M L Devault
Biographic Data
| ID | 101750 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M L Devault |
| GIVEN NAMES | M L |
| FAMILY NAME | Devault |
| SIGNATURE | DEVAULT M L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Syracuse University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0361-6516 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 586 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Dorothy Smith’s Sociology for People: Theory for Discovery
Dorothy E. Smith was a second-wave feminist scholar of the 1970s who brought forward an insistent critique of women’s exclusion from knowledge production and the resulting distortions of sociological theory. I offer here a reading of the theory Smith developed as she worked toward a sociology that could move the field beyond those distortions, toward a method of inquiry that could be useful for women and generally for people puzzled by the circum…
Conclusion
Dorothy E. Smith, Feminist Sociology and Institutional Ethnography: A Short Introduction
My first encounter with the work of Dorothy E Smith was via an essay about ‘K’ (published in 1978). K was a young woman who came to be described by her friends and others as ‘mentally ill’, and Smi
Ruling Relations
The term “ruling relations” is associated with the feminist thought of Dorothy E. Smith, who came to prominence in the academic movement that arose from women's activism in the 1960s and 1970s. Smith's work takes up the project of locating lived experiences of oppression within the social contexts that produce those experiences. Ruling relations identify the institutional complexes (emerging from the development and elaboration of capitalist econ…
Matrix of Domination
The term “matrix of domination” is associated with the feminist thought of Patricia Hill Collins, who came to prominence in the academic movement that arose from women's activism in the 1960s and 1970s. Her project locates lived experiences of oppression within the social contexts that produce those experiences. Collins's term refers to the particular configurations of oppression and resistance (along varied lines of socially constructed differen…
Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods: A Guidebook and Resource
Mapping Invisible Work: Conceptual Tools for Social Justice Projects
Feminist scholars developed the concept of “invisible work” in the 1980s to bring sociological attention to work that was unpaid, unrecognized, or undervalued. Since then, it has become clear that the “generous” concept of work can be applied more broadly and that bringing invisible work into view may help to advance projects of social justice and inclusion. Drawing on the example of healthcare access for deaf patients, this article explores stra…
Institutional Ethnography: A Feminist Sociology of Institutional Power
Dorothy E. Smith
This chapter contains sections titled: Dorothy Smith: The Person in Social Context The Scholarly Work The Intellectual Context and Impact of the Work Current Directions: Economic Restructuring and Governance Conclusion Bibliography
Bifurcated Consciousness, Line of Fault
Dorothy Smith's influential feminist essay, “A Sociology for Women,” begins by calling attention to a “line of fault”: “a point of rupture in my/our experience as woman/women within the social forms of consciousness – the culture or ideology of our society – in relation to the world known otherwise, the world directly felt, sensed, responded to, prior to its social expression” (1987: 49). Insisting on the anchorage of consciousness in located bod…
Introduction: What is Institutional Ethnography
Journal Article Introduction: What is Institutional Ethnography? Get access Marjorie L. Devault Marjorie L. Devault Syracuse University Direct correspondence to: Marjorie L. DeVault, Department of Sociology, 302 Maxwell Hall, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244. E-mail: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Problems, Volume 53, Issue 3, 1 August 2006, Pages 294–298, htt…
Families and Children: Together, Apart
In discussing the construction of gender in family settings and in children's lives, one must consider the relations of these separate but closely connected arenas. Easy assumptions of unity are wrong and inappropriate but studying children in isolation from family life-or vice versa-produces a flawed picture as well. This discussion suggests that literal joinings and separations in time and space should be integral to analyses in both fields bec…
Institutional Ethnography
Institutional Ethnography: Using Interviews to Investigate Ruling Relations
Taking Sides in Social Research: Essays on Partisanship and Bias
Comfort and Struggle: Emotion Work in Family Life
Though family life is typically associated with emotion rather than work, the concept of emotion work reveals the effort behind family feeling. Existing literature on family emotion work emphasizes caregiving and interpersonal support—activities associated with the housewife ideal of the industrial age. This article examines not only such caregiving and support activities but also several other forms of emotion work that become visible when we co…
The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart
In defense of textual experimentation: A response to Michael Schwalbe
Divergent Realities: The Emotional Lives of Mothers, Fathers, and Adolescents
Talking Back to Sociology: Distinctive Contributions of Feminist Methodology
This essay characterizes 'feminist methodology' as a field of inquiry rooted in feminist activism and in feminists' critiques of the standard procedures of social science. Feminist methodologists do not use or prescribe any single research method; rather, they are united through various efforts to include women's lives and concerns in accounts of society, to minimize the harms of research, and to support changes that will improve women's status. …
Handbook of Qualitative Research
Ethnicity and Expertise: Racial-Ethnic Knowledge in Sociological Research
