Institutional Ethnography as Practice

Contributions by Marie L. Campbell, Marjorie L. DeVault, Tim Diamond, Lauren Eastwood, Alison Griffith, Liza McCoy, Eric Mykhalovskiy, Ellen Pence, George W. Smith, Dorothy E. Smith, Susan Turner, Douglas Weatherbee, Alex Wilson Edited by Dorothy E. Smith

Not available to order

Publication date:

15 June 2006

Length of book:

274 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781461638216

In this edited collection, institutional ethnographers draw on their field research experiences to address different aspects of institutional ethnographic practice. As institutional ethnography embraces the actualities of people's experiences and lives, the contributors utilize their research to reveal how institutional relations and regimes are organized. As a whole, the book aims to provide readers with an accurate overview of what it is like to practice institutional ethnography, as well as the main varieties of approaches involved in the research.

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Part I: institutional ethnographic data: interview observation and text
Chapter 3 Institutional ethnography: using interviews to investigate Ruling Relations Marjorie L. DeVault and Liza McCoy
Chapter 4 "Where did you get the fur coat Fern?" Participant observation in institutional ethnography
Chapter 5 Incorporating texts into ethnographic practice
Chapter 6 Part II: Analysis
Chapter 7 Data: what it is and what to do with it:institutional ethnography and experience as data
Chapter 8 Keeping the institution in view: working with interview accounts of everyday experience
Chapter 9 Mapping institutions as work and text
Chapter 10 Constructing single-parent families for schooling:discovering an institutional discourse
Chapter 11 Part III Inquiry
Chapter 12 A research proposal
Chapter 13 Making the institution ethnographically accessible: UN document production and the transformation of experience
Chapter 14 U.S. judicial interventions in the lives of battered women: an Indigenous community's assessment

This is an extraordinary text that should be read by all scholars, students and activists who are interested in exploring how the social world is put together. Taken together, the chapters provide a comprehensive methodological road map for designing research that starts in people's actual experiences to reveal how ruling relations organize everyday life. Smith has gathered together the best practitioners of institutional ethnography to help bring her feminist methodology to life. This insightful and accessible collection offers inspiration and practical advice to all who yearn for a sociology that can make a difference in people's lives.