ABSTRACT
'Other fields: other grasshoppers' is an analogy for different contexts. Cultural context is at the heart of anthropology and yet is defined and operationalized in archaeology and linguistics than in social anthropology. Archaeologists use context to refer to the depositional matrix from which an artifact is recovered, and to the information gleaned from the environment about the conditions of deposition. The Thai women's movement has avoided both the extremes of universalizing women and of overstressing differences, albeit at the price of privileging central Thai and Bangkok women when representing Thai gender. A. Ong acknowledges that feminist research on Asian women has distanced 'us' feminists from the Asian other, the oppressed women, an opposition which reinforces the cultural superiority of Western feminists. Feminism, grounded in difference, is accused of masking difference. Academics working on gender issues in third world countries have also been accused of using the experience of the other to 'fill in the gaps' in the global feminist agenda.
