Coming of Age on Rapa Nui: On Doing Anthropological Field Work Among the Rapa Nui Youth

I have heard that novice anthropologists often enter the field thinking they know it all and then soon discover that they don't. I thought I knew nothing - and never discovered I had been wrong in that. In February 2002 I arrived to do my Ph.D. fieldwork on the Rapanui youth under the supervision of Grant McCall. As no one had studied the Rapanui youth so far, I had plenty of possible topics concerning the 761 islanders aged between 15 and 29 (national census, 2002), but I was personally most interested in the simple question: What is it like to be young in such a small, faraway and yet quite famous place?