Yet Another Reanalysis of the Navajo Outfit

In an effort to find order in the apparent "amorphousness" of Navajo kinship organization above the level of the homesite, Aberle (1981) has defined a larger social group, the "coresident kin group," to which he ascribes six characteristics. This paper offers a limited test of Aberle's formulation with historical data on Navajo families near Window Rock, Arizona. The main sources of information are several sets of documents from around 1940 and the recollections of local people themselves. The data concern mainly the sharing of range and other land-based resources, and in general substantiate Aberle's formulation. The paper concludes with the point that the amorphousness of large-scale kin groups may be the result of contradictory aspects of the mercantile and industrial capitalism that have dominated the modern Navajo political economy. These systems have simultaneously encouraged large kin-based and other collectivities and weakened them by fostering economic individualism

Archaeology · Capitalism · Cartography · Genealogy · Geography · Kinship · Navajo · Political science · Politics · Scale (ratio) · Sociology · Anthropology · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · History · Law

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