Perspectives in and from Institutional Ethnography

This presentation highlights the debates and issues raised in a new book Perspectives in and From Institutional Ethnography published by Emerald Publishing (December 2017) in their book series 'Studies in Qualitative Methodology'. The presenter is co-editor and contributor to the volume and the presentation explores recent developments in Institutional Ethnography (IE) and offers reflective accounts on how IE is being utilised and understood in social research. As an approach, IE is growing in significance across the globe, particularly in Canada, USA, Australia and UK and the contributors to the book, drawn from each of these countries, have discussed how they have engaged appreciatively and critically with other analytical approaches, or ways of making meaning. This includes: The Dialogic Production of Informant Specific Maps; Institutional Ethnography and Actor-Network-Theory; Standpoint: Using Bourdieu to Understand IE and the Researcher’s Relation with Knowledge Generation; Institutional Ethnography, Critical Discourse Analysis and the Discursive Coordination of Organizational Activity; Community-Based and Participatory Approaches in Institutional Ethnography; and Using Institutional Ethnography to Explore the Everyday Work of Learning Mentors in an English State Secondary School. This collection includes contributions from those involved in the early development of IE alongside Smith as well as early career researchers, new to the sociology, theory and method of IE. There is focus on IE as a sociological theory and qualitative research method; the relationship between data generation and analysis in IE; implications from its findings for policy; and IE as a significant methodological approach. This involves explication of the theoretical, the operationalization of IE, and links between the theoretical and the empirical. Significantly, it illuminates the relationship between data generation and analysis and includes consideration of its own textual relations of ruling.