by Abigail Brooks
The Boston College Sociology Department had the honor of hosting Professor Dorothy E. Smith from March 12-14 of 2002, as part of its second annual Visiting Scholar Series. Smith, who received her doctorate from the University of California at Berkley in 1963, is currently professor emerita in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, at the University of Toronto. Smith's scholarship, inclusive of numerous books and articles, has been extremely influential, even groundbreaking, within and across several disciplines. Her work continues to profoundly impact many sub-fields of sociology including feminist theory and methodology, sociology of knowledge, ethnography, organizational studies, and family studies and finds relevance in such disciplines as women's studies, psychology, and educational studies. Several, among many, of Smith's critical works include Writing the Social: Critique, Theory, and Investigations (1999); The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge (1990); Texts, Facts, and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling (1990); The Everyday World is Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (1987) and Feminism and Marxism: A Place to Begin, A Way to Go (1977). Smith's scholarship, particularly in light of its vital contribution to the discipline of sociology, has earned her numerous honors and awards including the American Sociological Association's Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award (1999), the Jessie Bernard Award for Feminist Sociology (1993), and two awards from the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association; the Outstanding Contribution Award (1990) and the John Porter Award for The Everyday is Problematic (1990). Graduate students and faculty alike, from Boston College and several surrounding area institutions, enjoyed the intellectual benefits of three sessions with Smith, including an evening lecture and two intensive seminars.
Professor Smith's public lecture focused on knowledge formulation processes. It could easily be argued that Smith pioneered the critique of so-called "objective," abstract, universal sociological knowledge and the so-called "objective" methodologies that accompany it. Beginning with her own lived experience as a woman, Smith illuminates the non-universality, the non-neutrality, of so-called "objective" sociological knowledge and the conceptual and methodological models of "objective" knowledge building. She draws upon her bifurcated consciousness, her awareness of the disconnect and contradiction between her lived experience as a woman and these so-called objective, abstracted methods, theories, and findings, to reveal gaping holes and blatant omissions within the objective knowledge canon. In short, Smith exposes the governance of the "abstract conceptual mode" as stemming not from its objectivity, from its universality, but from its location within a specific set of historical, material, and social (patriarchal) relations. For Smith then, knowledge is practice, both situated, relational, and embedded within specific historical material systems of power.
Smith's articulation of bifurcated consciousness, or an "uneasiness" that results as women attempt to negotiate two mismatched worlds (dominant knowledge concepts verses lived experience), represents a unique standpoint of women, of the oppressed. This unique standpoint, or perspective, holds the potential for viewing a more inclusive, or complete, picture of what is going on from the position below, an awareness of both worlds, not limited to one. It is here that we begin to perceive Smith's affinity with Marx and her influence on the development of feminist standpoint theory.
Smith's utilization and expansion of Marxist theory is also evident in her discussion of the process by which women become "alienated from their experience," an alienation which stems from the disconnect between how women experience, understand, and "think" their worlds and the (male- created) concepts and terms that are imposed upon them (Smith 1987: 86). Smith's work on women's alienation, an alienation that promotes a loss of language, a deprivation of the "authority to speak," has been foundational to the work of much feminist theory and research across disciplinary boundaries. One is reminded, for example, of Majorie Devault's (1990) methodology of collaboration between researcher and respondent, a methodology dedicated to overcoming women's "muted language" through the co-creation of new words, or of Dana Jack's (1991) work to help women suffering from depression develop their own, more accurately descriptive, language to articulate their feelings, a language outside of the dominant "dependency" discourse, a discourse representative of traditional, largely male-driven, models of psychology.
Smith rejects the viability (or desirability for that matter) of Vide Bierstedt's ideal sociology, one that "liberates the mind from time and space themselves and removes it to a new and transcendental realm…." (Bierstedt, 1966 cited in Smith 1987: 89). Instead, Smith calls upon the sociologist to begin where she is "actually situated" and to make her direct experience of the everyday world the "primary ground of her knowledge" (Smith, 1987). The lived, everyday experience of the researcher is not a contaminant, or barrier to knowledge, but instead a window into it, a "point of entry," and a way of grounding that knowledge, of holding it accountable.
It follows then, that the situatedness of the researcher should be incorporated into the very process of sociological knowledge building itself: "If sociology cannot avoid being situated, then sociology should take that as its beginning and build it into its methodological and theoretical strategies" (Smith 1990: 22).
Here Smith's profound influence on sociological theory and methods is evident, particularly in the realm of qualitative research and feminist theory and research methods. We are reminded of Kathy Charmaz's (1995) reworking of grounded theory to include a more collaborative, active role for the researcher, Devault's (1990) call for active collaboration between researcher and respondent, Helen Longino's (1999) articulation of the embodied location of the researcher as a potential "cognitive resource," and Donna Haraway's (1991) notion of situatedness as a "focusing device," or visual tool.
