ABSTRACT
This chapter considers to what extent three significant theoretical breakthroughs and ongoing debates in feminist theory seem relevant and responsive to the study of rural women's lives, including feminist epistemology, awareness of difference, and women's resistance. The concept of women's situated knowledge offers particular promise for exploring rural women's connections to the natural environment. Rural women's subjugated and situated knowledge offers these women possibilities for different and possibly emancipatory knowledge and social action. African-American and Third World feminists agree that Western feminism misrepresents women of color. Chandra Mohanty argues that Western feminists colonize the voices of Third World women; Third World women must speak as subjects participating in struggles. Most agree that women's experiences differ by race, class, ethnicity, nationality, and sexuality, that the form of women's oppression varies. However, the question for feminist theory and practice remains whether women share experiences that can result in common actions or strategies of resistance to patriarchal practices and ideologies.
