Institutional Ethnography Essay ⋆ Essays on Controversial Topics ⋆ EssayEmpire

Institutional ethnography is an alternative sociology that examines social relations and social institutions from the standpoint of the experiences of particular, active subjects. It is distinct from other sociological modes of investigation in that it is not under the direction or conceptual control of any sociological theory; rather, inquiry begins in and remains in the social world in which we live.

The aims of institutional ethnography investigations are twofold. The first is to discover how it is that day in and day out we put together our social world, including how our local everyday activities are linked to and coordinated by social relations that are not entirely visible from any one location. Thus, institutional ethnography research expands people’s knowledge of their everyday worlds beyond that which they develop through their routine participation. The second aim is to build knowledge of institutional processes in general and to develop new ways of discovering ruling relations. This work involves an examination of studies done in varied institutional settings and drawing out those relations and social processes commonly found across institutions. Throughout institutional ethnography investigations, however, the focus is on the material world: what people are doing, with whom they are doing it, and the conditions under which their activities are carried out.

Canadian sociologist and founder of institutional ethnography Dorothy E. Smith described institutional ethnography in the 1970s as an articulation of the women’s movement in North America. She identified two different modes of consciousness active in her life of running a household and being a mother and her life as a scholar in the university. The life in the home was one of particularities and real people, whereas the life of the university was abstract and the social relations were extra-local. Yet, through her involvement in the women’s movement, Smith learned to take her own experience as a woman as the basis for how she could know the world. She also realized, as did many others involved in the women’s movement, that the academic disciplines were written almost exclusively by men and from their viewpoint. Furthermore, the disciplines—sociology in Smith’s case—claimed objectivity while excluding women, their knowledge, and their concerns from the scholarly discourse. Smith concluded that it was necessary to remake sociology from the ground up. This alternative sociology would be a “sociology for women,” one which would discover the social relations which shaped women’s everyday experiences.

In 1986, the term institutional ethnography first appeared in print in Smith’s article “Resources for Feminist Research.” Indeed, the conceptual design of institutional ethnography was to aid women in understanding the social organization of their lives. Yet, it soon became evident that the social relations shaping the experiences of women shaped those of men as well, and in the 1990s institutional ethnography evolved as a “sociology for people.” A network of institutional ethnographers (many of whom were students of Smith at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education) formed, and they initiated research from the standpoint of people with AIDS, teachers, social workers, nurses, nursing home residents, and others.

The topics of institutional ethnography research are generally some issues or problems that people experience in their everyday lives, but the starting point (or point of departure) for the investigation is people’s actual experiences. This research is a two-step process. In the first step research begins with one’s own experience or with that of another actor, but in either case special attention focuses on what people actually do and on what they say about their activities. That is, the researchers attend to “work” and work “knowledges.” In institutional ethnography the term work expands beyond the sphere of paid labor to include any intended activity taking time and effort. “Work knowledges” refers to what people know of their work and how this work is coordinated with the work of others. Through the exploration of work and work knowledges, researchers learn of the local social organization and of the actors’ knowledge of this organization. Furthermore, people’s work and talk of work provide clues to the investigators regarding how local organization connects to the coordinating work of others. In the second step the researchers take up the clues, as evidence of local participation in the institutional practices, and trace this evidence—found in the form of discourse, spoken and textual—to the extra-local social relations.

Institutional ethnography research commonly examines texts, especially those replicable and standardized, since they coordinate people’s activities in local settings. They mediate social relations, coordinating the doings of people translocally. Texts, as taken up in local settings, enter actions and organize actions at multiple sites. While one party in the text is fixed, the reader is not. While attending to a text, the reader is active in interpreting and acting upon the text; that is, a text-reader conversation forms. In the text-reader conversation, the reader “activates” the text by taking it up and incorporating it into the local setting, thus hooking the local into the institutional. By activating the text, the reader becomes an agent of the text. This is not to imply that the text completely controls the reader. The reader may resist or disagree with the textual discourse, but through its activation, the text becomes unavoidable. Furthermore, in many work processes, one textual step follows another textual step, each dependent upon the prior step and the anticipated next step, and so on. Thus, filled-out forms and generated reports transform particular events into generalized forms that are critical in coordinating the work of others. Such regulation through texts is widespread in modern, literate societies, and it is a foundational consideration in institutional ethnographic investigations.

Institutional Ethnography of “Social Problems”

In sociology, “social problems” emerge as social objects through the ongoing research and theoretical activity of sociologists, and their existence then becomes taken for granted within the discipline. However, as both the discipline and the historical contexts evolve, a reconstruction of these social problems often follows. Smith, however, noted a difficulty with this objectification of social problems and suggested that social problems be viewed as a form of social organization operating within public text-mediated discourse, a complex of social relations within relations of ruling. As this social organization enters the local and particular actualities, experiences connect with, and translate into, standardized and generalized forms. This is a political process by which a particular experience becomes known as a social problem and other troubles align with it as cases of the social problem. Thus, “social problems” serve as a mechanism by which particular interests acquire objective status. The discourse of social problems provides a statement of general interest which may be contradicted if investigations of so-called social problems begin with experience in the local setting, rather than with interpretations provided by sociological discourse. For example, what appears as a problem of “illiteracy” or of “single-parent families” in the discourse may be found to be a shortcoming of capitalist practices in the local setting.

Bibliography:

Campbell, Marie. 2004. Mapping Social Relations: A Primer in Doing Institutional Ethnography. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.
Smith, Dorothy E. 1989. The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Smith, Dorothy E. 1993. “‘Literacy’ and Business: ‘Social Problems’ as Social Organization.” Pp. 327-46 in Reconsidering Social Constructionism: Debates in Social Problems Theory, edited by J. A. Holstein and G. Miller. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Smith, Dorothy E. 1993. Text, Facts, and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling. New York: Routledge.
Smith, Dorothy E. 1999. Writing the Social: Critique, Theory, and Investigations. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
Smith, Dorothy E. 2005. Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People. New York: AltaMira.
Smith, Dorothy E, ed. 2006. Institutional Ethnography as Practice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

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