Institutional Ethnography as a Method of Inquiry for Criminal Justice and Socio-Legal Studies

Abstract

Institutional ethnography (IE) is a method of inquiry created by Canadian feminist sociologist Dorothy E. Smith to examine how sequences of texts coordinate forms of organisation. Here we explain how to use IE, and why scholars in criminal justice and socio-legal studies should use it in their research. We focus on IE's analysis of texts and intertextual hierarchy, as well as Smith's understanding of mapping as a methodological technique; the latter entails explaining how IE's approach to mapping differs from other social science approaches. We also argue that IE's terms and techniques can help examine the textual work undertaken in criminal justice and legal organisations, and reveal how people are governed and ruled by these organisational processes. In the discussion, we summarise how IE can productively contribute to criminal justice and socio-legal studies in the twenty-first century.

Using Institutional Ethnography to Explicate the Everyday Realities of Nurses’ Work in Labor and Delivery

“…These discourses infiltrate documents (texts) that nurses are mandated to use, through an interconnected textual pathway beginning with a “boss text” (Smith & Turner, 2014, p.10). Boss texts are regulatory or higher order texts that regulate, govern, and standardize subordinate level texts within organizations (Doll & Walby, 2019; Smith, 2006). Our findings revealed that many SOGC clinical practice guidelines (e.g., Fetal Health Surveillance Intrapartum Consensus Guideline , 2020; Induction of Labour , 2013; Management of Spontaneous Labour at Term in Healthy Women , 2016) are the boss texts that govern the management of intrapartum care, fetal health surveillance, and are foundational to organizational texts discovered in our study.…”

Exploring the Practices of Refugee Settlement Practitioners in Toronto: An Institutional Ethnography

“…Therefore, the text helps to develop an understanding of the institution's daily activities (Default, 2006;Smith, 1999). It examines how people are organized, how they interpret and convey language, and how it is used to further an organization's goalsan ontology of the social (Doll & Walby, 2019;Smith, 2005, p. 59). (Deveau, 2009).…”

Doing Public Criminology with the Criminal Justice Voluntary Sector: Methodological Reflections and Considerations

“…As institutional ethnography has yet to be applied more widely in criminological projects (Doll and Walby ), work from other sociologists studying education, homelessness, health care, and social work (Bisaillon and Rankin ; Mykhalovskiy and McCoy ; Nichols ; Nichols and Braimoh ) has been instrumental in my own work on the CJVS in Canada.…”