I spent time in the refugee camps in Jordan, working with Palestinian women, and did a lot of oral histories. When I came back to this country and began to think about that material and write it up, the place that I found was most useful in terms of feminist theory was black feminist theory specifically, the work of Patricia Hill Collins. And it became very frustrating for me, after many years of going to conferences, that what was meant by Western feminism was always white Western feminism. But Hill Collins' critique of traditional epistemology, and her presentation of a combined Afrocentric and feminist approach, provide a meaningful framework for exploring ways that Palestinian women working in health movements in refugee camps in Jordan construct knowledge as a community, rather than as isolated individuals. What Hill Collins defines as Afrocentric epistemology, for example, illuminates how subordinate groups create knowledge that fosters resistance, and this is precisely what I've observed happening among Palestinian women.
Health is one of the major areas that women organize around in the camps.
It's an organizational tool, and it's highly politicized, because these women's definition of health is very intertwined with the issue of right of return. That's what health is. It's a metaphor for their ability to go back to Palestine. This is true especially in times of war, for example, Black September in Jordan. Both Afrocentric and feminist epistemologies reject Eurocentric, masculinist privileging as impersonal procedures for establishing truth.