ABSTRACT
The Kuikuru are a Carib-speaking tribe in central Brazil consisting of a single settlement of about 145 individuals. This society is very loosely organized and has an extremely permissive culture. The settlement com prises nine multifamily houses. I n most of the houses at least some of the families make up extended family residence units of various types, fra ternal, sororal, bilateral, patrilocal, or matrilocal. However, individual nuclear families not infrequently change their place of residence, making the extended family organization unstable as well as varied.
