Familiar Partners? The Mountain Arapesh and the Westermarck Effect

In her work on the Mountain Arapesh of New Guinea, Margaret Mead reported a betrothal practice in which a small girl goes to live with a future husband and is raised with him like a sister. The case has since played an unusual role in the anthropological debate about incest, having been used both to support and refute Edward Westermarck's "childhood-socialization" hypothesis of incest avoidance. Drawing upon the published Mountain Arapesh record and upon unpublished materials that include Mead's fieldnotes and a significant portion of those of Reo Fortune, her husband and cofieldworker in Alitoa locality, this article reevaluates Mountain Arapesh betrothal, marriage, and sexuality. It finds that the data provide firm support for neither side in the dispute and concludes that it would be wise to remove the Mountain Arapesh case entirely from debate over the Westermarck effect.