Discuss 'incest taboo' as the basis of development of kinship systems in human societies. (Answer in 250 words)

- Discuss 'incest taboo' as the basis of development of kinship systems in human societies. (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
The incest taboo is universal in form and variable in content. Levi-Strauss made it the hinge on which kinship turns, since a rule forbidding marriage within compels marriage without.
Body
1. What it prohibits: sexual relations within defined categories of close kin. The nuclear family is almost always covered, but beyond it scope varies sharply: Dravidian systems prohibit parallel cousins while prescribing cross-cousin marriage, north India extends the ban through gotra and sapinda rules, and royal Egyptian and Zoroastrian sibling marriage were licensed exceptions.
2. Explanations offered: Westermarck's aversion bred by early co-residence, supported by Wolf's Taiwanese minor marriages and Shepher's kibbutz data; Freud's contrary claim of repressed desire; the genetic argument from inbreeding depression; Malinowski's concern with role conflict inside the family; and Tylor's dictum that societies must marry out or be killed out.
3. How it builds kinship: in the Elementary Structures the taboo is the passage from nature to culture. By denying a group its own women it obliges exchange, so exogamy generates alliance, alliance generates reciprocity and durable inter-group ties, and descent groups become defined by whom one may not marry. Dravidian terminology encodes exactly this, classing kin as marriageable or prohibited.
4. How far it bears the weight: it is necessary but not sufficient. Descent, residence, property and succession also structure kinship, and Westermarck's evidence grounds part of the rule in biology rather than culture.
Conclusion
As the foundation of alliance theory the proposition holds. As a single origin for kinship in all its aspects it claims more than the evidence allows.