Introduction to the Notion of Love & Sex:
Love and sexual behavior among mankind, whether universal or local, have excited from early times,
and continues through the process of socialization, and enculturation over time and space. As a
consequence, it can be said that sexual-interactions both pre-marital and post-marital determine the
degree of personality, relationship, status, obligation, role, and behavior/emotions of members of each
tribal society since, sexuality has been working as a system on the basis of love, sex and sex norms, and
values1
.
Anthropology testifies that variations exist between different cultural groups in their patterns of sexual
behavior. Every society must control potentially disruptive sexual behavior through some systems. But
it is clear that effective control can be achieved in diverse ways. Behavior which is discouraged in one
society may be tolerated in a second, and encouraged in a third. Also, substantial differences may exist
between subgroups within a society (Gebhard 1971:206). The very existence of cultural practices like
monogamy, polygamy, joking relationship, preferential marriage, sororate, levirate, etc are based on
sexual interactions. The sexual privilege, avoidance, taboo, and incest among the members have been
helping the tribals to sustain their discipline, continuity, and existence.
Anthropological studies of intimate human emotions and sexual behavior traditionally are difficult to
conduct and to interpret. Usually this is because so much of any emotional and sexual behavior is
private and must be understood through reporting by others rather than through direct observation.
Identifying the central components that constitute general social structures, one cannot overlook the
integral role that marriage, in its many manifestations, plays in the make-up of human societies.
Marriage, or the ultimate extension of pair bonding, developed largely as a cultural adaptation to the
reproduction of slowly developing human offspring2
.
2.Love & Sex: An Anthropological Thought
Cross-cultural researchers point out that culture has a profound impact on how susceptible people are
to falling in love, with which they tend to fall in love, and how their passionate affairs work out
.
Jankowiak suggests that many researchers believe that romantic love evolved as a means of improving
human reproductive strategies through a concentration of parental investment. Thus, Jankowiak and
Fischer’s documentation of the universality of love set an important precedent, encouraging researchers
to examine the adaptiveness of this cultural trait. However, the aforementioned studies do not explain why this apparently universal concept, biologically and psychologically, is only an important basis for
marriage in a select sample of societies. The following is an analysis of the research that has been
conducted with the goal of explaining which cultural factors determine the importance of romantic
love as a basis for marriage. In a cross-cultural study, Rosenblatt and Cozby found an association
between freedom of choice in choosing a spouse and greater romantic love as a basis for marriage. In
their research, they found that “the greater the freedom of choice, the greater also was the degree of
exaggeration of qualities (versus objectivity), the more important was sex as a source of attraction, and
the more important were feelings of affection and courtly love” (Rosenblatt & Cozby 1972: 693).
Additionally, they associated freedom of choice with greater male-female contact, greater frequency of
dances, and community endogamy. This research indicates that where individuals are granted more
freedom of choice when choosing a spouse, romantic love is a more important basis for marriage,
leading to impractical mate choices and increased relational antagonism (Rosenblatt & Cozby: 1972).
Rosenblatt and Cozby attribute the increased relational antagonism to “the strong emotionality of
courtship coupled with ambiguity of situation in societies with a great deal of freedom of choice”4
.
It is important to note that many studies have found culture-related dimensions to a more complete
understanding of romantic love. Anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists have assumed that
passionate love is culturally universal. Cultural researchers, historians, and social psychologists have
emphasized the stunning diversity in the way passionate love and sexual desire have been viewed and
experienced. Culture, ethnicity and the rules passed down by political and religious authorities have a
profound impact on the way people think about an act of love and sex. The dimensions include
individualism and collectivism, at both societal and psychological level, offer insights into the nature
of romantic love and its perceived importance in marriage5
. Changes in values pertaining to romantic
love and its role in choosing partners or spouse are evident in several traditional societies.
In all cultures, men and women feel the strings of passionate love and sexual desire that comes in the
domain of “Sexual Ethnography”. And despite its universality, culture has been found to have a
profound impact on people’s definitions of passionate love and on the way they think, feel, and behave
when faced with appropriate partners in settings designed to spark such feelings. Cross-cultural studies
provide a glimpse into the complex world of passionate love and increase our understanding of the
extent to which people’s emotional lives are written in their cultural histories6
. Almost all cultures have
norms governing sex and reproduction, premarital sex, the incest taboo to legal concepts such as child
support. However these taboos are not found to be entirely universal.
