ABSTRACT
The Kachin of Upper Burma have gained a great deal of renown among anthropologists since the publication of Leach's Political Systems of Highland Burma . Although they were already receiving some attention from Granet, Lévi-Strauss, and others interested in the development of kinship systems, it is not until Leach that we get a clear documentation of the apparent oscillation between ‘egalitarian’ and ranked or even stratified social forms. It is not my intention here to discuss Leach's work in detail, since that would require a separate treatment which would be somewhat peripheral to the purpose of this analysis. Rather, using material from Leach and others, I shall attempt to present the Kachin in terms of a larger theoretical model in which what appears as oscillation is but part of a multilinear development generated by a specific structure of social reproduction, and the evolution of ‘Asiatic’ states as well as devolution towards more permanently ‘egalitarian’ big-man societies both result from the underlying properties of a single tribal system.
