an historian might suggest that leach developed this modrl from his own chaotic experience of fieldwork during wartime in 1939-43: his experience suggested to him that ethnicty was a chaotic construct. certainly, at this time, large numbers of kachin groups expressd dis-continuitiesin their conceptual understandings of political and social systems, communities appeared and/or were conflictual with each other, and the models of neighbouring political centres of power were themselves frequently the agents of change from 'within'. yes, such an analysis also has to take ioto account the very determined revisionist onslaught against british structuralist-functionalist anthropology with which leach was engaged by 1954. the biggest criticism, therefore, must by the apparent ease with which leach seemed willing to incorporate or discard historical evidence purely to substantiate his theoretical model, whichitself was primarily addressed not to 'the facts' but was intended to challenge the interests and conventions of british social anthropologists.