Outline, Sociology 2111, Week 15
I. Dorothy Smith: Standpoint Theory
A. Her early career in sociology... came to Berkeley as a temporary faculty member, with two small children, while finishing her dissertation.
1. Berkeley, early 1970s... basically an all-male department
2. Relation of her personal life and her academic life at Berkeley: Two worlds, separate and at odds--and she accepted it at first
3. Began to see sociology (and the university more generally) as part of the "relations of ruling," predicated upon a particular socially constructed kind of person who does not have family obligations
4. No apparent relationship to sex discrimination but a strong gender subtext...women as at best supportive
5. You could only understand the Berkeley Sociology Department's role in the maintenance of gender inequality if you approached it "from the standpoint of women"
B. Sociology from the standpoint of women
1. Her project: "To create a way of seeing, from where we actually live, into the powers, processes and relations that organize and determine the ordinary process of that seeing."
2. Documentary practices... for example, the reports generated by caseworkers in relation to welfare mothers; grades, recommendations, transcripts in relation to students.
C. Standpoint of women also limited: "I came to understand that the critique claiming to be from the category of women in general had it own class and race subtexts."
D. Examples
1. Study by Smith and Griffith, 1984, of the work mothers do in relation to their children's schooling
a. "Home and parents, and mothers in particular, are also invisibly at work in the production of the child's documented school performance."
b. Began with open-ended interviews with mothers in two Canadian school districts, one middle-class, one working-class... six interviews in each...
"Our primary structuring device was to run through a day with them. They spoke very freely and fully and for the most part very concretely.... The terms they used were theirs and not ours... we had certain topics we wanted to cover but we were not held to specific questions."
c. Working class: Jamie's mother's effort to make homework Jamie's responsibility
d. Middle class: Amy's mother's acceptance of the idea that "Amy's studying is accomplished by both Amy and her parents, particularly Amy's mother
1. "... her recognition of the importance of being seen as a "concerned parent".."Does being a concerned parent contribute to their child's in school, over and above the ways in which their work contributes to Amy's performance."
2. her response to a note about a French assignment saying Amy didn't study hard enough... not willing to leave the teacher with this impression that Amy is not conscientious.
e. Later interviews with teachers and administrators, taking care not to adopt the viewpoint of the school.
2. Timothy Diamond: Making Grey Gold
a. Nursing home assistants: "How do you make it on just one job around here." Mostly minority women, often immigrants. He was the only white male.
b. "Where's my social security?"... the absence of most discretionary control for the patients
c. "Why can't I get a little rest around here?"vs. "There's one thing you have to learn around here--to Wait."
d. Two standpoints in conflict
1) Management
a) "If it's not charted, it didn't happen."
b) "You used to work together. Now you're on your own." Cutting from four nursing assistants per floor to 3.5.
2) Mother's Wit: the standpoint of the nursing assistants (and patients)
a) the community college teacher in the nursing assistant certification program who was fired
b) Most of the "caring" in spite of the directives, procedures, documentation
"Change that proceeds from mother's wit will probably have to do with activity relating to feeding, cleaning, teaching, laughing, comforting, holding, scolding--stopping to take the time to do any of them... It amounts to making into a home that which has been made into a hospital. Every day and night, in other words, the caretakers try to build a rest home. But each day the factorylike schedule starts up the production of patients and tasks and timed and measured units of service at the crack of dawn."
1. Who were the terrorists and what were their motivations? What is El Qaeda and how has it changed over time?
2. How can we understand the perspective of those who may have celebrated the terrorism? (The popular form of this question is why do they hate us and some of the most fantastic answers have been posed quite seriously; you can do better).
3. Why has the U.S. responded with a "war" on terrorism, and what would it mean to win such a war? What are the obstacles to getting long-term, world support for such a war? What makes it a popular war with some governments?
4. Is there any realistic alternative to the war on terrorism? What are the unintended consequences that are likely to follow from that war?
5. What about war on Iraq? Do you see it as an extension of the war on terrorism? Again, do any of our theoretical perspectives help in illuminating the basic issues?