Abstract
Institutional ethnography has an explicit ontology that serves as the foundation for inquiry. This chapter discusses the elements of that ontology and explains how they inform institutional ethnographic research. It makes the argument that refreshed attention to the ontology can serve as a springboard for extending institutional ethnographic research into new territory.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Comte, A. (1893). The positive philosophy of Auguste Comte (H. Martineau, Trans.). London: Kegan, Paul, Teench, Teubnee and Co.
Coole, D., & Frost, S. (2010). New materialisms: Ontology, agency, and politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Perss.
Corman, M. K. (2017). Paramedics on and off the streets: Emergency medical services in the age of technological governance. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Corman, M. K., & Barron, G. R. S. (2018). Institutional ethnography and actor-network theory: In dialogue. In J. Reid & L. Russell (Eds.), Perspectives on and from institutional ethnography (pp. 49–70). Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing.
Deveau, J. L. (2009). Examining the institutional ethnographer’s toolkit. Socialist Studies/Etudes Socialistes, 4(2), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.18740/S4F60Z.
Diamond, T. (1992). Making gray gold: Narratives of nursing home care. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Diamond, T. (2006). “Where did you get that fur coat, Fern?” Participant observation in institutional ethnography. In D. E. Smith (Ed.), Institutional ethnography as practice (pp. 45–63). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Durkheim, E. (1964). The rules of sociological method (S. A. Solovay & J. H. Mueller, Trans.). New York: The Free Press.
Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public: Microstudies of the public order. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Grahame, P. (2018). Looking at whales: Narration and the organization of visual experience. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 47(6), 782–806.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Luken, P. C., & Vaughan, S. (2005). “… be a genuine homemaker in your own home”: Gender and familial relations in state housing practices, 1917–1922. Social Forces, 83, 1603–1626.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1970). The German ideology. C. J. Arthur (Ed.). New York, NY: International Publishers.
McCoy, L. (1995). Activating the photographic text. In M. Campbell & A. Manicom (Eds.), Knowledge, experience and ruling relations: Studies in the social organization of knowledge (pp. 181–192). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. C. W. Morris (Ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Reid, J. (2018). Standpoint: Using Bourdieu to understand IE and the researcher’s relation with knowledge generation. In J. Reid & L. Russell (Eds.), Perspectives on and from institutional ethnography (pp. 71–90). Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing.
Smith, D. E. (1987). The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Smith, D. E. (1999). Writing the social: Critique, theory, and investigations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Smith, D. E. (2005). Institutional ethnography: A sociology for people. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.
Smith, G. W. (1990). Political activist as ethnographer. Social Problems, 37(4), 629–648.
Walby, K. (2007). On the social relations of research: A critical assessment of institutional ethnography. Qualitative Inquiry, 13(7), 1008–1030.
Warner, K. (2014). Regulating the alternative: Certifying organic farming on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. In D. E. Smith & S. M. Turner (Eds.), Incorporating texts into institutional ethnographies (pp. 41–63). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Warren, L. D. (2014). Text in performance: The making of a Haydn concerto. In D. E. Smith & S. M. Turner (Eds.), Incorporating texts into institutional ethnographies (pp. 120–146). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McCoy, L. (2021). Materialist Matters: A Case for Revisiting the Social Ontology of Institutional Ethnography. In: Luken, P.C., Vaughan, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Institutional Ethnography. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54222-1_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54222-1_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-54221-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-54222-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)