Institutional ethnography: An introduction

Jeudi 26 février 2009 
11h45 à 13h00 
Pavillon Lionel Groulx, 3150 rue Jean-Brillant, salle C-4141

Kevin Walby is a PhD candidate in sociology at Carleton University. He has published in the Canadian Journal of Law and Society (2008), Upping the Anti (2008, with J. Monaghan), Social & Legal Studies (2007), Critical Sociology (2007), Qualitative Inquiry (2007), Surveillance & Society (2006/2005), the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice (2005), the Canadian Journal of Sociology (2005) as well as many other journals and edited books. He is part of Books2Prisoners Ottawa. He is an outreach and advocacy coordinator for the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons.

Résumé: Institutional ethnography (IE) is a method of inquiry that examines how the work people do with texts plays an integral part in governance processes. A ‘text’ refers to a replicable form of words or images. Any form of words or images that can be reproduced for people who are separated from one another in time or place counts as a text. By inquiring into how people interpret events, translate their depictions of these events into textual form, and then convey these texts to other people working in different organizations, IE is able to extend its analysis outside of the local site of relations, pace traditional ethnographic procedures. The promise of IE is its introduction of ethnographic practice that inquires into extra-local relations that govern action in the local site. IE draws from several qualitative research methodologies, such as observation, interviewing, focus groups, mapping, and textual analyses. In this presentation I will discuss the basic tenets of institutional ethnography, including how an institutional ethnographer conceptualizes texts, how an institutional ethnographer conceptualizes work and experience, as well as how observation, interviewing and mapping methodologies are used in IE. I will also discuss how a sociologist or criminologist would go about planning, carrying out and writing up an institutional ethnography research project.