Institutional Ethnography as Practice

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.

Table of Contents:
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

About the Author :
Dorothy E. Smith is professor emerita in Sociology & Equity Studies in Education at the University of Toronto and adjunct professor of Sociology at the University of Victoria.

Review :
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. This collection examines institutional ethnography as a theoretical perspective and methodological approach for developing and understanding of complex social structure as it is perceived by and impacts the individual, with a focus on organizations that address social problems. Recommended. Libraries serving sociology, social work, or women's studies departments that offer advanced degrees. This collection provides a valuable and readable introduction to the work of doing IE. With its focus upon lived experiences within relations of ruling, Institutional Ethnography as Practice offers a distinctive and highly valuable perspective on the constitution of social life. This collection, which deserves to be read by social researchers in general, advances our understanding through accounts of the experiences and results of those who have been inspired by its practices.