According to Foucault, until Freud, the discourse on sex that scholars and theoreticians are engaged in
never ceased to hide the thing that they were speaking about and by speaking about it so much, by
multiplying it and partitioning it off a screen-discourse was created, a dispersion avoidance meant to
evade the unbearable and too hazardous truth of sex. It began to be spoken about from the rarified and
neutral viewpoint of science, a science that refused to speak of sex itself but spoke of aberrations,
perversions, exceptional oddities, pathological abatements and morbid aggravations. It stirred up
peoples fear as it claimed to tell the truth as it ascribed an imaginary dynasty of evils destined to be
passed on for generations7
.
3.An Understanding of the Tribal Sexuality
In conceptualization of the individual or reproductive couple as the fulcrum of reproductive decisionmaking, such models abstract the decision-making process from the socio-cultural and political context
in which the reproductive unit is located (Simmons, 1988; Schneider & Schneider, 1995) and fail to
consider the influences of social institutions and social relations that structure that context (Thomas &
Price, 1999). Anthropological analyses have challenged the notion that fertility-related behavior is the
outcome of individualistic calculations of the costs and benefits of having children8
.
Considering the ethnographic analysis of various tribal or indigenous communities, there were some
detailed analysis of the native’s or tribals’ perception on the purview of love and sex pertaining to the
sexual behavior of the individuals in the community. The most common pattern noted in the literature
is to permit joking relationship within the same generation, sometimes with alternate generations and
only rarely between contiguous generations. Radcliffe-Brown regards the joking relationship as a
technique of resolving problems inherent in the social structure and an alternative to extreme respect or
avoidance. He says that: “a relation between two persons in which one is by custom permitted and in
some instances required, to tease or make fun of the other, who in turn is required to take no offence”.
He further says that: “the joking relationship between affinal relatives close in age is that sexuality is
spoken about or expressed in gestures which seem to anticipate a future sex relationship” (RadcliffeBrown 1952:90-104). The ethnographic literature frequently mention about joking, sexual license, or
obligations between specified members of a society, and among the Luguru of Tanganyika all three of
these behavior patterns are to be found in a relationship.
According to Eggan (1937:75) avoidance and joking were alternative solutions for resolving what
could potentially be serious conflicts between kinsmen. “Avoidance and respect were likely to occur between different generations, with joking and license permitted between members of the same
generation where a conflict situation is inevitable. He suggested avoidance and respect because it had
the potential for conflicts, jokes, satires, and sexual plays are expected to be greatest between siblings in-law”. Whereas it is just opposite in the case of incest behavior for Radcliffe-Brown (1950:69), incest
is “properly speaking the sin or crime of sexual intimacy between immediate relatives within the
family, father and daughter, mother and son, brother and sister”.
4.Social Context of Love, Sexual and Reproductive Behavior: Tribes of India and the World
Different people feel differently about the place of their sexual intercourse. One of the reasons for the
origin of youth dormitories in tribal societies in India like the Juangs of Odisha, Muria Gonds of
Madhya Pradesh is that the parents do not want to be witnessed by their children during their sexual
intercourse at home. This is where the children get their sex education and orientation on love and
sexual behaviors. While the Muria Gonds juveniles have their sexual urge fulfilled in the youth
dormitories. After weaning the Muduvars, and the Malai Malasars children sleep in bachelor or, young
maiden halls respectively, and thus, the parents are undisturbed during nights in their houses (Ehrenfels
1952:203). The Onge of Little Andaman observes initiation ceremony, tanagire, for boys to initiate
them into manhood. The elders teach the initiated boys about all aspects of their culture including sex.
Some tribals, specially the Chenchus of Andhra Pradesh, have sexual intercourse in day time since;
they feel that intercourse at night lead to the birth of blind child. Also, they have sex in deep forest area
as; they believe that their home is not a hygienic place to have sex (Haimendorf 1943). Extramarital
relations are allowed among the infertile Chenchus of Andhra Pradesh, in the hope of proving their
fertility (Meera Guntupalli and Chenchelgudem 2004:256,258).
Sex activities of the Kadars of Cochin are somewhat different since, they are confined to excursions
into the forest during day time. The restrictions therefore mould not only sex-habits as such, but
determine also the daily routine of all married people (Ehrenfels 1952:202 and Coon 1972:158).
Further, their ordinary marital sex life is also quite interesting. A husband of women would ask his
wife to go and collect firewood in the forest, either in the morning or, late afternoon. She, naturally,
will accept it as the appropriate way The wife will take this as just the correct form of approach to
which she will generally respond willingly, unless contemplating divorce or expecting menstruation
very soon. The Kadars also believe that houses, leaf-shelters or, caves are too small, and too over
crowded, and too open as to allow any enjoyable intimacy. Moreover, sexual intercourse must not take
place in the presence of children (Ehrenfels 1952:203).
The Maasai of Eastern Africa are of the opinion that sex in day time can be fatal (Rouse 2002:11).
The pastoral Maasai, inhabit the Savannah borderland between Kenya and Tanzania in Africa
permitted their young males to have sex with immature girls. Talle (2007:351), has reported that: “This license has its rationale within a cultural logic and structural framing of hierarchically organized age
and gender categories that give precedence to male seniority and male power (Jacobs 1965; Galaty
1977 and Spencer 1988). This is being argued as sexual prohibitions and licenses-the one implicating
the other-may be fruitfully analyzed as part of ‘serious games’ (Ortner 1996), where subjects are
positioned in shifting contexts of equality and inequality, power and hierarchy. Throughout their life
cycles and in their practical lives, the Maasais participate in several sexual ‘games’, which are deeply
social practices drawing people into wide and intense webs of interaction and socialisation. Sexual
relations, moreover, cannot be analyzed in isolation from other social relations or from the realm of
economics or politics (Ortner and Whitehead 1981; Caplan 1987 and Herdt 1999)”.
In the case of Eskimos, the children learn about sex from their family itself, as soon as they are able to
form ideas. Since they live in small dwellings, it is a matter of observation that all the family functions
including sex between parents or, other elderly couples being conducted right before their eyes (Garber
1935:216). It is also very interesting to quote here the observation made by Garber (1935:216): “I
found several instances in which girl’s mother, by physical manipulation, prepared her small daughter
for the process of copulation in order that complete satisfaction might be assured to the prospective
husband”.
Native American tribe, Hopi insists that sex should take place indoors while, the Witotos, another
Native American tribe insists that sex should take place outside their dwelling unit. The frequency of
sexual intercourse is related to cultural norms. The Keraki of New Guinea are reported to have
intercourse on an average, once a week. The Arandas of Australia have sex three to five times a day;
and the Chagga of Eastern Africa are alleged to manage ten sex episodes in a single night (Rouse
2002:11).
Evans-Pritchard (1970) has reported that male and female homosexual relationship seems to be
common among the Azande. While discussing the sex and personality in the Marquesas, Kadiner
(1939:219) has interpreted homosexuality as being a “supplementary activity, a form of making good a
long-felt carving for a dependency which cannot be satisfied by the women”.
Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowksi from 1914-1918 studied the inhabitants of Trobriand
Islanders and was of the opinion that the inhabitants are very open to sex. These Melanesians live in a
group of 22 islands which are part of Papua New Guinea and they are not very conservative when it
comes to everyday dress. Premarital intercourse is universal in their culture and even children as young
as three years old are permitted to explore their sexuality.
Similarly, Margaret Mead in her book ‘Coming of Age in Samoa’ describes the psychology of the
individual Samoan as being simpler, more honest, and less driven by sexual neuroses than the West.
She describes Samoans as being much more comfortable with issues such as menstruation and more casual about non-monogamous sexual relations. Part of the reason for this is the extended family
structure of Samoan villages. Conflicts that might result in arguments or breaks within a traditional
western family are defused in Samoan families simply by having one of the parties involved in the
conflict relocate to a different home that is part of the household within the village.
A Nuer marriage is considered incomplete till a child is born to it. Further, a man’s name must
continue in the lineage. If a man dies without male heirs, a kinsman ought to take wife in his name.
Such a marriage is precarious marriage or ghost-marriage. The precarious husband acts as a true
husband in the marriage ceremonies, habitation and domestic life. But, as the Nuer say, he is only
‘kindling the fire’ of his dead kinsman, ‘who is the legal husband’ (Evans-Pritchard 1960:108-109).
This results in a system of proxy-fatherhood to a child, even though the ‘same husband’ is the real
biological father of the child, in the Nuer society importance is given to the social father, on whose
behalf he has acted as ‘the husband’. Therefore, presence of proxy-fathers, and ghost-marriages among
the Nuer of Africa are note worthy.
Human emotions of love and sexual behavior, are two of the fundamental activities of human being,
and are certainly divisive in nature. It was, and is generally considered to be a biological urge of Homo
sapiens sapiens. But, it also has social and cultural significances in the day-to-day human life. In that
sense, an understanding of love and sexual behavior is of potential utility to understand the other
aspects of human behavior. It has been clearly disclosed in this module, that all of the sexual behavior
of human being existed as the part and parcel of culture, and society as well.