"The effects of displacement on culture can have significant impacts on the psychological and physical welfare of individual refugees and on the social dynamics within a refugee population. Yet, refugees and relief agencies alike often underestimate or feel too overworked to incorporate the importance of cultural factors in assistance programmes. Potential cultural conflicts between refugee communities, host communities and relief agencies are of course important. Less often recognised, however, is the importance of cultural variation and tension within the refugee community. This article argues that if relief agencies develop a greater awareness of cultural patterns and potential cultural conflict within as well as between communities, their assistance programmes may be more effectively and appropriately designed and implemented...This article is based on anthropological field research, conducted by the author at the request of the NGO concerned during the course of wider field research conducted in 1996-7 and 1998, with Karenni refugees living in camps on the Burmese border, in Thailand?s northwestern province of Mae Hong Son. Karenni people have been fleeing from Karenni (Kayah) State in eastern Burma and seeking refuge on the Thai side of the border for some years, the first significant numbers arriving in 1989..."