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