ABSTRACT
Feminism's keen sensitivity to structural inequalities in research and to the irreconcilability of Otherness applies primarily to its critique of research by men, particularly to research by men, but about women. The majority of feminist claims about feminist ethnographic and other forms of qualitative research, however, presume that such research occurs almost exclusively woman-to-woman. As such feminist researchers are apt to suffer the delusion of alliance more than the delusion of separateness and to suffer it more than do most post-structuralist ethnographers. Recall the claims about empathy and identification between feminist researchers and the women they study and the calls by feminist scholars for an egalitarian research process, full collaboration, and even with multiple authorship. Hence, it strikes me that a fruitful dialogue between feminism and critical ethnography might address their complementary sensitivities and naivetes about the inherent inequalities and the possibilities for relationships in the definition, study, and representation of the other.
