HARNESSING THE FATHERS

In the earlier section on feminist responses to the major figures in the classic grand narrative of sociology I used women whose work is recog­nisable to all but the most blinkered malestream sociologists. In this part of the chapter the focus is on feminist developments from the founding fathers which deviate further from malestream sociology, and might provoke disquiet among the malestream disciples. Weiler (2001) is a collection of papers in which women, most of them self-identified as feminists, reflect upon how they have used various theorists but none is a foundational sociologist. In this section, feminist use of Marx, Weber and Durkheim is explored. Dorothy Smith’s advanced work on Marx, Witz’s (1992) development from Weber and feminist work by Ardener, Douglas and myself drawing on Durkheim, are all explained.