For the Ankave of Papua New Guinea men unlike women do not reach adulthood and become fathers simply by growing up and reproducing. What fathers and by extension men actually are is a result of a series of relational transformations operated in and by rituals in which men and women both perform complementary actions in separate spaces. Acting for Others is a tour de force in Melanesian ethnography gender studies and theories of ritual. Based on years of fieldwork conducted by the author and her