The term ‘fieldwork’ in ethnography is used for two type of engagement in the field. Fife (2005) describes these as the ‘macro and micro environments’, where a ‘macro level’ of engagement is used to describe an investigation into the background and context of an environment before entering the field at a ‘micro level’, when the local community is investigated. Fife provides a wonderful example of this, and I strongly recommend this text to anyone really interested in engaging in this type of research. Before travelling to Papua New Guinea to investigate the issue of ‘formal primary education and its relationship to formal expectations for economic development in that country’ (Fife, 2005, 2), Fife spent three months in the missionary archives of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Using primary historical sources available there he was able to establish the context and background to the current situation in that country before travelling there.