ABSTRACT
Contemporary appraisals of feminist ethnographic methods have raised questions about the ethics of feminists' research on women less powerful than themselves (Patai, 1991; Stacey, 1991) and drawn attention to the associated fieldwork dilemmas (Wolf, 1993; Scott and Shah, 1993). Many argue that the nationality, class, race, and ethnicity differences between researcher and researched cannot be erased by research methods that attempt to generate intimacy and a sense of commonality of interests as women. Furthermore, given the power asymmetries, an ethical field relationship is argued to be impossible for feminist researchers to attain (Patai, 1991). In light of my own field experiences with women carpet weavers in rural Turkey, I would like to take issue with these claims and their pessimistic implications for fieldwork methodology.
