ABSTRACT
Family traditions are the most valuable assets of Central Asian culture. Upon arrival in the rural villages hidden among the fields of Uzbekistan or Afghanistan, the host family treats you not simply as a guest, but as a family member and if you’re female as a woman who should be assisted, protected, and (at times) supervised. At the same time the host family expects the same intimacies in return, for example, expecting you to share your own family members’ photos and all of your family’s stories.
This raises diverse ethical issues for the visiting researcher and, of course, for those whom we meet in our research. In this chapter, I discuss issues that arose across many years of research in different locations in Central Asia, reflecting on how such factors as gender, ethnicity, age, and status as an urbanite or as an overseas resident impacted the relationships I was able to form during my fieldwork and the expectations others then placed upon me on the basis of these relationships.
