Abstract
Institutional Ethnography in the Nordic Region is an interesting and exciting intervention in both the field of Institutional Ethnography (IE) and discussions of the ‘Nordic model’ of welfare. IE is a feminist sociological approach focusing on how people’s lives are organised by language and texts from the standpoint of people navigating institutions. Lund and Nilsen present a selection of IE empirical case studies in the Nordics, largely focused on the work of front-line welfare state professionals, alongside analytical and theoretical discussions of how to do IE, particularly when mixing it with other theoretical and methodological approaches. IE was developed by Dorothy Smith and associated researchers based in North America as an ‘alternative’ feminist sociology from the 1970s onwards but has slowly spread to other places and is increasingly popular in Europe, with this book providing the first Europe-focused collection of IE studies. While the collection focuses entirely on IE, Lund and Nilsen provide an accessible overview of this approach in the introduction, and each of the chapters is attentive to being written for an international audience who might be unfamiliar with the Nordic context.
The book is arranged into four sections, providing: (i) an overview of IE and the Nordic context; (ii) dialogues between IE and other approaches; (iii) summaries of Nordic IE empirical work; and (iv) a reflection on the ‘transformative potential’ of the approach in the Nordics. Part 1 explains what IE is and how it has travelled from North America to the Nordics and why it resonates in the region. Lund and Nilsen (Chapter 1) explain that the book has two aims: to showcase Nordic IE research and to develop the field of IE by encouraging successful mixing of IE with other approaches, theories and methods. This encouragement of a pluralistic IE field, while retaining the ontological roots from Smith and other Institutional Ethnographers’ (IEers’) foundational work, is similar to Luken and Vaughan’s (2021) edited collection. However, Lund and Nilsen’s book feels somewhat freer as the theoretical mixing is a much more prominent part of this flexible and permissive Nordic approach, as demonstrated in the second part of the collection.
Part 2 emphasises how IE can be mixed with other approaches, including Scandinavian Neo-Institutional Theory (Chapter 3), institutional theory (Chapter 4), Actor Network Theory (Chapter 5), feminist studies of technoscience (Chapter 6) and the work of Foucault and Goffman (Chapter 7). Such work is sorely needed, as the emphasis on IE as an ‘alternative’ sociology often overplays the differences between it and other approaches, and Smith’s critiques of objectifying theory have sometimes been taken to mean IE is atheoretical (this discussion is deftly addressed in the introduction).
Parts 3 and 4 provide an array of empirical research on: men’s breadwinning work in Norway (Chapter 10), Norwegian job centres/schemes (Chapters 11 and 12), formal and informal care work in Norway (Chapter 13), child marriage in Nepal and Norwegian development paradigms (Chapter 14) and residential care homes in Denmark (Chapter 15). Of particular interest are Chapters 8 (Kuronen) and 9 (Lund), which reflect on the politics of IE as a critical feminist approach. Kuronen discusses the introduction of IE to Finland and her use of IE in feminist social work, arguing that IE provides a ‘bridge’ between two research foci: feminist researchers ‘giving voice’ or platforming marginalised groups through discussing experiences; and, more macro-level or structural discussions of welfare services and policy-focused discussions (p. 121). Lund’s chapter explores whiteness as an ‘ideological code’ through reflections on her interviews with white Finnish academics. This provides an extremely interesting and important intervention, as ‘race’ and racism are not prevalent themes in IE, both in this collection and more broadly in the field. This is perhaps unsurprising given that IE is largely practised in the Global North by mostly white scholars, and because many IE studies take the standpoint of front-line workers, often without sufficient exploration of how structural positioning cuts through profession and bureaucratically assigned roles.
The final section of the book explores ‘everyday resistance’ uncovered by IE research, appreciating that many Nordic IEers focus on professionals, many of whom believe the ‘good intentions’ of the welfare state (Chapter 16), before Lund and Nilsen’s concluding chapter discusses future trajectories. Lund and Nilsen encourage Nordic IEers to research more from the marginalised standpoints and with an eye to implementation and transforming society and encourage IEers elsewhere to acknowledge the situatedness of IE research, as context affects knowledge production.
Overall, Lund and Nilsen’s collection is an exciting addition to both IE literature and discussions of the ‘Nordic model’ of welfare, providing a uniquely situated array of IE research from the Nordics and provoking interesting debates in both fields. Thus, this book will be of interest to seasoned IEers and other social scientists who are interested in critical analysis of state welfare provision.
