Going for Gold: Mapping Institutional Relations

Format: open

Dorothy Smith developed institutional ethnography as a sociology for people, not of them—one that shows how everyday lives are organised by institutional relations. Susan Turner later advanced mapping as a way to make these relations visible and communicate findings across academic and non-academic contexts.

Mapping is what makes IE research gold: it provides an empirical blueprint for challenging institutions and driving meaningful change. Yet maps, and the social change they support, are often underrepresented in academic writing.

As IE researchers, we must remain useful to the communities we study and represent, especially as local and global challenges demand new ways of seeing entrenched problems.

This session invites researchers to share the “gold” they have found: the maps produced through their research, what these maps reveal, and how this learning has supported individuals and communities in creating change.