How Does Sociology Problematize “Women's Experience”?

Rethinking Dorothy Smith's Feminist Sociology

Abstract

Since the 70's, Dorothy Smith has explored the disjuncture between objectified knowledge and women's experience in her works of feminist sociology. This paper examines the particular use she makes of the concept of “disjuncture” through her work so as to redefine the sociological implications of her arguments. Smith's sociology does not take “women's experience” as a simply private thing. The “experience” is always mediated by “relation of ruling” and transformed into “objectified knowledge” in an invisible process. By critically analyzing this process, Smith shows that investigations on the production of the distinction private-public through the social organization of knowledge could be the main issue of sociology.