At the same time, Smith cautions that while grounded, situated, everyday experience should serve as a "point of entry" of investigation, one must not take that situatedness for granted but be aware of it, communicate it, be reflexive about it, problematize it. One must remember that experience and knowledge are always relational and continue to be wary of how that experience and knowledge is mediated. As Smith explains: "We must remember that as we begin from the world as we actually experience it we are located and that what we know of the world, of the 'other,' is conditional upon that location as part of a relation comprehending the other's location also" (Smith 1987: 93).
It is Smith's articulation of knowledge as both situated and reflexive, embodied and relational, that allows her to successfully bypass the "endless sea of relativities" critique. Smith calls for not only an awareness of the unique positionality of knowledge forms as rooted in everyday experience, but also emphasizes the importance of communication and dialogue between and across knowledge forms. It is only by revealing the relationality between and among positions/experiences/knowledges that we are able to build new understandings and hence, new knowledges.
Echoes of Smith's emphasis on the importance of dialogue, reflexivity, and relationality in the context of knowledge building are found in feminist theory and methodology and cultural studies. We are reminded here of Helen Longino's (1999) call for socializing justification, Donna Haraway's (1991) hope for the building of new knowledges through cyborg fusions, and finally, bell hooks' (1990) dream for cultural studies as a safe space for diversity, difference and contestation and communication, a space in which to safely engage in "troubled speech" while "patiently awaiting revelation."
Thus, as Smith instructs us, we must begin with our everyday, lived knowledge
and experience, but not end there. In problematizing it, in beginning to understand
how our everyday world is mediated to us, we will begin to understand that not
all of its determinates are observable in the "scope of direct experience.
" (Smith, 1987) It is here that the link between larger social and material
structures of capitalism and our own everyday experience is illuminated.
In so doing, we will be engaging in what Smith calls "institutional ethnography,"
a process of knowledge building which strives to fuse the micro-social and the
macro-social levels of inquiry. We begin with the everyday world, with the standpoint
of the actor in everyday life, and seek to elucidate the relationship between
everyday world activities and experiences and larger institutional imperatives,
in other words, to examine the broader social relations in which local sites
of activity are embedded.
Knowledge building, knowledge as situated and relational, and links between knowledge formulation and specific social, historical and material settings, served as central themes throughout Smith's lecture and seminar series. In her lecture, Smith addressed knowledge formulation processes in several contexts, including the recent discrediting of Rigoberta Menchu's oral history/autobiography and a loss of autonomy among intellectuals and teachers within university and pubic school settings. In the case of Rigoberta Menchu, her story (I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala published in 1983), is re-told, re-written, by Anglo-American sociologist David Stoll who, after years of "fact-checking" research, was able to publish a revised account of Menchu's story in 1999 which served to falsify primary elements of her own original telling. As Smith highlighted, crucial knowledge and the potential for knowledge building and increased understandings was lost as Menchu's autobiography was pushed aside in favor of Stoll's telling. Stoll's measurements of accuracy, of truthfulness, were white, western ones, as were his concepts of time and space: chronological, linear, and bounded. It is easy then, to understand how Stoll's application of these western measurements left no room for Menchu's knowledge, such as her use of the term "I" as simultaneously representative and protective of her community and "brothers and sisters" as indicative of affection for the entirety of her community. Smith also articulated a loss of intellectual autonomy within universities and public schools, or what she termed "an undermining of the intelligentsia," in the context of the "reshaping of a new hegemony" which began in the Reagan era and continues in rampant form today. This "reshaping of a new hegemony" involves the "unmaking" of traditional institutional forms, forms that were sustained by stronger nation states, in favor of neo-liberal, business models. It is the infiltration of these business models into the field of education and academia that leads to such trends as time-efficient "performance standards", teachers as "managers", and students as "customers." This loss of freedom and autonomy in academia, combined with Rigoberta Menchu's lost narrative, risks less knowledge, less potential for interchange across perspectives, and hence a loss of new knowledge.
Smith's seminars, each involving lively intellectual interchange, focused more specifically on the relationship between texts and knowledge building. Topics of discussion, inclusive of Smith's own work entitled "Writing the Social: Critique, Theory, and Investigations" (1999), centered on an examination of texts which "organize and regulate", such as prescribed textbooks in introductory courses and grade sheets and evaluations which produce people as "graded" and "graded people" respectively. The regulatory power of texts was also discussed in the context of funding allocations, police reportage, and the labeling of domestic abuse. Finally, texts were also identified as coordinators of social action.
Professor Smith's lecture and seminar series offered a rich opportunity for the discussion of profound sociological questions and topics: how we know what we know, links between knowledge and power, knowledge and lived experience, the relationship between knowledge building, theory, methodology, and texts. Smith's accessibility outside of the lecture hall and classroom setting, her willingness to engage in continuous dialogue with students and faculty throughout her three-day stay at Boston College, was also greatly appreciated. All in all, Smith's visit proved energizing and rigorous, a significant contribution to an expanding climate of intellectual interchange in the Boston College Sociology Department.