Feminist and Marxist: Dorothy Smith receives lifetime sociology award

NEW YORK – At a national meeting this summer here, social theorist Dorothy E. Smith was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Section on Marxist Sociology of the American Sociological Association. Smith is widely acknowledged as a major feminist thinker, perhaps best known for her development of the concept of “standpoint theory.” Recognizing that knowledge and understanding are embedded in social structures, standpoint theory begins in a Marxist rejection of liberal claims of “objective” social research, and instead calls on social scientists to begin inquiry in social structures and processes with the standpoint of the marginalized.