What makes one family a clan and another family a loosely connected network of households–if they even know each other? Is it simply a function of a mutual effort and willingness to communicate? Is it the comradery of shared experience and close proximity? Or is it a social and cultural phenomenon doomed to obsolescence in the developed world and relegation to isolated pockets of ethnic homogeneity? I'm not a sociologist and I'm not even going to pretend to answer these quest