Analysis of an interview conducted by a white researcher with an African American nutritionist points to the significance of racial-ethnic dynamics in the conduct of qualitative research. Interviewers who follow the standard methodological rule-to let findings 'emerge' from their data-may fail to hear the significance of race-ethnicity in the accounts of informants. Close analysis suggests that talk will sometimes reveal racial-ethnic dynamics ev…
Narrative analysis
The Sociology of Food: Eating, Diet and Culture
Family Services
Talking and Listening from Women's Standpoint: Feminist Strategies for Interviewing and Analysis
This article combines feminist perspectives on women and language with a recent emphasis in qualitative methods on linguistic aspects of interview research. The feminist proposition that language is often incongruent with the realities of women's experiences provides an opening for methodological strategies aimed at the recovery and analysis of experiences that women often have difficulty articulating. Analytic strategies are discussed in relatio…
Talking Back to Sociology: Distinctive Contributions of Feminist Methodology
This essay characterizes 'feminist methodology' as a field of inquiry rooted in feminist activism and in feminists' critiques of the standard procedures of social science. Feminist methodologists do not use or prescribe any single research method; rather, they are united through various efforts to include women's lives and concerns in accounts of society, to minimize the harms of research, and to support changes that will improve women's status. …
Comfort and Struggle: Emotion Work in Family Life
Though family life is typically associated with emotion rather than work, the concept of emotion work reveals the effort behind family feeling. Existing literature on family emotion work emphasizes caregiving and interpersonal support—activities associated with the housewife ideal of the industrial age. This article examines not only such caregiving and support activities but also several other forms of emotion work that become visible when we co…
Introduction: What is Institutional Ethnography
Journal Article Introduction: What is Institutional Ethnography? Get access Marjorie L. Devault Marjorie L. Devault Syracuse University Direct correspondence to: Marjorie L. DeVault, Department of Sociology, 302 Maxwell Hall, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244. E-mail: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Problems, Volume 53, Issue 3, 1 August 2006, Pages 294–298, htt…
Ethnicity and Expertise: Racial-Ethnic Knowledge in Sociological Research
Analysis of an interview conducted by a white researcher with an African American nutritionist points to the significance of racial-ethnic dynamics in the conduct of qualitative research. Interviewers who follow the standard methodological rule-to let findings 'emerge' from their data-may fail to hear the significance of race-ethnicity in the accounts of informants. Close analysis suggests that talk will sometimes reveal racial-ethnic dynamics ev…
Mapping Invisible Work: Conceptual Tools for Social Justice Projects
Feminist scholars developed the concept of “invisible work” in the 1980s to bring sociological attention to work that was unpaid, unrecognized, or undervalued. Since then, it has become clear that the “generous” concept of work can be applied more broadly and that bringing invisible work into view may help to advance projects of social justice and inclusion. Drawing on the example of healthcare access for deaf patients, this article explores stra…
Novel Readings: The Social Organization of Interpretation
Theories of interpretation must explain not only the accuracy of interpretation but also the divergence between readings that arises from the socially situated nature of any reading. In this article, the sources of variant readings of a single novel ( The Late Bourgeois World, by Nadine Gordimer) are examined. Analysis of published statements (reviews and critical analyses) and comparison of these professional accounts with the author's own "lay"…
Surplus and Scarcity: Hunger and the Origins of the Food Stamp Program
Hunger in the United States was largely ignored prior to the 1960s, when social conditions combined to make it a national issue. This paper looks at the history of the food stamp program and the ongoing competition between two definitions of hunger: one which focuses on the need for food, the other which emphasizes social inequality. We show how the food stamp program has evolved in response to legislative activity and social movements, and how c…
Handbook of Qualitative Research
Institutional Ethnography: A Feminist Sociology of Institutional Power
In defense of textual experimentation: A response to Michael Schwalbe
Families and Children: Together, Apart
In discussing the construction of gender in family settings and in children's lives, one must consider the relations of these separate but closely connected arenas. Easy assumptions of unity are wrong and inappropriate but studying children in isolation from family life-or vice versa-produces a flawed picture as well. This discussion suggests that literal joinings and separations in time and space should be integral to analyses in both fields bec…
Dorothy Smith’s Sociology for People: Theory for Discovery
Dorothy E. Smith was a second-wave feminist scholar of the 1970s who brought forward an insistent critique of women’s exclusion from knowledge production and the resulting distortions of sociological theory. I offer here a reading of the theory Smith developed as she worked toward a sociology that could move the field beyond those distortions, toward a method of inquiry that could be useful for women and generally for people puzzled by the circum…
Ruling Relations
The term “ruling relations” is associated with the feminist thought of Dorothy E. Smith, who came to prominence in the academic movement that arose from women's activism in the 1960s and 1970s. Smith's work takes up the project of locating lived experiences of oppression within the social contexts that produce those experiences. Ruling relations identify the institutional complexes (emerging from the development and elaboration of capitalist econ…
