‘You Are Here’: an interview with Dorothy E. Smith

Abstract

Keywords Dorothy E. Smith • feminism • institutional ethnography • Marxism • texts • sociology for people Mots-clés Dorothy E. Smith • féminisme • ethnographie institutionnelle • marxisme • textes • sociologie pour tous Dorothy Smith is a world-renowned Marxist feminist scholar and activist and a formidable intellect. Her decades of scholarly and activist contributions combine a lively sociological imagination with unfailing rigour, inspiring and challenging academics, professionals and 'ordinary' women and men to consider how social relationships and power are organized in everyday life. She is the author of many groundbreaking articles and books, including The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (1987), Texts, Facts, and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling (1990), Writing the Social: Critique, Theory and Investigations (1999) and Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People (2005). She is best-known for her creation of institutional ethnography (IE), a method of inquiry she originally characterized as a 'sociology for women' but has since recrafted as a 'sociology for people'.