"Charts new ground by bringing 'corridor talk' to the level of integrated discussion. It should be required reading for all of us who bring families to the field or create new families in the field, both 'real' and 'fictive'." -American Anthropologist

Ethnographic fieldwork is prolonged, intensive, participatory, and of necessity highly personal. Its organization and execution are influenced by the researcher's gender, age, ethnicity, personality, and other individual factors. In Fieldwork and Families, a diverse group of authors--all with experience in Pacific settings--examine the interplay between their family situation and their fieldwork. These accounts of diverse family attachments and identities--biological and adopted, straight and gay--confirm the impact of family on all aspects of fieldwork: how researchers present themselves, their connection with the local community, the topics they research, their methods of data collection, what data they collect, and how they interpret it.

Researchers contemplating family involvement in fieldwork will benefit from the descriptions of strategies for successful integration of family members into the fieldwork enterprise. Fieldwork and Families is a refreshing attempt to create an anthropology of anthropologists. It contributes a rich array of information and insight to the ongoing examination of personal factors in cross-cultural research, challenges the existing model of fieldwork, and significantly advances the exploration of the meaning of family.

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