Institutional Ethnography at the CWSE

Institutional Ethnography (IE) is a feminist methodological practice created by Dorothy E. Smith, PhD.

Institutional Ethnography Workshops 2012
with Dorothy E. Smith & Susan M. Turner

at the Centre for Women’s Studies in Education (CWSE)

Institutional Ethnography is a method of social inquiry that explores how institutions are put together; starts from the standpoint of people’s everyday lives and real concerns; and explores the organization of power that is outside the range of people’s own knowledge.

Participants will be introduced to Institutional Ethnography and its relevance to the academy and in addressing problems of everyday life and activism. The 2012 IE Workshops and Weeklong Intensives include the most recent developments in and illustrations of the wide range of IE practice.

Weekend Workshop I with Dorothy E. Smith, June 8—10, 2012 (Friday evening to Sunday afternoon) $425 CDN + HST

Weeklong Workshop I with Dorothy E. Smith & Susan M. Turner, June 80015, 2012, $750 CDN + HST, plus $425 + HST for weekend prerequisite

Weekend Workshop II: IE mapping with Susan M. Turner, June 15—17 (Friday evening to Sunday afternoon) $425 CDN + HST

Weeklong Workshop II: Mapping Intensive with Dorothy E. Smith & Susan Turner, June 17—22, 2012, $750 CDN + HST, plus $425 + HST for weekend prerequisite

Participants who want to enroll in a Weeklong Intensive must take the Weekend Workshop and then the Weeklong Intensive continuously.

To register for a workshop, email Jamie Ryckman at cwse@utoronto.ca.  Limited enrollment, apply early. 

Downtown Toronto location.

About Institutional Ethnography

Institutional Ethnography (IE) is a feminist methodological practice created by Dorothy E. Smith, PhD.

Institutional Ethnographic theory does not begin with established theories and concepts applied to the interpretation of people’s behaviour.  Rather, it’s a sociology that says something like, “let’s focus on what people actually do and experience and how their actions are coordinated.”  We’re particularly interested in how the everyday is organized by the text-mediated extra-local relations that govern our forms of society. The emphasis is on discovery and exploration.

About the Instructors

 Susan Marie Turner, PhD is an independent researcher and educator (www.susanmarieturner.ca). Her doctoral thesis, Municipal Planning, Land Development and Environmental Intervention: an Institutional Ethnography, received the 2004 OISE/UT Outstanding Thesis of the Year Award. She received the Dorothy E. Smith Scholar Activist Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems Institutional Ethnography Division in 2010. The award recognized her contributions to IE in both her innovative strategy for visually mapping complex organizational work and institutional functions, and her collaborative scholar-activist work.

She has given IE Mapping workshops at the Centre for Women’s Studies in Education (2009 and 2011) and week-long intensives with Dorothy Smith (2011). A joint Smith-Turner workshop on texts will take place in late November 2011.

Dr. Turner was Coordinator of the SSHRC-funded Community University Research Alliance (CURA) Rural Women Making Change (www.rwmc.uoguelph.ca) (2004-2009). Working with rural women’s organizations, the program addressed a range of policy, communications and government relations’ issues in Canada.

She was Sessional Instructor in International Development and Sociology at the University of Guelph (1994-2008) and Special Graduate Faculty (2005-2008).  Throughout 1999-2004 she also managed a large academic advising office.

Feature publications:
2011  Turner, Susan M. Texts and the Institutions of Municipal Government: The Power of Texts in the Public Process of Land Development, in Lindsay  Prior (Ed.) Using Documents and Records in Social Science Research, SAGE Publications Ltd. New Delhi. Vol.4.

2006 Turner, Susan M. Mapping Institutions as Work and Texts, in Dorothy E.  Smith (Ed.), The Practice of Institutional Ethnography. Alta Mira Press,  Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc. USA.

2002 Turner, Susan M. Texts and the Institutions of Municipal Government: The   Power of Texts in the Public Process of Land Development, Studies in Cultures  and Organizations and Societies, Vol. 7 No. 2, 297-325 Routledge, UK.

1995 Turner, Susan M.  Rendering the Site Developable: Texts and Local  Government Decision Making in Land Use Planning, in M. Campbell and A.  Manicom (Eds.), Knowledge, Experience and Ruling Relations: Studies in the  Social Organization of Knowledge, (234-248), Toronto: University of Toronto  Press.

1990 Smith, Dorothy E. and Susan M. Turner, Eds. Doing It The Hard Way:  Investigations of gender and technology (by Sally Hacker), London: Unwin  Hyman Ltd, UK.

Dorothy E. Smith, PhD is a leading Canadian sociologist and Professor Emerita, University of Toronto and Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria. She is the founder of Institutional Ethnography and has received multiple awards for her work, including the American Sociological Associations Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award, the Jessie Bernard Award for Feminist Sociology, the Outstanding Contribution Award from the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, and the John Porter Award.  

Her published books are: 

with Sara David ed.  Women Look At Psychiatry:  I'm Not Mad, I'm Angry (Press Gang, Vancouver, BC, 1975);

Feminism And Marxism: A Place To Begin, A Way To Go, (New Star Books, Vancouver BC, 1977); 

El Mundo Silenciado De Las Mujeres (Santiago Chile,: CIDE 1985).

The Everyday World As Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (University of Toronto Press, 1987); 

The Conceptual Practices Of Power: A Feminist Sociology Of Knowledge (University of Toronto Press, 1990);

Texts, Facts, And Femininity:  Exploring The Relations Of Ruling (Routledge,1990);

Eine Soziologie Für Frauen (Frigga Haug trans and ed., Argument Verlag, Berlin 1998);

Writing The Social; Critique, Theory And Investigations (University of Toronto Press, 1999);

with Alison Griffith, Mothering For Schooling (Routledge 2005);

Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology For People (Rowman & Littlefield 2005) and editor of institutional ethnography as practice (Rowman & Littlefield 2006).

Institutional Ethnography as Practice (Editor) (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc. 2006)

Note: you can now read Dorothy E. Smith's Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People in Spanish, translated by Ana Marie Bach for the journal Revista Temas de Mujeres.