Dorothy E. Smith, Feminist Sociology & Institutional Ethnography: A Short Introduction

This short introduction to the work of key feminist sociologist and theorist Dorothy E. Smith traces the development of her ideas and thinking across her publications. Smith's exposition of feminist sociology and its critique of the established mainstream and her important development of institutional ethnography are discussed in detail. This is combined with an innovative focus on how Smith translates her theoretical ideas into research practice in the analysis of institutional texts, with texts in action central to her investigations of the practical accomplishment of relations of ruling.The work of Dorothy Smith has been widely influential and this book provides an accessible guide to her central ideas and concepts. These include relations of ruling, knowledge practices, institutional texts, the everyday world as problematic, the standpoint of women and the standpoint of people, the small hero, mapping, writing the social, the local and the extralocal, institutional ethnography, the active text, the text-reader conversation, the act-text-act sequence, boss texts, public discourses, and the front-line work of organisations. It relatedly shows how these are combined in Smith's radical project of re-making sociology and the social sciences more generally. Liz Stanley's lively and readable book provides a helpful and accurate guide to Smith's work. The work of Dorothy Smith has been influential across the entirety of the social sciences and the short introduction will be essential reading for scholars and teachers at all levels who are engaging with the ideas of this key sociologist and feminist theorist.Dorothy Smith writes:"A fascinating read for me. No biography, no imposed interpretation, but a brilliant discovery of a coherent direction in my work that I could not have fully known myself. I learned from your study and I thank you. Dorothy E. Smith"