ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how I discovered the importance of economically active women in the peasant economy of post-independence Malaysia, and how this finding has been conceptualised in different ways through the filter of changing analytical paradigms and experiential frameworks – my own, those of my informants, and the ones that we create together out of our conversations about shared reference material. The lapse of time is a long one – from a first field study in 1964/5, to a re-study through three consecutive field trips in 1986, 1987 and 1988.
