages 215-26 of this book.
*This, of course, is an oversimplified biological explanation. My purpose is simply to state a frame of reference. For a fuller elucidation by biologists see Asimov 1962, Crick 1962 and 1963, Watson 1963.
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TWO
FASHIONING AN IDENTITY AND A SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY
AN indissoluble relationship exists between emotional identification and a sense of responsibility. Thus, it has been observed that “the extent to which the individual feels responsible for what other people are doing, gives a clue to his degree of identification with those pe...