Dorothy E. Smith, Feminist Sociology and Institutional Ethnography: A Short Introduction
My first encounter with the work of Dorothy E Smith was via an essay about ‘K’ (published in 1978). K was a young woman who came to be described by her friends and others as ‘mentally ill’, and Smi
Narrative analysis
The Sociology of Food: Eating, Diet and Culture
Novels, Novelists, and Readers: Toward a Phenomenological Sociology of Literature. Mary F. Rogers
Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940
Surplus and Scarcity: Hunger and the Origins of the Food Stamp Program
Hunger in the United States was largely ignored prior to the 1960s, when social conditions combined to make it a national issue. This paper looks at the history of the food stamp program and the ongoing competition between two definitions of hunger: one which focuses on the need for food, the other which emphasizes social inequality. We show how the food stamp program has evolved in response to legislative activity and social movements, and how c…
Sex Role Research: Measuring Social Change
The Rhetoric of Social Research: Understood and Believed
Talking and Listening from Women's Standpoint: Feminist Strategies for Interviewing and Analysis
This article combines feminist perspectives on women and language with a recent emphasis in qualitative methods on linguistic aspects of interview research. The feminist proposition that language is often incongruent with the realities of women's experiences provides an opening for methodological strategies aimed at the recovery and analysis of experiences that women often have difficulty articulating. Analytic strategies are discussed in relatio…
Novel Readings: The Social Organization of Interpretation
Theories of interpretation must explain not only the accuracy of interpretation but also the divergence between readings that arises from the socially situated nature of any reading. In this article, the sources of variant readings of a single novel ( The Late Bourgeois World, by Nadine Gordimer) are examined. Analysis of published statements (reviews and critical analyses) and comparison of these professional accounts with the author's own "lay"…
What is Family
Family Services
Novels, Novelists, and Readers: Toward a Phenomenological Sociology of Literature. Mary F. Rogers
The Sociology of Food: Eating, Diet and Culture
Narrative analysis
Handbook of Qualitative Research
Ethnicity and Expertise: Racial-Ethnic Knowledge in Sociological Research
Analysis of an interview conducted by a white researcher with an African American nutritionist points to the significance of racial-ethnic dynamics in the conduct of qualitative research. Interviewers who follow the standard methodological rule-to let findings 'emerge' from their data-may fail to hear the significance of race-ethnicity in the accounts of informants. Close analysis suggests that talk will sometimes reveal racial-ethnic dynamics ev…
In defense of textual experimentation: A response to Michael Schwalbe
Divergent Realities: The Emotional Lives of Mothers, Fathers, and Adolescents
Talking Back to Sociology: Distinctive Contributions of Feminist Methodology
This essay characterizes 'feminist methodology' as a field of inquiry rooted in feminist activism and in feminists' critiques of the standard procedures of social science. Feminist methodologists do not use or prescribe any single research method; rather, they are united through various efforts to include women's lives and concerns in accounts of society, to minimize the harms of research, and to support changes that will improve women's status. …
The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart
Comfort and Struggle: Emotion Work in Family Life
Though family life is typically associated with emotion rather than work, the concept of emotion work reveals the effort behind family feeling. Existing literature on family emotion work emphasizes caregiving and interpersonal support—activities associated with the housewife ideal of the industrial age. This article examines not only such caregiving and support activities but also several other forms of emotion work that become visible when we co…
Institutional Ethnography: Using Interviews to Investigate Ruling Relations
Taking Sides in Social Research: Essays on Partisanship and Bias
Institutional Ethnography
Families and Children: Together, Apart
In discussing the construction of gender in family settings and in children's lives, one must consider the relations of these separate but closely connected arenas. Easy assumptions of unity are wrong and inappropriate but studying children in isolation from family life-or vice versa-produces a flawed picture as well. This discussion suggests that literal joinings and separations in time and space should be integral to analyses in both fields bec…
Introduction: What is Institutional Ethnography
Journal Article Introduction: What is Institutional Ethnography? Get access Marjorie L. Devault Marjorie L. Devault Syracuse University Direct correspondence to: Marjorie L. DeVault, Department of Sociology, 302 Maxwell Hall, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244. E-mail: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Problems, Volume 53, Issue 3, 1 August 2006, Pages 294–298, htt…
Bifurcated Consciousness, Line of Fault
Dorothy Smith's influential feminist essay, “A Sociology for Women,” begins by calling attention to a “line of fault”: “a point of rupture in my/our experience as woman/women within the social forms of consciousness – the culture or ideology of our society – in relation to the world known otherwise, the world directly felt, sensed, responded to, prior to its social expression” (1987: 49). Insisting on the anchorage of consciousness in located bod…
Dorothy E. Smith
This chapter contains sections titled: Dorothy Smith: The Person in Social Context The Scholarly Work The Intellectual Context and Impact of the Work Current Directions: Economic Restructuring and Governance Conclusion Bibliography
Sociology (23 works) · Anthropology (11 works) · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Ethnography (7 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works)