Mapping Social Relations: A Primer in Doing Institutional Ethnography
© 2002
This is a book about a distinctive methodological approach inspired by one of Canada's most respected scholars, Dorothy Smith. Institutional ethnography aims to answer questions about how everyday life is organized. What is conventionally understood as "the relationship of micro to macro processes" is, in institutional ethnography, conceptualized and explored in terms of ruling relations. The authors suggest that institutional ethnographers must adopt a particular research stance, one that recognizes that people's own knolwedge and ways of knowing are crucial elements of social action and thus of social analysis. Specific attention to text analysis is integral to the approach.
Institutional ethnography is remarkably well-suited to the human service curriculum and the training of professionals and activists. Its strategy for learning how to understand problems existing in everyday life appeals to many researchers who are looking for guidance on how to take practical action. At the same time, the highly elaborated theoretical foundation of institutional ethnography is difficult to deal with in the brief time most students are in the classroom. The authors successfully tackle the issue of teaching and applying institutional ethnography. Campbell and Gregor have been testing out instructional methods and materials for many years. Mapping Social Relations is the product of that effort.
Product Details
- World Rights
- Page Count: 160 pages
- Dimensions: 5.8in x 0.4in x 9.0in
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Reviews
This book makes accessible, to students and practitioners, one of the most incisive and revealing methodologies that sociology has to offer. It is clearly written, peppered with highly instructive examples, and firmly grounded in critical social analysis.
William K. Carroll, University of VictoriaMapping Social Relations makes an enormous contribution... the authors have achieved a remarkable degree of clarity in a complex and challenging field.
Nancy Jackson, University of Toronto -
Author Information
Marie Campbell is a professor in the faculty of Human and Social Development at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
Frances Gregor is an associate professor in the School of Nursing at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
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Table of contents
Introduction
Why Another "Methods" Text?
About the Authors
Positioning the Text in Relation to its Users and Uses
How the Book is Organized
AcknowledgementsChapter One: Finding a Place to Begin
Practices of Knowing, Forms of Literacy
The Located Knower: A Feminist Discovery
Challenging Authoritative Ways of Knowing
Learning to See "Social Organization" in a Health Care Setting
Embodied Knowing in a Text-mediated WorldChapter Two: Theory "in" Everyday Life
Social Organization and Social Relations
Texts and the Relations of Ruling
Activating Texts as Ruling Relations
Objectified Knowledge and Ruling
Experience, Discourse, and Social RelationsChapter Three: Beginning an Institutional Ethnography
Identifying the Problematic of the Research
The Conceptual Frame for a Research Project
Writing an Account of the MethodologyChapter Four: Collecting Data for an Institutional Ethnography
Explicating Ruling Relations
Positioning Oneself as a Researcher: Research Relations
More about Data Collection and Interpersonal Relations with Informants
Data Collection: How to "Look" and "Listen"
Field Methods in Institutional Ethnography
About Observations
About Interviews
About Texts as DataChapter Five: Analyzing Data in Institutional Ethnography
Moving from Data to Data Analysis: What Path to Follow?
Different Ethnographies, Different Analytic Strategies
Making Sense of Discursively-Organized Settings
Writing Analysis in Institutional Ethnography
Interpretation and AnalysisChapter Six: Putting Institutional Ethnography into Practice
Studies by Institutional Ethnographers with Research Preparation in Master's Programs
Practising a Sociology for People
Subverting InstitutionalizationReferences
Notes
Index
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Subjects and Courses
