Abstract
Dorothy Smith's feminist career began with her theorizing of the “bifurcation of consciousness” in a manner that went well beyond Alfred Schütz's earlier thinking on the topic. This was quickly followed by her integration of specific insights from the “line of fault” that the women's movement had opened up at that time. And within a decade, both of these “discoveries” proved themselves foundational for her subsequent elaboration of the theory/method now known as “institutional ethnography.”