F eminist and g ender t heories

Figure 7.2
Smith’s Concepts of “Standpoint” and “Relations of Ruling”
2

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA
Nonrational
Rational
Standpoint
Figure 7.2
Smith’s Concepts of “Standpoint” and “Relations of Ruling”
Collective
Individual
Habituated
experiential
reality and
consciousness
Working
existence
Relations of
ruling
Discourses of
power
Institutions
organizing and
regulating
society

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SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA
organizing and regulating society (collective/rational) as well. That said, above all, “stand-
point” reflects the specific attitudes, emotions, and values that I experience and internalize at 
the level of the individual (individual/nonrational) as well as the habituated day-to-day expe-
rience, and the particular strategic advantages and disadvantages I am able to accrue through 
this position and my mundane working existence (individual/rational).
Put in another way, Smith articulates not only how individuals unthinkingly “do” gender 
(and class) in daily life at the individual/nonrational level, but also the subjective categories 
that make this possible—that is, the taken-for-granted understandings of what it means to 
be a “boy” or a “girl” that reflect the collective, nonrational realm. Akin to Schutz and 
Berger and Luckmann (see Chapter 6) as well as the poststructuralists who emphasize dis-
course and are discussed in the next chapter, Smith continually emphasizes that gender 
cannot be “done” at the individual level in everyday life without taken-for-granted concep-
tualizations at the collective level.
In a similar vein, that Smith’s concept “relations of ruling” encompasses both such forms 
as “bureaucracy, administration, management, professional organization and media” and 
scientific, technical, and cultural discourses, reflects the collective/rational and collective/
nonrational realms, respectively (see Figure 7.2). Specifically, that Smith (2005:227; 
emphasis added) defines ruling relations as “objectified forms of consciousness and organi-
zation, constituted externally to particular places and people,” clearly reflects her collectiv-
istic orientation to order. And although Smith also underscores that ruling relations refer to 
“that total complex of activities, differentiated into many spheres . . . through which we are 
ruled and through which we, and I emphasize this we, participate in ruling” (Smith 1990a, 
as cited in Calhoun 2003:316; emphasis in original), which indicates an acknowledgment of 
individual agency, that “forms of consciousness are created that are properties of organiza-
tion or discourse rather than of individual subjects” (Smith 1987:3, emphasis added) clearly 
reflects a collectivistic approach to order. This dual rational/nonrational approach to action 
and collectivistic approach to order inherent in Smith’s concept of relations of ruling is 
illustrated in Figure 7.2. Interestingly, then, taken together, Figures 7.1 and 7.2 illustrate that 
the multidimensionality of the concept of institutional ethnography is a function of its incor-
poration of the more individualistic concept of standpoint and the more collectivistic con-
cept of ruling relations.
Readings
Introduction to Institutional Ethnography
In this excerpt from her most recent book, Institutional Ethnography (2005), Smith 
explicitly defines “institutional ethnography” and explains how she came to formulate 
this unique method of inquiry. In addition, Smith explains the historical trajectory of 
gender and relations of ruling—that is, how the radical division between spheres of action 
and of consciousness of middle-class men and women came to emerge. As indicated pre-
viously, it is precisely this conceptualization of relations of ruling (or ruling relations) as 
not simply modes of domination but also forms of consciousness that forms the crux of 
Smith’s work.

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