Political Sovereignty and the Modern Origin of Incest Taboo

Weilin Xiao, University of Hong Kong

Every society has incest taboos, but why their prohibited degrees are different? By examining the legality of consanguineous marriage—mainly first-cousin, or avunculate marriages— in early modern England, 19th century America, Meiji Japan, and 20th century China, this Article argues that the establishment of incest taboos in modern societies was fundamentally linked to political sovereignty, with surging political forces seeking to assert their authority and distinguish themselves from their predecessors, peers and rivalries. The prohibition of certain degrees of consanguinity served this function. This conclusion differs from existing anthropological, religious, cultural, and biological interpretations of incest taboos. In England, the legalization of first-cousin marriage under Henry VIII was a move to assert political power during the Reformation, distancing from Roman Catholic prohibitions and establishing new Protestant authority. In the United States, while early states followed British practices of permitting first-cousin marriages, Southern and Western states later prohibited such marriages to protect the dominant Anglo-Saxon authority from immigrants who practiced consanguineous marriage, thereby consolidating American sovereignty in the late 19th century. In Meiji Japan, customary practices did not strictly prohibit cousin and avunculate marriage. However, with the rise of Meiji absolutism and its family-state ideology, on the one hand, the Meiji regime permitted first-cousin marriage but prohibited avunculate marriages for preserving intergenerational power and hierarchy. On the other hand, when promulgating new prohibited degrees, Meiji elites tried to differentiate Japan from Chinese familial ethics. In 20th century China, the Nationalist government expanded traditional paternal consanguineous restrictions to maternal ones, asserting its authority over traditional Confucian patriarchy. Later, Socialist China relaxed these restrictions in the 1950s, condemning prohibited degrees as feudal practices incompatible with the Socialist state. By the 1980s, prohibitions on first-cousin marriage were revived as part of States’ modernization efforts.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 164. Surveillance, Classification, and Bureaucratic Control