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.…”

Constructing Risk through Jurisdictional Talk: The Ontario Review Board Process under Part XX.1 of the Criminal Code

“…More specifically, in line with critical and sociolegal theorists, we treat the contents and effects of the ORB processes as techniques-mediated by texts and practices with respect of those texts-that come together to fashion legal outcomes or effects (e.g., Rose and Valverde 1998). We think of our approach to sociolegal scholarship as compatible with, if not demonstrative of, institutional ethnography, where standpoint, textuality, and mapping are used to account for the actual effects of institutional forms on social action (Doll and Walby 2019). Our principal convergence with institutional ethnography lies in our shared attention to the work done by texts, which, as the late Dorothy Smith (2005, 166) defined, are "stretches of talk [and] what is inscribed in more or less permanent form" that "associa[tes] words and images with some definite material form that is capable of replication."…”

Elucidating the Ruling Relations of Nurses’ Work in Labor and Delivery: An Institutional Ethnography

“…Hence, texts are essential because they function as the main tools of ruling ( Rankin, 2017 ). It is important to note that “texts do nothing on their own” ( Frampton et al, 2006 , p. 38) but are made active by people referring to, reading, filling out, responding to, or reproducing their content ( Doll & Walby, 2019 ).…”

“…The intertextual hierarchy of organizations are constructed by “boss texts” ( D. Smith & Turner, 2014 , p. 10) which are explained by D. E. Smith (2006) as the regulatory or higher order texts. Boss texts regulate, govern, and standardize subordinate level texts within organizations ( Doll & Walby, 2019 ).…”