The incest taboo has long proved a problem for social scientists, and it is no different for Levi-Strauss. In numerous articles, Levi-Strauss attempts to reconcile nature and culture in the prohibition against incest. Although he does this effectively, and his conclusion seems valid, the way that he arrives at it opens his work, structuralism, and social science in general up to larger critiques. The critique of social science is not about the conclusions reached but about the seeming inability of the social scientist to overcome or even put through a rigorous and thorough examination the concepts inherent in their work.

Before Levi-Strauss, there were three primary theories put forward to explain the incest. Some, like Westermarck and Ellis, believed that the prohibition derived from an instinctive horror of familial sex inherent in a person's psychology. Others argued that the prohibition was the result of an elementary understanding of...