Writing the Social
Critique, Theory, and Investigations
- Publisher
- University of Toronto Press
- Initial publish date
- Jan 1999
- Category
- General, Political
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780802081353
- Publish Date
- Jan 1999
- List Price
- $47.95
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780802043078
- Publish Date
- Jan 1999
- List Price
- $80.00
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781442683747
- Publish Date
- Jan 1999
- List Price
- $97.00
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Description
This collection of essays, written by Dorothy Smith over the past eight years, is a long-awaited treasure by one of the world's foremost social thinkers. In it, Smith turns her wit and common sense on the prevailing discourses of sociology, political economy, philosophy, and popular culture, at the same time developing her own sociological and feminist practice in unexpected and remarkable directions.
Shedding the idiom of the sociologist, Smith inquires directly into the actualities of peoples' lives. Her critical investigations of postmodernism, political correctness, university politics, and SNAF (the Standard North American Family) draw on metaphors and examples from a stimulating range of autobiographical, theoretical, historical, political, and humorous resources. Out of an abstract encounter with Bakhtin, for example, comes an analysis of a child learning to name a bird, and a new way of seeing the story of Helen Keller. In introducing a radically innovative approach to the sociology of discourse, even the most difficult points are addressed through ordinary scenes of mothers, cats, and birds, as well as scientists, pulsars, and cell microscopes.
Smith's engaged, rebel sociology throws light on a remarkable range of issues and authors, forever changing the way the reader experiences the world. This, her signature work, will delight a wide and varied audience, and enliven university courses for years to come.
About the author
Dorothy E. Smith is an adjunct professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Victoria and the author of Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (UTP 1988) and The Conceptual Practices of Power (UTP 1990).
Other titles by
Simply Institutional Ethnography
Creating a Sociology for People
Under New Public Management
Institutional Ethnographies of Changing Front-Line Work
Incorporating Texts into Institutional Ethnographies
Incorporating Texts into Institutional Ethnographies
The Conceptual Practices of Power
A Feminist Sociology of Power
The Everyday World as Problematic
A Feminist Sociology
