Dorothy Smith Essay

Dorothy Smith Essay

My name is Dorothy Smith, and I am recognized as among the key figures in the discipline of sociology. I am known for the various contributions in the women’s studies, educational studies, psychology, and mainly, the feminist theory, which is captured in my book The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. My most significant work is the shaping of the standpoint theory that argues that the cradle of all knowledge is the social position. My take and need to contribute to the feminist theory were significantly influenced by the various events that I encountered while growing up and witnessing various instances that radicalized me, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. I  grew up in a time that society never paid attention to the opinions or contributions of women and this limited my chances of pursuing careers that I needed and it is this that forced to pursue a degree in sociology which then opened my eyes to the framework of how society is developed through the lens of men. It is through the studies of the various scholars who tried to explain the various sociological perspectives that I developed an insight into standpoint theory and its contribution to looking at the world from the lens of a woman.

It is best if I first go back to my origins and the process of my growing that so that you can have a clear idea of how I came to develop this perspective and the need to challenge the mainstream and flawed sociology. I was born in Northallerton, Yorkshire, England, in 1926 to Tom Place and Dorothy F. Place, along with three siblings who are all brothers (Carroll 10). My father was a businessman, and we grew up in a rural middle class. At the age of eighteen, I worked in a factory because of the war for about four months, and this was a radicalizing experience as it made me aware of what it meant to live and work as an industrial worker (Carroll 11). However, it was until when I interacted with the working class in Britain that I experienced a real shift that influenced my need to go into a social work training course. The practicum I did Sheffield, which was a very industrial town, opened my eyes to the horrific realities on how people lived (Carroll 12). It is this that, at the end of my course, made me realize that there needed to be something more.

However, it was when I was 26 years old that I made the decision to go to university and applied to the London School of Economics (LSE). It was from this school that I earned my B.Sc in Sociology with a Major in Social Anthropology. After I graduated with a degree in sociology, I moved back to the United States, where I met my husband and had two children. It is at this point that I started teaching sociology, and it came to my realization that I was the only woman in a faculty of four (Carroll 15). I recall attending a course given by a guy named Tomatsu Shibutani on George Herbert Mead, and it was a brilliant introduction to a way of thinking (Carroll 23). The course touched on the attempt to develop an alternative to left-wing progressive influences. I remember being challenged by the course the significance of detaching the new type of sociology from what previously existed. My eyes were opened, and I realized that the women’s movement was for me. I taught at the University of British Columbia and developed one of the first women’s courses that allowed me to trigger a new shift in sociology.

Since we did not have enough materials for teaching women’s studies courses, I needed to develop one. I, therefore, wrote The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. The book focused on the standpoint perspective, which was developed by Sandra Harding. The feminist standpoint theory that I developed addressed the need for sociology to embrace a woman’s standpoint. The standpoint feminism is a theoretical perspective arguing that social science needs to be practiced from the outlook of women or groups of women as they are better equipped to understanding certain aspects of the world better (Harding 38). This stems from the bifurcation of consciousness. The concept of bifurcation is the separation of modes existing within every woman, and these are society as one experiences it and the dominant view that must be adapted to explain social issues (Harding 41). Generally, the standpoint feminism theory seeks to amplify women’s voices in existing realities where they are overlooked.

I consider my work is significant in the world of sociology as it challenges sociologists to look at and analyze societies in which we live from unbiased perspectives. For a long time, taking up the experiences of women as a subject was always operated in the intellectual and cultural sphere of men. I, therefore, helped in elaborating the works on feminism that were already discussed by the pioneers of the theory but put it in a limelight by publishing the need to stop looking at social and cultural feminism from the eyes of men, and give women a chance to see, analyze, and discuss social and cultural issues from their experiences. Nonetheless, the knowledge and contribution I have made in the discipline of sociology have mainly been influenced by the experiences I have had growing up in different social and cultural environments.