Skinner went on to become a giant in his field-his obituary in American Anthropologist called him "the world's most influential anthropologist of China." A key portion of his legacy arose from his Sichuan fieldwork, contained in his classic monograph Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China.

G. William Skinner (1925¿2008) was the dean of sinological anthropology in the West, a major theorist of family systems, and a pioneer in applying spatial analysis techniques to the study of agrarian societies. Stevan Harrell, professor of anthropology and environmental and forest sciences at the University of Washington, is the author of Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China. William Lavely, professor of international studies and sociology at the University of Washington, is the author of many articles on demography and the family in contemporary China.