The Navajo are one of the most studied people in the world; yet their social organization is one of the least well understood. In "Navajo ""Kinship and Marriage," Gary Witherspoon, a fluent speaker of the Navajo language who lived among the Navajo for eight years, offers a new theoretical approach to kinship based on its cultural dimensions. Witherspoon makes a primary distinction between culture (patterns for behavior) and the system of social relations (observable patterns of behavior) in this definitive work on Navajo kinship and marriage.
"Witherspoon . . . clarifies problems...