ABSTRACT
Many feminist ethnographers have become sensitized to diverse constructs of selfhood cross-culturally and to the impacts of their own culture, gender, race, or class in studying cross-culturally. Feminist fieldworkers, however, have only begun to problematize their own construct of self in relation to the constructs of self among the subjects of their research. Relational theories of knowledge are being developed by theorists challenging the self/other binary. Earlier work, though, often identified relationality as dysfunctional and did not analyze the intersections of relationality and patriarchy. Feminist revisions of Western constructs of self, although linking relationality with patriarchy, often feminized the relational self. In this chapter the author focuses on her relationship with one key informant, Hanna Yusif, a young Palestinian Lebanese, who lived in Camp Trad. The conjunction of self with that of Hanna, organized around patriarchal connectivity, had significant implications for author's fieldwork. The chapter discusses the methodological, theoretical, and epistemological implications for feminist research of such patriarchal connective personhoods.
