Institutional ethnography

Institutional ethnography is a research method that emphasizes the study of the social organization of everyday life. This project involves extensive observation of social settings and writing about experiences and events in such.

Institutional ethnography was developed by the Canadian Sociologist Dorothy Smith. This project is based on Smith's writings and Mapping Social Relations by Campbell and Gregor.

• Completing an introductory course in Sociology or Anthropology is recommended.
• Completing the learning project Introduction to ethnography is recommended.
• Close reading of the WRN Privacy Policy and Wikiversity research ethics pages is required before or early on in the course.
• If you intend to do social research, reviewing one of these free online courses is recommended:
  • Research Ethics Training Curriculum prepared by w:Family Health International (FHI).
  • National Cancer Institute Human Subjects Research Tutorial.

This learning project offers learnings activities to explore the practice of institutional ethnography. After doing these activities, the learner should have started to develop the ability to:

• take field notes
• identify ones social location in relation to various social contexts
• analyze problems that arise in everyday life
• analyze social groups and processes sociologically
• organize an ethnography research project

Concepts to learn include: /concepts

• Activity 1. Observe how collaborations develop at Wikiversity. Create some wiki pages that promote collaborative learning.
• Activity 2.
• etc.

Each activity has a suggested associated background reading selection.

• Reading 1.
• ect.

• Ethnography

• Ethnography (Wikipedia)

Additional helpful readings include: