connected with place were alliances with the local guardian spirits to which new settlers had to pay respect . no one would dare to settle in a place without paying respect to the local lord.
ethnicity thus was not part of the pre-colonial power model as a decisive mechanism of difference and as an instrument of vertical or horizontal inclusion/exclusion on the other hand,ethnicity was a very important part of individual identification and thus of personal relations. if a person wanted to settle and marry in another ethnic group he would need relatives or well-established friendships and religious affiliation- yet he would often remain a stranger and be classified by his ethnic origin and named after his native place. This was the practice among the pwo karen, as explained to me in the 1970s by elder karen in Thailand .men would travel far and visit Karen villages and monasteries in thailand and burma and establish relations,thus connecting ethnic enclaves into an ethnic space (Dean,chapter5 in this volume). Likewise,the culturally different groups in the kachin category would know each others place in the mayu-dama affinal sytem; if not, they would include aperson in the sytem The major difference between the pre-colonail period and the present is that ethnicity as a dominant exclusive/exclusive political mechanism has become manifest as well as mapped in the modern nationstate. Ethnic boundaries were maintained within the orbit of state centres, but not as part of mdern state territorialization.