Mobility is very important to the Maku, given that their usual means of resolving conflicts is spatial dispersion. There are no leaders or 'tribal' councils who could arbitrate the frequent misunderstandings between a village's inhabitants. The village leader is no more than a host and co-ordinator for collective hunts. In general, the position is taken by a middle-aged man, still strong enough to hunt and with considerable experience in the subject, around whom are united five or six domestic groups whose heads are his sons or sons-in-law. He has no authority for judging who is right or wrong in a dispute. A leader who attempts to pass judgement is not exempt from being struck during the fight or seeing the irrevocable desertion of a significant number of his sons or sons-in-law. Temporary spatial dispersion is thus the only form of avoiding the definitive fission of the village in the event of a conflict. But, depending on its gravity, fission may be inevitable: some domestic groups never return to their home village, but resettle instead in neighbouring villages, where they have close kin, or set up a new village.

The Maku local groups (villages) demonstrate a bilateral composition: both the leader's sons and his sons-in-law live together. The basic foundation of male friendship is the relationship between brothers-in-law, that is, men who exchange sisters. However, the term 'sisters' should be understood in a wide sense. The kinship vocabulary is Dravidian: it is based on the bipartition of cousins into those prohibited in marriage (parallel cousins, that is, children of siblings of the same sex) and those preferred in marriage (cross cousins, that is, children of opposite sex siblings). Among the Maku, the Dravidian vocabulary is associated with a system of patrilateral exogamic clans. There is a match between the vocabulary and the classification of the clans: just as cousins are split into 'brothers' (parallel cousins) and 'brothers-in-law' (cross cousins), the clans are classified into 'brother' clans and 'brother-in-law' clans, such that the universe of relatives is split in half, both from the point of view of the kinship vocabulary and from the point of view of the clan system. In this way, men who exchange real or classificatory sisters between themselves are friends (co-residents, hunt partners). The most stable local groups (villages) are those revealing this composition: a group composed of brothers-in-law assembled around a man of middle-age, father-in-law to some and father to others. This means at least two affinal clans are united in the same local group.

There are no factions, corporate age groups or elders councils among the Maku. They classify people according to three main age ranges (in the Hupdu language): the dowdu (green/unripe = children), the wudndu (mature = adults) and the wuhudndu (dry = elders). The village leaders are in an intermediary sub-class between the wudndu and the wuhudndu. The latter, apart from almost invariably performing the function of shamans, are also name-givers. In order to name a child, the elder undertakes a 'trip' (using a hallucinogen of the genus banisteriopsis) to the world of the ancestors. Arriving there, he consults the latter concerning the child's name. Each clan possesses a repertoire of names, such that the proper name already determines the person's clanic identity, as well as his matrimonial status (whether 'brother' or 'brother-in-law') in relation to the other clans.