Author: Dorothy E. Smith
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802067968
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
Sociologists generate idology instead of knowledge - particularly where women are concerned. By starting with the theoretical formulations of their discipline and then interpreting people's activities as expressions of those ideas, sociologists both participate in and perpetuate society's traditional power relations. So argues Dorothy E. Smith in this provocative study of her own discipline and its relationship to women's lives. While acknowledging that social science is ideological, Smith argues that for sociologists idology affects methods of inquiry and transforms what actually happens in people's lives into a formalized picture that lacks subjectiveness. She explicates the need for an alternative sociology that better explores everyday experience, suggesting a Marxist materialist ideology, and emphasizing that ideology is not content but practice. Smith is especially concerned with the application of sociological ideology to the human service bureaucracy and the way institutions of mental health reconstruct women's lives. She provides meticulous accounts of the ways in with police reports, governments statistics, hospital records, and psychiatric files and ideologically interpreted, transforming a person's life history in the process. In a reveatory chapter on biographer Quentin Bell's exploration of Virginia Woolf's suicide, Smith demonstrates once again how the professional who claims to report an event acurrately also shapes it. Highly critical of current sociological practice, she also hopes that alternative appraoches will change the discipline.
The Conceptual Practices of Power
Author: Dorothy E. Smith
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802067968
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
Sociologists generate idology instead of knowledge - particularly where women are concerned. By starting with the theoretical formulations of their discipline and then interpreting people's activities as expressions of those ideas, sociologists both participate in and perpetuate society's traditional power relations. So argues Dorothy E. Smith in this provocative study of her own discipline and its relationship to women's lives. While acknowledging that social science is ideological, Smith argues that for sociologists idology affects methods of inquiry and transforms what actually happens in people's lives into a formalized picture that lacks subjectiveness. She explicates the need for an alternative sociology that better explores everyday experience, suggesting a Marxist materialist ideology, and emphasizing that ideology is not content but practice. Smith is especially concerned with the application of sociological ideology to the human service bureaucracy and the way institutions of mental health reconstruct women's lives. She provides meticulous accounts of the ways in with police reports, governments statistics, hospital records, and psychiatric files and ideologically interpreted, transforming a person's life history in the process. In a reveatory chapter on biographer Quentin Bell's exploration of Virginia Woolf's suicide, Smith demonstrates once again how the professional who claims to report an event acurrately also shapes it. Highly critical of current sociological practice, she also hopes that alternative appraoches will change the discipline.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802067968
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
Sociologists generate idology instead of knowledge - particularly where women are concerned. By starting with the theoretical formulations of their discipline and then interpreting people's activities as expressions of those ideas, sociologists both participate in and perpetuate society's traditional power relations. So argues Dorothy E. Smith in this provocative study of her own discipline and its relationship to women's lives. While acknowledging that social science is ideological, Smith argues that for sociologists idology affects methods of inquiry and transforms what actually happens in people's lives into a formalized picture that lacks subjectiveness. She explicates the need for an alternative sociology that better explores everyday experience, suggesting a Marxist materialist ideology, and emphasizing that ideology is not content but practice. Smith is especially concerned with the application of sociological ideology to the human service bureaucracy and the way institutions of mental health reconstruct women's lives. She provides meticulous accounts of the ways in with police reports, governments statistics, hospital records, and psychiatric files and ideologically interpreted, transforming a person's life history in the process. In a reveatory chapter on biographer Quentin Bell's exploration of Virginia Woolf's suicide, Smith demonstrates once again how the professional who claims to report an event acurrately also shapes it. Highly critical of current sociological practice, she also hopes that alternative appraoches will change the discipline.
