HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF DOROTHY SMITH AND PATRICIA COLLINS CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEMINIST SOCIOLOGY

Abstract

This paper accounted the historical contributions and relevance of Dorothy Smith and Patricia Collins feminist sociologists leading up to the development of institutional ethnography as “a sociology for people”, sociology for women, text, fact and feminity and everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology, Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness and the politics of empowerment, Fighting words: black women and search for justice and black sexual politics among many contributions. Drawing from the selected writings of Smith and Collins, the paper discusses some of the major ideas, debates and practical influences that are relevant to both scholars trajectory. Smith and Collins examine the structure of the everyday world through the lenses of feminist theory, Marxism and phenomenology. Their feminist sociology analyses derive from the premise that women are excluded from what they calls the ruling apparatus of culture which they all argued does not arise spontaneously, but rather are manufactured by those in positions of dominance-almost exclusively men. The works of Smith and Collins therefore continued to be relevant and ranked among the most important produced in the 20^th and 21th century sociology. This is illustrated on how their feminism analyses were integral to their celebrated critique and re-writing of sociological method.