| dc.description.abstract | One of Dorothy Smith's most important contributions to feminist theory was the
development of her concept called'the standpoint of women' (Smith, 1979). This thesis
traces the evolution of this concept In her work from her earliest intellectual beginnings
to the present. It restricts the examination of Smith's writing to her work on ideology and
the sociology of knowledge, giving attention to the male theorists that she has
appropriated in her early writings and the emergence of a more autonomous framework
In her recent publications. The thesis is constructed from a sociology of knowledge
perspective, thus Smith's writings are contextualized in the socio-historical events that
have shaped them, occurrences such as the Free Speech Movement and the Montreal
Massacre.
Data for the thesis includes Smith's original writing, secondary sources on her work
and original interviews which I conducted with Smith about the intellectual development
of her writing. In addition, the extent of Smith's Influence In Canadian sociology has
been explored through: 1) A survey of several prominent Canadian feminist sociologists
and the editors of a few feminist journals; and 2) A search of the Social Sciences Citation
Index to discover where, how often and in what ways she has been cited.
Chapter One introduces the predominant themes of the thesis. One of these
themes is a method which begins inquiry from the personal, and another is the examination of epistemological autonomy in Smith's writing. Chapters 2 deals with the
quantification of Smith's influence in sociology, through a the survey of feminist theorists
and a citation analysis. Chapter 3 documents her intellectual beginnings at the London
School of Economics and at the University of California at Berkeley. Marxist feminism
and the domestic labour debate in feminist theory are the topic of Chapter 4. Chapter 5
traces the origin of the 'standpoint of women' and includes recent criticism. The Montreal
Massacre and the possibility of an epistemological break in Smith's work are the subjects
of Chapter 6. The thesis ends with an interpretation of how the male writers that Smith
has chosen to appropriate have affected her work. | |