The Conceptual Practices of Power
Author: Dorothy E. Smith
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781555530808
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Book Description
Beginning with women's experience, the author examines the field's actual practices of reasoning and conceptualization. She argues that standard sociological methods of inquiry make use of ideological practices, transforming the actualities of people's lives into a formalized picture lacking subjects and subjectivity. The method of Smith recommends anchors a Marxist materialism, based in people's activities, to a woman's stand-point based in experience. She uses this method in a radically original way to explore ideology and objectified knowledge as the conceptual practices of ruling. Smith is equally concerned with the application of sociological ideology to the human service bureacracy and the way institutions of mental health reconstruct women's lives. She provides meticulous accounts of the ways in which police reports, government statistics, hospital records, and pschiatric files are ideologically interpreted, transforming a person's life history in the process. In a revelatory chapter on the biographer Quentin Bell's account of Virginia Woolf's suicide, the author demonstrates how the text implicates the reader in the objectification of Woolf's "psychiatric problems." Highly critical of current sociological practices, The Conceptual Practices of Power both recommends and exemplifies the alternative approach that Smith presented in her earlier work, That Everyday World as Problematic, also published by Northeastern University Press.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781555530808
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Book Description
Beginning with women's experience, the author examines the field's actual practices of reasoning and conceptualization. She argues that standard sociological methods of inquiry make use of ideological practices, transforming the actualities of people's lives into a formalized picture lacking subjects and subjectivity. The method of Smith recommends anchors a Marxist materialism, based in people's activities, to a woman's stand-point based in experience. She uses this method in a radically original way to explore ideology and objectified knowledge as the conceptual practices of ruling. Smith is equally concerned with the application of sociological ideology to the human service bureacracy and the way institutions of mental health reconstruct women's lives. She provides meticulous accounts of the ways in which police reports, government statistics, hospital records, and pschiatric files are ideologically interpreted, transforming a person's life history in the process. In a revelatory chapter on the biographer Quentin Bell's account of Virginia Woolf's suicide, the author demonstrates how the text implicates the reader in the objectification of Woolf's "psychiatric problems." Highly critical of current sociological practices, The Conceptual Practices of Power both recommends and exemplifies the alternative approach that Smith presented in her earlier work, That Everyday World as Problematic, also published by Northeastern University Press.
Power and Everyday Practices, Second Edition
Author: Deborah Brock
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487588224
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
Rather than view social inequality as a problem for marginalized populations, Power and Everyday Practices turns the spotlight on the ways power and privilege are produced and reproduced in our everyday worlds
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487588224
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
Rather than view social inequality as a problem for marginalized populations, Power and Everyday Practices turns the spotlight on the ways power and privilege are produced and reproduced in our everyday worlds
Black Feminist Thought
Author: Patricia Hill Collins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135960135
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academe. She provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. The result is a superbly crafted book that provides the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135960135
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academe. She provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. The result is a superbly crafted book that provides the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought.
Frameworks of Power
Author: Stewart R Clegg
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 0857022938
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319
Book Description
This textbook provides a coherent and comprehensive account of the different frameworks for understanding power which have been advanced within the social sciences. Though looking back to the classical literature on power with special emphasis on Machiavelli and Hobbes, the book concentrates on the modern analysis of power - from both British and American social and political theorists, and from German Critical Theory and French theorists such as Foucault - and develops upon its theory and its application. Not only does the book provide an overview of the various frameworks of power advanced by these and other influential thinkers, but it also develops a new synthesis based on important work in both the sociology of science and the sociology of organizations. This approach is then applied to key questions in the comparative historical sociology of the emergence of the modern state.
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 0857022938
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319
Book Description
This textbook provides a coherent and comprehensive account of the different frameworks for understanding power which have been advanced within the social sciences. Though looking back to the classical literature on power with special emphasis on Machiavelli and Hobbes, the book concentrates on the modern analysis of power - from both British and American social and political theorists, and from German Critical Theory and French theorists such as Foucault - and develops upon its theory and its application. Not only does the book provide an overview of the various frameworks of power advanced by these and other influential thinkers, but it also develops a new synthesis based on important work in both the sociology of science and the sociology of organizations. This approach is then applied to key questions in the comparative historical sociology of the emergence of the modern state.
Knowing Otherwise
Author: Alexis Shotwell
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271068051
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
Prejudice is often not a conscious attitude: because of ingrained habits in relating to the world, one may act in prejudiced ways toward others without explicitly understanding the meaning of one’s actions. Similarly, one may know how to do certain things, like ride a bicycle, without being able to articulate in words what that knowledge is. These are examples of what Alexis Shotwell discusses in Knowing Otherwise as phenomena of “implicit understanding.” Presenting a systematic analysis of this concept, she highlights how this kind of understanding may be used to ground positive political and social change, such as combating racism in its less overt and more deep-rooted forms. Shotwell begins by distinguishing four basic types of implicit understanding: nonpropositional, skill-based, or practical knowledge; embodied knowledge; potentially propositional knowledge; and affective knowledge. She then develops the notion of a racialized and gendered “common sense,” drawing on Gramsci and critical race theorists, and clarifies the idea of embodied knowledge by showing how it operates in the realm of aesthetics. She also examines the role that both negative affects, like shame, and positive affects, like sympathy, can play in moving us away from racism and toward political solidarity and social justice. Finally, Shotwell looks at the politicized experience of one’s body in feminist and transgender theories of liberation in order to elucidate the role of situated sensuous knowledge in bringing about social change and political transformation.
