Ursula T. Wright  Tonette S. Rocco

Ursula was the principle author of the paper, and she is not here since her vacation was canceled.

Dorothy Smith started the work with institutional ethnography. Tonette will speak about Ursula’s work with institutional ethnography. Derrick Well - Faces at the Bottom of the Well. She talked about Derrick Bell, a critical race theorist. She spoke this story that space people came and would relieve all American debt policy, etc., if all African Americans in the US were given to them. Typical research is a few sides of an issue. Institutional Ethnography instead look at this within a larger system. Race and how race relations are are different in different contexts. IE tries to address some of this.

I need to look for a research method / framework for this liveblogging research.

Tonette spoke about the way that researchers

social practice is embedded in particular social context.

Eberything around white people is around whiteness as being the norm. Likewise, outside the US the US seems to see itself as the norm.

IE looks at the micro and the macro. It is a critical ethnography. The institution in IE is not always an organization. Rather, it is about institutional systems that cross many sites, such as systemic racism. Ethnography is a method that helps us look at culture. It is a way to look at local settings and administration.

This method helps us to surface voices that often do not get problemetized.

individual experiences are organized by larger power relations.

Thus, when we look at an issue, there are many factors that feed into an issue.

The goal is to uncover and actively combat the power relations asking  “How does this happen as it does?” Ruling relations, and an analysis of power.

Using IE, there are many latyers and issues involeved with how th problem is identified and then used. This method is not about the topic or object, but raryyhter the entry point into undertsanding the ruling relations. She discussed the various ways of observing and then colecting data. She gave lots of examples from the book she mentioend, and then she spoke about hw to train to be a good observer. This also includes document analysis and formal policies in a workplace. then, look at the poliicies in place within the local community that feeds into the power relationships. The training is more about how to observe and be a good observer.

Data findings in IE. Create a map or diagram or flowchart of the way the power moves. Then uncover the texts and the stories and how they are in the power relations that come out in new ways. One of the findings is to have new policies put into place and then make a difference back in the organizational structures. It should not just stay within an academic context.

Uncovers limitations.

The same baggage we take within us in relationships is the same as when we are learning.

This is based on the work of Dorothy Smith, where the work is based on feminism. A question from the audience discussing how things are institutionalized because they repeat regularly until they are institutionalized as lived and embodied senses of power within our organizations and how we are actually.

Some good quesitons about this methodology.

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