June Nash spent what were obviously six very busy months in the field collecting data for the dissertation which is this book. She carried out a complete census, obtaining a wealth of relevant information; observed daily in a number of households; and kept her ears open for all the happenings in the community as numerous case studies and footnotes attest.
Three objectives of the study are noted: “1. A more precise method for the statement of residential relations. 2. An indication of how the principles of kin and residence structure participation in defined categories of events. 3. An analysis of the balancing mechanisms for establishing harmonious relationships in a situation of close and continuous social interaction.”
The analysis is detailed utilizing statistical tables and diagrams to describe the community, its divisions, and the social, work, and ritual networks related to kinship and residential patterns. Nash concludes that “the functioning of a kinship system and the enactment of kinship roles can be better understood in the context of residential relationships. Because of propinquity alone, certain relationships are emphasized over others. A statement of lineal or jural obligations is then insufficient to the understanding of a social system without an analysis of activities and of residential relationships as they affect interaction.”
The study’s objectives are well met and the findings are of worth in anthropological theory. They are also relevant to group and organization theory, while the study itself constitutes an addition to the ethnographic material on the Mayans.
The book is a dissertation written for an anthropology department and it reads like a dissertation. It is not easy nor always very exciting to read. The inferior quality of the printing and particularly the diagrams further detract from the reader’s enjoyment; but, if the subject is of interest, it does not detract much.