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271068051
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
Prejudice is often not a conscious attitude: because of ingrained habits in relating to the world, one may act in prejudiced ways toward others without explicitly understanding the meaning of one’s actions. Similarly, one may know how to do certain things, like ride a bicycle, without being able to articulate in words what that knowledge is. These are examples of what Alexis Shotwell discusses in Knowing Otherwise as phenomena of “implicit understanding.” Presenting a systematic analysis of this concept, she highlights how this kind of understanding may be used to ground positive political and social change, such as combating racism in its less overt and more deep-rooted forms. Shotwell begins by distinguishing four basic types of implicit understanding: nonpropositional, skill-based, or practical knowledge; embodied knowledge; potentially propositional knowledge; and affective knowledge. She then develops the notion of a racialized and gendered “common sense,” drawing on Gramsci and critical race theorists, and clarifies the idea of embodied knowledge by showing how it operates in the realm of aesthetics. She also examines the role that both negative affects, like shame, and positive affects, like sympathy, can play in moving us away from racism and toward political solidarity and social justice. Finally, Shotwell looks at the politicized experience of one’s body in feminist and transgender theories of liberation in order to elucidate the role of situated sensuous knowledge in bringing about social change and political transformation.
Southern Theory
Author: RAEWYN. CONNELL
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367719418
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Southern Theory presents the case for a radical re-thinking of social science and its relationships to knowledge, power and democracy on a world scale. Mainstream social science pictures the world as understood by the educated and affluent in Europe and North America. From Weber and Keynes to Friedman and Foucault, theorists from the global North dominate the imagination of social scientists, and the reading lists of students, all over the world. For most of modern history, the majority world has served social science only as a data mine. Yet the global South does produce knowledge and understanding of society. Through vivid accounts of critics and theorists, Raewyn Connell shows how social theory from the world periphery has power and relevance for understanding our changing world from al-Afghani at the dawn of modern social science, to Raul Prebisch in industrialising Latin America, Ali Shariati in revolutionary Iran, Paulin Hountondji in post-colonial Benin, Veena Das and Ashis Nandy in contemporary India, and many others. With clarity and verve, Southern Theory introduces readers to texts, ideas and debates that have emerged from Australia's Indigenous people, from Africa, Latin America, south and south-west Asia. It deals with modernisation, gender, race, class, cultural domination, neoliberalism, violence, trade, religion, identity, land, and the structure of knowledge itself. Southern Theory shows how this tremendous resource has been disregarded by mainstream social science. It explores the challenges of doing theory in the periphery, and considers the role Southern perspectives should have in a globally connected system of knowledge. Southern Theory draws on sociology, anthropology, history, psychology, economics, philosophy and cultural studies, with wide-ranging implications for social science in the 21st century.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367719418
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Southern Theory presents the case for a radical re-thinking of social science and its relationships to knowledge, power and democracy on a world scale. Mainstream social science pictures the world as understood by the educated and affluent in Europe and North America. From Weber and Keynes to Friedman and Foucault, theorists from the global North dominate the imagination of social scientists, and the reading lists of students, all over the world. For most of modern history, the majority world has served social science only as a data mine. Yet the global South does produce knowledge and understanding of society. Through vivid accounts of critics and theorists, Raewyn Connell shows how social theory from the world periphery has power and relevance for understanding our changing world from al-Afghani at the dawn of modern social science, to Raul Prebisch in industrialising Latin America, Ali Shariati in revolutionary Iran, Paulin Hountondji in post-colonial Benin, Veena Das and Ashis Nandy in contemporary India, and many others. With clarity and verve, Southern Theory introduces readers to texts, ideas and debates that have emerged from Australia's Indigenous people, from Africa, Latin America, south and south-west Asia. It deals with modernisation, gender, race, class, cultural domination, neoliberalism, violence, trade, religion, identity, land, and the structure of knowledge itself. Southern Theory shows how this tremendous resource has been disregarded by mainstream social science. It explores the challenges of doing theory in the periphery, and considers the role Southern perspectives should have in a globally connected system of knowledge. Southern Theory draws on sociology, anthropology, history, psychology, economics, philosophy and cultural studies, with wide-ranging implications for social science in the 21st century.
