Institutional Ethnography studies

There is now a body of IE studies carried out in various areas from different scholars and with different subject matter. This section highlights studies that have inspired and influenced my research, as well as illustrating the different ways in which IE can be utilised. In a sense, this section could be read as part of my literature review prior to that discussed in Chapter three. 2.6.1 Applying Institutional Ethnography

One excellent example that illustrates the textual and discursive organisation of the incidence of domestic violence is a study by Ellen Pence (2001). Pence maps the course of action from the point where women who have experienced violence make a 911 call. From this point, the woman’s experience is transformed into that of a text as reports are written according to sets of ideological rules set out in other texts. The textual document, that

portrays the woman’s experience, travels through the criminal justice system where other people take action and move the incident along by creating more texts. This effectively processes the woman’s experience into a ‘case’ or an incident that ‘has happened’. Pence found that within this textual system there were no administrative principles for prioritising the safety of women during the process, and no capacity for these textually mediated forms of social organisation to anticipate what violences and intimidation may occur from the perpetrator during the process, or in the future. Ultimately, what Pence was able to do through her research was to identify a process that did not serve women’s best interests, and thus managed to actively change and transform policy into that which suited women’s needs better.

In a study on doctor-patient relationships from the perspective of patients who were HIV positive, Liza McCoy (2005) uncovered direct links between medical care, ruling authorities and institutional processes. McCoy’s rationale behind her research was not to turn the experiences of people with HIV into conceptual terms that reflect the interests of professional and research discourses such as Care-seekers or adherence, but rather to use the participants’ comments in order to:

clear a space outside professional and managerial discourses so that the modes of knowing and related practices of health professionals can in turn become the objects of critical study. (McCoy 2005:804)

What McCoy uncovered was that access to health care was ideologically organised and that the full range of support was not accessible in terms of referral, information, emotional support, advice and treatment, for more marginalised and vulnerable groups. Highly educated HIV+ participants were mostly treated with respect, whereas marginal social groups did not always receive the same treatment, and felt doctors judged them according to their life circumstances regarding their use of street drugs, prison incarceration, or their levels of income. In addition, participants sometimes felt forced, pushed or threatened into taking certain medication, and while some doctors held an understanding of participants life circumstances and worked within those constraints, other doctors would withdraw support and services (ibid).

The accounts of McCoy’s participants directed her to question the institutional practices that shaped patients’ lives in consequential ways. To this end, her research resulted in further questions and areas for study, such as the institutional practices that shape what doctors are able to do for their patients. For example, how is it that some doctors provide positive care and understanding for socially marginalised patients who are looking after their health? What can other student doctors learn from these aforementioned doctors? And, in the area of education, rather than just providing information, what resources are needed to facilitate understanding for patients? (ibid: 804- 805)

Jill Weigt’s (2006) study concerned US neo-liberal welfare restructuring and low paid mothers. Weigt looked at the very complicated ways in which women with children, forced to leave welfare, managed low paid employment and their childcare. Weigt’s point was not to describe the impact of welfare restructuring, but to use women’s experiences to identify the forces originating

outside of women’s lives which organised and shaped their management of carework. In short, the material conditions of women along with neo-liberal ideology, involuntary entry into low paid employment, inflexibility of employment and a lack of time and resources combined to make mothering and low paid work extremely complex. Women experienced poverty, hardship and stress and tended to have to work much harder in order to remain in paid work. Within this context, women were especially concerned about not caring for their children in ways that they perceived as adequate (ibid:338). Women used both the SNAF and mothering discourse in a variety of ways: some to explain their situation and difficulties, some fully embracing the discourses, and some resisting or rejecting them (ibid:336-337). Thus Weigt identified both SNAF and mothering discourses as ‘discourses in action’, and as a template from which to interpret women’s carework. These two discourses, along with the discourses of work enforcement and welfare policy were linked to the meta discourse of neoliberalism, and made visible the complex ways in which social relations are played out and shape the women’s everyday experiences.

Other studies that feed into or cut across my own research more directly, come from Naomi Nichols (2006), who looked at ‘activism’ through Smith’s (1999) concept of ‘ideological codes’. Nichols traced the standardised

knowledge that is ‘activism’ outwards in order to uncover the way in which it has become subsumed within corporate ideology. Nichols argued that the everyday experience of activists in Canada now includes the negotiation of the market and the use of corporate ideological language in order to procure funding, make alliances with both the civil and state sector and achieve charitable status. This is not necessarily representative of how activists identify themselves. Nevertheless, it has become almost an imperative if social change is to be sought and implemented, and activists consciously frame their funding proposals within a corporate and accountable discourse. On the other hand, funders also frame their regulations and requirements within an activist framework. Whether activists embrace or resist corporate discourse is indicative of the ways in which corporate ideologies shape the everyday experience of activists, and is explored more thoroughly in Chapter six.

Staying with ideological codes, George W Smith’s research (1998) located the word ‘fag’ as an ideological text that shaped masculinity and sexuality in schools. Smith examined heterosexual/homophobic regimes in Canadian schools through the experiences of gay teenagers. He did not study the teenagers themselves, but rather explored the dimensions of the regime from the standpoint of his informants. Using a documentary method of interpretation, Smith looked at the ways in which a fixed underlying pattern – fag or homophobia – is expressed through various texts. These texts can vary from writing on toilet walls (graffiti), dress, gossip, verbal abuse (talk) and so on. What Smith uncovered were the ways in which the ‘ideology of fag’ were accomplished and how this is primarily a practice, and how making visible this ‘ideology in practice’ helps to understand how integral homophobia is to hegemonic relations of gender and heterosexuality (ibid).

Finally, perhaps the closest piece of research to my study is a book by Gillian Walker (1990) Family Violence and the Women’s Movement: The Conceptual Politics of Struggle. This research looked at the women’s movement and women’s organisation and campaigning around men’s violence in Canada, and the subsequent Canadian government’s commitment to ‘stem the tide of family violence in Ontario’ (ibid:14). Walker, in analysing events occurring in the 1970’s and 1980’s, opened up for examination the political processes of control that worked to shape and direct issues through the

process of institutional articulation, and identified the transition of women’s grass roots local work and knowledge into generalised administrative procedures. This transition was brought about through the use of ideological practices and discursive frameworks that organise and order ruling contemporary society, and as have been highlighted in the aforementioned selected studies. Walker’s work has been particularly influential, especially in writing Chapter six.

The next and last section considers the limitations of IE, and then discusses the way in which I utilise IE in my own research.