Me, Myself, and IE: Describing the Actualities of Undertaking Institutional Ethnography
Date
Authors
Birch, Oliver
Adams, Peter
Cohen, Bruce
Newcombe, David
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Abstract
Through Institutional Ethnography (IE), one can explicate how people’s lives are being socially organised. The ethnographer creates an empirical account of what happens within a complex of institutional order, moving iteratively between data collection methods to see how the ‘institution’ occurs through people’s work, how texts are used to coordinate it, and how these texts reproduce ideology. They follow findings as they arise, with reference to the perspectives of ‘standpoint informants’. However, because this process is iterative, descriptions of IE studies vary greatly. Guidance on how to undertake IE’s methods is often specific to the institution being studied. To aid prospective ethnographers, the article describes a step-by-step process through which IE was interpreted and implemented in practice in a healthcare setting. Though it references research at an Opioid Substitution Treatment (OST) service, the account is not prescriptive; rather, it illustrates how one might undertake IE-informed data collection and analysis while being consistent with what is expected of an IE.Description
Keywords
4410 Sociology, 44 Human Society, 1117 Public Health and Health Services, 1601 Anthropology, 1608 Sociology, 4203 Health services and systems, 4206 Public health, 4410 Sociology
Source
Social Theory & Health, ISSN: 1477-8211 (Print); 1477-822X (Online), Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 24(1), 4-. doi: 10.1057/s41285-026-00251-2
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