This economic unity excludes the exercise of the rights of individual members against the group, represented by the household head. We do not, for example, find women exercising rights to specific pieces of land; nor, if a young kinsman is brought up in a household, are any rights which he may have to his own land acknowledged until he leaves the household.
Even when members of a household are quarrelling more or less openly, they do not seem to think of dividing the produce between them. Haci Ismet (T), head of the richest household in Sakaltutan, was more or less senile, and the household was run by his eldest son. The second son - both were middle-aged men - was not on good terms with his father and brother, and in anticipation of trouble over the division of the land, rights to certain pieces had been established in advance. But even so the household was still run as an economic unit at least as far as farming was concerned, if not personal earnings. On the other hand, the younger son's first wife and her grown son, who had left altogether and set up a separate household, took with them the land owned by her in her own right.
The village is an economic unit only in the sense that it imposes the alternations of crop land and pasture, and in the sense that it provides essential communal services. But it is in no sense a unit for production. Moreover, organised and traditional cooperation between the households of a village do not seem to exist. Households in trouble may be helped by their neighbours and kin, but normally each household arranges its own work entirely on its own.
This household unit, provided its resources are more or less in balance, is a relatively tough and flexible concern. When times are good, it can build up resources in animals, by buying or by keeping more of the natural increase than usual. In satisfactory years, it has money to spend on clothes, replacement of equipment, even weddings and housing. In less fortunate times, through illness of humans or working animals, or poor harvests, it can easily postpone heavy expenditure, and if necessary sell animals to meet a crisis. Because the techniques are so simple, and the village relies so little on the outside world