ABSTRACT
Contemporary appraisals of feminist ethnographic methods have raised questions about the ethics of feminists' research on women less powerful than themselves and drawn attention to the associated fieldwork dilemmas. 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. In light of the author's own field experiences with women carpet weavers in rural Turkey; she likes to take issue with these claims and their pessimistic implications for fieldwork methodology. Weavers generated a considerable portion of the income that raised household wealth. This research illustrates the constraints on the ability of a lone feminist researcher to bring about change. The research reveals the strong economic incentives for maintaining the gender hierarchies around which carpet weaving was structured.
