Roberts and Gregor interpreted this pattern of seclusion and openness in a dialectic fashion, compatible with the framework of the present article: The Mehinacu culture had evolved mecha nisms that permitted a balance of openness and closedness to others, with different mechanisms and different levels of accessibility shifting over time and with circumstances. Furthermore, this ethnographic analysis provides a good illustration of the value of conceptualizing privacy as involving a mixture of environmental, verbal, nonverbal, and cultural mechanisms. By focusing only on one aspect of life, such as environmental factors, one would have obtained a distorted view of the Mehinacu privacy regulation
system. Gregor (1974) stated it well: