Children and Anthropological Research

The first time that we, the editors of this volume, met, a chance remark by one of us, newly returned from fieldwork in Fiji, quickly led to an animated discussion of our experiences doing anthropological research with children. Following that occasion, we began to seek each other out in order to continue such conversations, because we had found no other opportunity to discuss these significant events. We knew our experiences were rich sources of cross-cultural data and stimuli to rethinking anthro pological theory and methods. A cursory review of the literature on fieldwork revealed, to our surprise, that fieldworker's experiences with children were rarely and only briefly mentioned (Hostetler and Huntington, 1970, are an early exception). In order to learn more about research that included the ethnographers' children, we organized a conference on the topic at Michigan State University on May 1, 1982. This volume includes papers from that conference, as well as insights and ideas from the formal and informal discussions among the conference participants and audience. This volume, like the conference which preceded it, is intended to be the effects of accompanying children on anthropological an exploration of field research and on the effects of fieldwork on the children themselves. Additionally, we see this book as part of an anthropological inquiry into research as a cultural process, by which is meant the effects of the researchers' cultural identity--class, gender, age, ethnicity, and other characteristics--on fieldwork.