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This article presents the methodological lessons learnt from an ethnographic study of gender relations and kinship labour organisation in Papua New Guinea. By combining sociology and anthropology, cultural distance and physical proximity, this fieldwork highlighted the benefits of an inductive approach to studying kinship through practices, by overcoming certain assumptions about family forms. This configuration gave particular strength to the method of direct and participative observation, which is well suited to the study of daily life organisation in a Kiriwina village, where all social life, and especially work, is rooted in kinship and mainly takes place in plain sight.