Abstract
From the books we read to the magazines and newspapers we flick through, the bureaucratic documents we fill in to the expanse of the internet, we are surrounded by texts. And yet, texts do not often feature as heavily in ethnographic accounts as they do in our everyday lives. This is the ontological and methodological concern addressed by Incorporating Texts into Institutional Ethnographies, a collection of 10 exemplar studies edited by Dorothy Smith and Susan Turner.
Introduced and concluded with short discussions about the centrality of texts to sociological concerns and institutional ethnographic research, Smith and Turner weave each chapter into a larger methodological narrative of how to do text-focused research, providing models for research, musings on method, and organising their discussion around five big methodological themes.
So what is institutional ethnography? For the uninitiated, institutional ethnography can be a daunting research approach to grasp and utilise. Developed by feminist sociologist Dorothy Smith over a period of more than 30 years, institutional ethnography provides both a critique of positivistic ‘malestream’ sociology and an alternative research approach. Best understood as an ontological and methodological framework for research, this is an approach rather than a method, and as such there are a plethora of ways to use it.
The versatility of institutional ethnography is evident from the breadth and variety of texts and methods discussed in this volume. From three studies of technologically specialised texts (financial texts, musical scores and a computerised hospital system) to Luken and Vaughan’s extended institutional ethnography exploring public discourse through multiple methods, readers will find many useful blueprints for their own research projects.
Whilst the term ethnography might conjure ideas of participant observation and fieldnotes, as becomes evident throughout this term is used more to indicate a commitment to exploration and for mapping what is ‘actually going on’. The aim of institutional ethnographies should be to help people navigate complex textual processes in their everyday lives rather than to prove a theory or hypothesis that would pre-determine the findings or focus of one’s research. Rather, the researcher commits to following the texts and listening to people’s explanations of how they interact with texts.
In Chapter one, in a study of a police raid on a gay sauna in 1980s Toronto, George Smith explores texts rather than accusations of individual police officers’ homophobia in order to show how the textual organisation of police activity is where unexamined systematic homophobia lies. Texts such as the criminal code or particular laws that authorise police activities, alongside the reports they write, are used as concrete evidence of how institutional processes facilitate systematic discrimination. This provides a clear explanation of how police activity is organised and thus provides points for activists to lobby for change and avoid future targeting.
Texts are key to institutional ethnography. Dorothy Smith conceptualises texts as replicable material objects that carry messages; for example, books, photographs, films or online texts. These replicable texts provide the bridge between local everyday experiences and beyond, with their replicability meaning they can exist simultaneously in multiple locales across place and time. Institutional texts, such as bureaucratic forms, are hooked up into sequences or chains of texts and actions, and thus must be analysed in particular times and places alongside the people who activate them.
This is highlighted in the first section exploring institutional circuits: textual processes are examined by reading texts with experts in the field. For example, Katherine Wagner discusses the certification process of organic farms in British Columbia by exploring texts in conversation with farmers and certification officers. Lauren Eastwood looks at UN policy-making processes, which explore how regulatory texts come into being and organise people in extended sequences of action.
By focusing on texts, the researcher can go beyond the local by following texts, which provide the bridge between different locales in people’s everyday lives. Because replicable texts exist in multiple locales at the same time, and organise across time and place, they are crucial to the organisation of society. Rather than theorising about structures, Smith is finding the structuring or organising of people’s lives in the local through texts.
Institutional ethnography is a vital addition to sociology and social research more broadly, with this edited volume proving essential reading for institutional ethnographers and Dorothy Smith enthusiasts. However, for those less familiar with the approach I’d recommend reading Smith’s Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People (2005) and Institutional Ethnography as Practice (2006) to contextualise this collection.
As an important addition to the institutional ethnography canon, this volume provides more than just a handbook of studies and methodological advice, it also develops Smith’s ontology of the social, an important explanation of how central texts are to the organisation of society. Smith’s conceptualisation of texts and their powerful role in contemporary society is a vital contribution for all sociologists, not just institutional ethnographers.