Sociology is the systematic study of society and social interaction. In order to carry out their studies, sociologists identify cultural patterns and social forces and determine how they affect individuals and groups. They also develop ways to apply their findings to the real world.
the experience of sexual violence—had simply been invisible or regarded as
unimportant politically or socially. Dorothy Smith’s development of standpoint
theory was a key innovation in sociology that enabled these issues to be seen and
addressed in a systematic way (Smith 1977). She recognized from the
consciousness-raising exercises and encounter groups initiated by feminists in the
1960s and1970s that many of the immediate concerns expressed by women about
their personal lives had a commonality of themes. These themes were nevertheless
difficult to articulate in sociological terms let alone in the language of politics or law.
Part of the issue was sociology itself. Smith argued that instead of beginning
sociological analysis from the abstract point of view of institutions or systems,
women’s lives could be more effectively examined if one began from the
“actualities” of their lived experience in the immediate local settings of
“everyday/every night” life. She asked, what are the common features of women’s
everyday lives? From this standpoint, Smith observed that women’s position in
modern society is acutely divided by the experience of dual consciousness. Every
day women crossed a tangible dividing line when they went from the
“particularizing work in relation to children, spouse, and household” to the
institutional world of text-mediated, abstract concerns at work, or in their dealings
with schools, medical systems, or government bureaucracies. In the abstract world
of institutional life, the actualities of local consciousness and lived life are
“obliterated” (Smith 1977). While the standpoint of women is grounded in bodily,
localized, “here and now” relationships between people, due to their obligations in
the domestic sphere, society is organized through “relations of ruling,” which
translate the substance of actual lived experiences into abstract bureaucratic
categories. Power and rule in society, especially the power and rule that constrain
and coordinate the lives of women, operate through a problematic “move into
transcendence” that provides accounts of social life as if it were possible to stand
outside of it. Smith argued that the abstract concepts of sociology, at least in the way
that it was taught at the time, only contributed to the problem.
Criticism
Whereas critical sociologists often criticize positivist and interpretive sociology for
their conservative biases, the reverse is also true. In part the issue is about whether
sociology can be “objective,” or value-neutral, or not. However, at a deeper level the
criticism is often aimed at the radical nature of critical analyses. Marx’s critique of
capitalism and the feminist critique of patriarchy for example led to very interesting
insights into how structures of power and inequality work, but from a point of view
that sees only the most revolutionary transformation of society as a solution.
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