Dorothy E. Smith

Observation: In sociology, we must interrogate the texts that govern us.

Comeback: If your data doesn't speak to lived reality, change your ears.

From speech: Women's standpoint reveals the contradictions in capitalist relations.

Passage: Everyday life is the site where power is both exercised and resisted.

Letter excerpt: Teaching sociology means teaching people to see the invisible chains.

Professional: Institutional ethnography demystifies how organizations shape lives.

Reflection: Art in life is the creativity of ordinary women navigating ruling relations.

Interview: Politics starts in the kitchen, not the parliament.

Aphorism: Knowledge is a relation, not a possession.

Witty: Sociology's humor is in discovering how seriously we take our illusions.

Key passage: The local and extralocal are hooked together by texts and discourses.

Personal: Life's profundity is in the small acts of defiance against ruling.

Speech: We must theorize from the standpoint of the oppressed.

Observation: Wisdom in sociology comes from listening to the marginalized.

From correspondence: My work is a call to see society through women's eyes.

Joke: Why did the sociologist cross the ruling relations? To get to the other side of truth.

Interview excerpt: Art and sociology intersect in storytelling the unseen.

Reflection: On deathbed, she whispered, 'Keep mapping the relations; the work continues.'

Professional: Science demands we start where people are, not where theories want them.

Aphorism: The profound is in the everyday; ignore it at your peril.