Feminist Sociology and Sociological Feminism: Recovering the Social in Feminist Thought

Abstract

Whereas others have considered the interrelationship between feminism and sociology in terms of the impact of the former on the latter, this paper focuses on the influence of sociological thought on feminist theory. Sociological perspectives were much in evidence within feminist thought in the 1970s, but the shifting disciplinary hierarchies associated with the ‘cultural turn’ of the 1980s have since undermined sociology's influence within feminism - and especially in feminist theory. One consequence of this, I suggest, has been the erasure of some important sociological insights and perspectives from the map of feminist theory. In particular the origins of social constructionism have been forgotten, along with much that was distinctly social in this approach. In charting the course and assessing the effects of the ‘cultural turn’, I make it clear than not all feminists have followed that route. I argue for the recovery of the social from its eclipsing by the cultural and for the continued importance of a sociologically informed feminism into the 21st century. In making the case for a distinctly sociological approach to central feminist concerns, I will take sexuality as a case study. Here I seek to demonstrate that sociology has more to offer feminism than the cultural focus of queer theory.