Ask yourself why this is a good means to adapt to the cold deserts in which Inuit live?

There are several issues to consider in answering this question. First, women can fulfill most of their tasks without knowing the capacities of their environment. They can perform their work in anybody's camp. Given such a residence rule, a man will have a team in his father, brothers, and other family members. He will know his environment and what it contains well because of his life-long experience with it. He will have relatives in other camps. His father's sister, for example, will live in her husband's camp. His mother's brother will live in another camp. There will be a network of relationships upon which to rely if there is a need. There will be a network created through marriage. Therefore the rule of exogamy is well demarcated in Inuit society.

There is another important characteristic of Inuit society that further extends the network that one might rely upon. This is the partnership. A partnership is a relationship with people outside of one's designated kinsmen. These can be either informal or formal. Partnerships create a network of people you can rely upon other than close relatives. These friends are so close that they will swap wives or avenge each other's deaths. These friendships extend beyond territories and bands. These can take on a "joking relationship" or a "namesake relationship". Names are very important to traditional Inuit. Two people with the same name are spiritually interlocked.

Every hunter had a number of sharing partners for each part of the seal meat and blubber that was to be shared - ideally 12. Names were attached to each part and people were referred to by those names. The sharing system was called the niqaiturasuakiut; "niqaitut" is the name of seal skin bag upon which the food was divided. Partners were recognized as kinsmen and nonkinsmen. Parents usually selected a boys first partners in early childhood. Close relatives and members of the same camp could not become partners. Only distant relatives and non-related individuals were eligible for partnerships.

There was no need for close relatives to become partners because they already would share food together and held confidential relationships. You can see how the social network was expanded using partnerships as another way of food sharing.
The uncertainties of resources and the lack of any social authority often create circumstances where kinship ties and relationships of friends become crucial. It is possible to fall back onto these relationships in order to survive.

There are few statuses in traditional Inuit society; none carried any political or legal implications. Skillful men could organize hunts, advise on seasonal movements, and oversee the important and equitable distribution of animal and fish resources. Senior men generally took charge of decision making such as these. Age mattered in Inuit society. Both older men and women commanded respect from the younger members of the group.

During good times when game was plentiful, life was peaceful, cooperative and everyone laughed. With shortages of food, this life could give way to highly competitive, noncooperative behavior. The threat of starvation was real for these people on the "edge".

There were other sources of competition: mate selection and fertility. Women competed for desirable men and for the status reaped from numerous, healthy offspring - preferably males.