Dorothy Smith’s Sociology for People: Theory for Discovery

Dorothy E. Smith was a second-wave feminist scholar of the 1970s who brought forward an insistent critique of women’s exclusion from knowledge production and the resulting distortions of sociological theory. I offer here a reading of the theory Smith developed as she worked toward a sociology that could move the field beyond those distortions, toward a method of inquiry that could be useful for women and generally for people puzzled by the circumstances of their lives. I highlight Smith’s commitment to knowledge that is anchored in a shared, material world; the originality of her approach to the investigation of textually mediated social organization; and the goal of mapping social organization that underlies her approach.