The house/ village. The Yanomami local groups are generally made up of a multifamily house in the shape of a cone or truncated cone called yano or xapono (eastern and western Yanomami), or by villages composed of rectangular-type houses (north and northeastern Yanomami).

Each collective house or village considers itself an autonomous economic and political entity (kami theri yamaki, ‘we co-residents’) and its members ideally prefer to marry inside this community of kin with a ‘cross’ cousin, that is the son or daughter of a maternal uncle or paternal aunt. This type of marriage is reproduced as far as possible between the families in a generation and from generation to generation, making the collective Yanomami house or village a dense and comfortable mesh of consanguine and affinal bonds.

The inter-village social space. However, despite this ideal autarchy, all local groups maintain a network of relations of matrimonial, ceremonial and economic exchange with various nearby groups, considered allies in opposition to other multicommunity groupings of the same nature. These groupings partially overlap to form a complex sociopolitical nexus, which links the totality of Yanomami collective houses and villages from one end of the indigenous territory to the other.

The social space beyond the collective house or village, considered as monads of close kinsfolk, is apprehended with suspicion as the dangerous universe of 'others' (yaiyo thëpë): visitors (hwamapë), who during the large funerary reahu intercommunity alliance ceremonies may cause sickness using sorcery to avenge insults, avarice or sexual jealousy; enemies (napë thëpë), who may kill, attacking the village as warriors (waipë) or sorcerers (okapë); unknown and distant people (tanomai thëpë), who may provoke lethal sicknesses by sending predatory shamanic spirits or by hunting the rixi animal double of a person (the rixi live in remote forest, far from their human double); finally, the 'whites' (napëpë), a paradoxical category of close strangers (potential enemies), feared for their epidemics (xawara) associated with smoke fumes produced by their 'machines' (mining machinery, airplane and helicopter motors) and the burning of their possessions (mercury and gold, paper, tarpaulins and rubbish).