Doing Sociology with People: Disability, Coloniality and Reflexivity in Institutional Ethnography

Based on a study conducted with disabled students in a post-colonial higher education (HE) context, this paper offers a novel approach to reflexivity in institutional ethnography (IE). It shows why and how existing approaches to reflexivity in IE have been inadequate in preserving the voice of the subaltern subjects. It engages with the question of reflexivity for “academic homecomers” who have been educated in the countries of the global North and go to research or engage communities in the South.

By proposing a decolonial institutional ethnography that demands biographical, epistemic, analytical, and transformational reflexivity, this paper advances the argument that IE should move from a “sociology for people” (Smith 2005) to a “sociology with people” who are being ruled by the colonial matrix of power.

In this study, a decolonial institutional ethnography takes a reflexive approach to understanding how the trans-local conditions of coloniality shape the social relations of inclusion and participation for disabled students. The study concludes that while IE provides the opportunity to empower those under a matrix of domination with knowledge of how things are organised, it does not offer researchers a method to collaborate with people to transform their everyday realities. By engaging with Touraine’s (1981) sociological intervention, the study concludes that reflexivity can be more than just textual; it can also be transformational.