Norms are forever problematic. Scientific statements are product of an intersubjective dialog with validity claims about problematic situations of the Social World. Problematic is a term used in ethnomethodology and put to effective use by Dorothy E. Smith to describe as a problem of interest that which is normally not seen as a problem because it is taken for granted. Dorothy E. Smith argues that, “the everyday world is problematic.” By bracketing one's own membership in the world a researcher makes the commonsense and taken-for-granted world problematic. By making the everyday and ordinary problematic a researcher is able to uncover the structure and dynamic of the everyday.
Dorothy E. Smith's conception of the everyday world as problematic involves a critical departure from the concepts and procedures of more conventional sociologies. Institutional ethnographic research is a method of inquiry pioneered by Dorothy E. Smith. Institutional ethnography is a research strategy which emerges from Smith's wide-ranging explorations of the problematic of the everyday world. The Everyday World As Problematic: A Feminist Sociology.
Ethnography, Institutions,
and the Problematic of the Everyday World
Peter R. Grahame.
Abstract This essay describes institutional ethnography as a method of inquiry pioneered
by Dorothy E. Smith, and introduces a collection of papers which make distinctive
contributions to the development of this novel form of investigation. Institutional
ethnography is presented as a research strategy which emerges from Smith's wide-ranging
explorations of the problematic of the everyday world.
The Everyday Classroom As
Problematic: A Feminist Pedagogy
Gallagher, Kathleen.
Abstract: The title of this article is borrowed and adapted from Dorothy Smith's
authoritative text, “The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology.”
Likewise, the “everyday
classroom” has traditionally operated within patriarchal structures and used
practices which have not taken up girls' experiences as distinct and unique. Therefore,
problematizing the pedagogical lens, as Smith has problematized the social sciences we
have used to study human relations, leads to, in Smith's case, new feminist research
strategies in the field, and in the case of pedagogy, new classroom practices and a view
of curriculum which addresses girls' experiences in necessary ways.