F eminist and g ender t heories

Feminist and Gender Theories  
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she brings this knowledge into her grasp (Calhoun 2003:320). As Smith states, “we can 
never escape the circles of our own heads if we accept that as our territory. . . . We aim not 
at a reiteration of what we already (tacitly) know, but at an exploration of what passes 
beyond that knowledge and is deeply implicated in how it is” (ibid.).
The Everyday World as Problematic (1987)
Dorothy Smith
i
nstitutional
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thnoGraphy
:
a F
eminist
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esearch
s
trateGy
Institutional Relations as Generalizers of 
Actual Local Experience
Let me give an everyday example of what I 
mean by the “problematic of the everyday 
world.” When I take my dog for a walk in the 
morning, I observe a number of what we might 
call “conventions.” I myself walk on the side-
walk; I do not walk on the neighbors’ lawns. My 
dog, however, freely runs over the lawns. My 
dog also, if I am not careful, may shit on a 
neighbor’s lawn, and there are certainly some 
neighbors who do not like this. I am, of course, 
aware of this problem, and I try to arrange for 
my dog to do his business in places that are 
appropriate. I am particularly careful to see that 
he avoids the well-kept lawns because those are 
the ones I know I am most likely to be in trouble 
over should I/he slip up—which does happen 
occasionally. The neighborhood I live in is a 
mixture of single-family residences and rental 
units, and the differences between the well- and 
ill-kept lawns are related to this. On the whole, 
those living in rental units do not care so much 
about the appearance of their front lawn, whereas 
those who own their own residences are more 
likely to give care and attention to the grass and 
sometimes to the flower beds in front of the 
house.
So as I walk down the street keeping an eye 
on my dog I am observing some of the niceties 
of different forms of property ownership. I try to 
regulate my dog’s behavior with particular scru-
pulousness in relation to the property rights of 
the owners of single-family dwellings and am a 
little more casual where I know the house con-
sists of rented apartments or bachelor units, or, as 
in one case, a fraternity house.
i
Customarily in sociology we talk about this 
behavior in terms of norms. Then we see my 
selection of a path of behavior for my dog as 
guided by certain norms held in common by 
myself and my neighbors. But something impor-
tant escapes this. The notion of “norm” provides 
for the surface properties of my behavior, what I 
can be seen to be doing—in general preventing 
my dog from shitting on others’ lawns and being