Handbook of Feminist Research
Author: Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1412980593
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 793
Book Description
The second edition of the Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis, presents both a theoretical and practical approach to conducting social science research on, for, and about women. The Handbook enables readers to develop an understanding of feminist research by introducing a range of feminist epistemologies, methodologies, and methods that have had a significant impact on feminist research practice and women's studies scholarship. The Handbook continues to provide a set of clearly defined research concepts that are devoid of as much technical language as possible. It continues to engage readers with cutting edge debates in the field as well as the practical applications and issues for those whose research affects social policy and social change. It also expands on the wealth of interdisciplinary understanding of feminist research praxis that is grounded in a tight link between epistemology, methodology and method. The second edition of this Handbook will provide researchers with the tools for excavating subjugated knowledge on women's lives and the lives of other marginalized groups with the goals of empowerment and social change.
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1412980593
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 793
Book Description
The second edition of the Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis, presents both a theoretical and practical approach to conducting social science research on, for, and about women. The Handbook enables readers to develop an understanding of feminist research by introducing a range of feminist epistemologies, methodologies, and methods that have had a significant impact on feminist research practice and women's studies scholarship. The Handbook continues to provide a set of clearly defined research concepts that are devoid of as much technical language as possible. It continues to engage readers with cutting edge debates in the field as well as the practical applications and issues for those whose research affects social policy and social change. It also expands on the wealth of interdisciplinary understanding of feminist research praxis that is grounded in a tight link between epistemology, methodology and method. The second edition of this Handbook will provide researchers with the tools for excavating subjugated knowledge on women's lives and the lives of other marginalized groups with the goals of empowerment and social change.
Protean Power
Author: Peter J. Katzenstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108425178
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383
Book Description
Mainstream international relations continues to assume that the world is governed by calculable risk based on estimates of power, despite repeatedly being surprised by unexpected change. This ground breaking work departs from existing definitions of power that focus on the actors' evolving ability to exercise control in situations of calculable risk. It introduces the concept of 'protean power', which focuses on the actors' agility as they adapt to situations of uncertainty. Protean Power uses twelve real world case studies to examine how the dynamics of protean and control power can be tracked in the relations among different state and non-state actors, operating in diverse sites, stretching from local to global, in both times of relative normalcy and moments of crisis. Katzenstein and Seybert argue for a new approach to international relations, where the inclusion of protean power in our analytical models helps in accounting for unforeseen changes in world politics.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108425178
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383
Book Description
Mainstream international relations continues to assume that the world is governed by calculable risk based on estimates of power, despite repeatedly being surprised by unexpected change. This ground breaking work departs from existing definitions of power that focus on the actors' evolving ability to exercise control in situations of calculable risk. It introduces the concept of 'protean power', which focuses on the actors' agility as they adapt to situations of uncertainty. Protean Power uses twelve real world case studies to examine how the dynamics of protean and control power can be tracked in the relations among different state and non-state actors, operating in diverse sites, stretching from local to global, in both times of relative normalcy and moments of crisis. Katzenstein and Seybert argue for a new approach to international relations, where the inclusion of protean power in our analytical models helps in accounting for unforeseen changes in world politics.
Social Reproduction Theory
Author: Tithi Bhattacharya
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN: 9780745399881
Category : Capitalism
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Crystallizing the essential principles of social reproductive theory, this anthology provides long-overdue analysis of everyday life under capitalism. It focuses on issues such as childcare, healthcare, education, family life, and the roles of gender, race, and sexuality--all of which are central to understanding the relationship between exploitation and social oppression. Tithi Bhattacharya brings together some of the leading writers and theorists, including Lise Vogel, Nancy Fraser, and Susan Ferguson, in order for us to better understand social relations and how to improve them in the fight against structural oppression.
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN: 9780745399881
Category : Capitalism
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Crystallizing the essential principles of social reproductive theory, this anthology provides long-overdue analysis of everyday life under capitalism. It focuses on issues such as childcare, healthcare, education, family life, and the roles of gender, race, and sexuality--all of which are central to understanding the relationship between exploitation and social oppression. Tithi Bhattacharya brings together some of the leading writers and theorists, including Lise Vogel, Nancy Fraser, and Susan Ferguson, in order for us to better understand social relations and how to improve them in the fight against structural oppression.