In this paper, I draw on the critique of traditional anthropological assumptions about kinship and recent analyses of politico-ritual leadership in the Pacific to reconsider the age-set organization of the Amis. Rather than relying on assumptions as to what constitutes 'kinship' and 'non-kinship' relations in the earlier view of traditional Amis society, I advocate here a broader analytical perspective that encompasses both the kinship system of the domestic maternal-focused houses and the supposedly non-kinship, locality based male-focused communal age-set organisation as a total kinship system. This paper thus departs significantly from most of the previous literature on the Amis by representing the age-set system as constituted of metaphorical fathers and sons based on indigenous notions and ritual practices.