Institutional Ethnography

Institutional Ethnography

The hood where experience counts.

A research madness method presentation by K.SoPCOM 621 Royal Roads University

Institutional ethnography dissected

"Institution", within institutional ethnography, refers to complexes of activity organized around a distinctive function such as the law or education or international development.

Ethnography is a well-known approach to studying everyday life in its natural state.

Institutional ethnographers share techniques of observation, talking to people, formal interviews, and so on with other ethnographers.

Institutional ethnography dissected

However

IE differs from other forms of ethnography

because it addresses a key feature of

contemporary life that other researchers take

for granted and ignore

IE researchers notice that human lives are

shaped by social relations of coordination and

control that we cannot understand or perhaps

even see from within the scope of local

experience.

Institutional ethnography dissected

IE research must move outside the local setting

(where ethnographic fieldwork is conducted)

and explore how the social is "put together" in

the way that people experience it.

Institutional ethnography defined (finally)

Institutional ethnography explores how the

coordination of people (and ideas and plans

and so on) through the institution's discursively

organized practices, working across time and

geographic spaces functions by learning from

people who are experienced in the coordination

(coordinator or those being coordinated) in the

organization.

Its like conducting a

study to learn about

the function of a

maze by asking lab

rats about the

conduct, rules and

structure of the maze.

In other words

Inquiry in institutional ethnography is framed as much as possible without relying on academic theories, professional language and discourse, or administrative terms and categories.

Rather, we proceed from what people know about their lives, what they actually do everyday, and how they express this knowing and doing in their own terms.

Institutional Ethnography

TheoryAcademic/ scientific lingo

Businessterms

Synergyantidisestablish-mentarianism

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Feminist approach to knowledge

Originated with Dorothy E. Smith in 1987

Developed for use in sociology

IE has not been used in communication research

previously

IE is used to often times examine the power and social

relations in research.

IE: History

Institutional

Ethnography

For more information on this research

method, please visit the class wiki.