Institutional ethnography is a research method that aims to understand the social and cultural processes that shape people's experiences within particular institutions or organizations. It involves studying the everyday practices, discourses, and relationships within these institutions, and how they are shaped by larger social and cultural structures.
One example of institutional ethnography is the work of Dorothy Smith, a sociologist who used this method to study the experiences of women in the workplace. Smith argued that traditional sociological methods, which often focused on macro-level structures and abstracted individuals from their social context, failed to capture the complex and nuanced ways in which gender, race, and class intersected in the lives of working women.
To understand the experiences of these women, Smith conducted extensive interviews and observations within various workplaces, including hospitals, factories, and schools. She found that the everyday practices and discourses within these institutions reproduced and reinforced the gendered and racialized inequalities that women faced. For example, she found that women's work was often devalued and underpaid, and that they were often excluded from decision-making processes and relegated to low-status positions.
Another example of institutional ethnography is the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, who used this method to study the culture of community groups and organizations. They found that these groups often operated according to their own unique "communities of practice," which were shaped by the shared values, norms, and practices of their members. These communities of practice were often shaped by larger social and cultural structures, such as gender, race, and class, but they also had the power to resist and transform these structures.
In conclusion, institutional ethnography is a valuable research method for understanding the complex and dynamic relationships between individuals and the institutions or organizations within which they operate. It allows researchers to study the everyday practices and discourses within these institutions, and how they are shaped by larger social and cultural structures. By examining these processes, institutional ethnography can provide insights into the ways in which these institutions reproduce and reinforce social inequalities, as well as the ways in which they may be transformed to promote greater social justice.
Introduction: What is Institutional Ethnography? on JSTOR
Understanding curriculum as normalizing text: disability studies meet curriculum theory. Working across Boundaries: Exploring the Relations of Researching Gender and Development. An illusion of difference: Reconstituting women on welfare into the working poor Doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University. Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
(PDF) Institutional Ethnography: A research method to investigate the work
Stockholm: Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, Stockholms universitet. Nurses and Electronic Health Records in a Canadian Hospital: Examining the Social Organisation and Programmed Use of Digitised Nursing Knowledge. The Canadian Journal of Sociology, 33 1 , 61-88. The emphasis is on what people do—with work as a broadly conceived notion— and what individuals say and know about their work as experts, that point to larger patterns of shared experiences to uncover institutional organizations of power that influence and shape such experiences. Institutional ethnography — a new chance for qualitative research.
Institutional ethnography as practice. The field needs a an alternative vision of the traditional adult vocational education setting, its students, and the profession Cunningham, 1989 ; and b an analysis of adult vocational education that merges social and cultural dimensions with microsocial theories of learning and teaching Amstutz, 1999; Cunningham, 2000; Ettling, 2001; Heaney, 2000; Sheared, 1999; Sissell, 2001. Constructing grounded theory: a practical guide through qualitative analysis. Introduction: what is institutional ethnography?. Ethnographic Investigation of Oral Care in the Intensive Care Unit.
Institutional Ethnography: A Holistic Approach to Understanding Systems: Education Journal Article
As IE is interested in the everyday, material world of institutions and work, the texts that socially coordinate people to the work are necessary elements in this methodology. LaFrance, Michelle and Melissa Nicolas. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education 15 3 : 353—78. Medical humanities, 39 2 , 77-84. Families, consequently, traverse this terrain without a map, meeting myriad professionals who also lack orientation to the landscape, yet who must provide written documents without always knowing their destination or audience.
A Feminist Teaches Writing through Institutional Ethnography
Comparing integrated care policy in Europe: does policy matter?. Who is being promoted and what social influences might impact who is getting opportunities? At School Support Team meetings, School Support Team members including parents meet to discuss the multiple assessment findings and recommendations of health care and education professionals. Understanding the complex social relations involved in work processes is important for those wanting to do IE research; how does one give voice to those who feel powerless and marginalized, especially if the researcher is part of that social network? Journal of Management 15 6 : 430—45. Knowledge for re-forming nursing's future: Standpoint makes a difference. En institusjonell etnografisk studie av et stryringsinstrument.
This can be work in which you are employed by an institution, paid or unpaid, or this can be work more broadly defined: the work you do as a student, the work you do as a sibling, as a parent, as a member of an organization. Diamond, Timothy Diamond, T. Institutional ethnography IE is a method used in sociology to understand the experiences of marginalized people in different kinds of institutions. International Journal of Integrated Care 10: e043. OUP is the world's largest university press with the widest global presence. However, you do not know where to start or begin and you find yourself overwhelmed. Thinking about this chapter, and its particular understanding of feminism, how can we apply feminist work to our everyday lives? Women and people of color continue to be underrepresented among engineering faculty.
Teaching and Teacher Education, 58 2016 , 80-89. Social Work in Health Care 38 2 : 37—41. Essential to this analysis is institutional ethnography IE , a research method that gives analytic emphasis to merging both social and individual contexts- entering everyday life from the standpoint of marginalized, often excluded, populations Grahame and Grahame, 2000 , yet extending investigation to the larger social and economic processes that shape individual experience Smith, 1987. IE recognizes the complexity of work as it encompasses relations, material realities, and how power and talk influences our everyday decisions and choices that we make; it also allows for researchers to start in their own experiences, to map out the many influences and structures that shape these experiences, and to conduct a study that will help us explore how certain things happen. Constructing migrant care labor: A study of institutional process and the discourse of migration and work Doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University. Community Safety, Housing Precariousness and Processes of Exclusion: An institutional ethnography from the standpoints of youth in an "unsafe" urban neighbourhood.
What concept did we find particularly useful in helping us think about IE as a methodology useful to us? Women look at psychiatry. Humans become social and political subjects within work. Other examples of ethnography include business, educational and medical ethnography. Institusjonell etnografi — en ny mulighet for kvalitativ forskning? IE is one more tool for you as a writer and researcher to think about ways in which your own writing can lead to reform and change, for the good of everyone. Culture is something that can either be accepted, or something to be apprehensive of. Writing the Social: Critique, Theory, and Investigations. H ø gsbro, Kjeld Høgsbro, K.
In this protocol, we have used language consistent with the articles we reviewed in identifying the gap and need for this research. American Journal of Occupational Therapy 57 1 : 17—28. Dressing your IEPs for the general education climate analysis of IEP goals and objectives for students with multiple disabilities. The people on the ground, who make up the employees of this workplace, do not feel as if they are being included in the work, and feel excluded based on their gender, and perhaps rank. Advocating work: An institutional ethnography of patients' and their families' experiences within a managed care health system Doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University. Inter-agency information sharing in health and social care services: the role of professional culture.
