Institutional Ethnography in the Nordic Region

Rebecca W. B. Lund, Ann Christin E. Nilsen, Rebecca W. B. Lund, Ann Christin E. Nilsen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367030353
• eBook ISBN: 9780429670817
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Developed in response to the theoretically driven mainstream sociology, institutional ethnography starts from people's everyday experiences, and works from there to discover how the social is organized. Starting from experience is a central step in challenging taken-for-granted assumptions and relations of power, whilst responding critically to the neoliberal cost-benefit ideology that has come to permeate welfare institutions and the research sector. This book explicates the Nordic response to institutional ethnography, showing how it has been adapted and interpreted within the theoretical and methodological landscape of social scientific research in the region, as well as the institutional particularities of the Nordic welfare state. Addressing the main topics of concern in the Nordic context, together with the way in which research is undertaken, the authors show how institutional ethnography is combined with different theories and methodologies in order to address particular problematics, as well as examining its standing in relation to contemporary research policy and university reforms. With both theoretical and empirical chapters, this book will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, professional studies and anthropology with interests in research methods and the Nordic region.

Part 1
Contextualizing IE in the Nordics

1 Introduction

Conditions for doing institutional ethnography in the Nordics

Rebecca W. B. Lund and Ann Christin E. Nilsen

What is institutional ethnography?

Institutional Ethnography (IE) is a methodology-of-inquiry associated with the Canadian sociologist Dorothy E. Smith (e.g. Smith (ed.) 2006). IE is designed to discover, unpack and challenge the social organization of everyday life and involves commitment to doing research with and for people, rather than about them (Smith 1987, 2005). Ontologically, people are understood as essentially social beings and the social, in turn, is understood as people coordinating activities. Speaking of the social as “coordination”, rather than “structure”, “rules” or “system”, implies people’s actual activities. This ontology is central to understanding the development of IE as a sociological method-of-inquiry which does not end with individual experience, but never loses sight of it either. In this way, IE challenges structure-agency, macro-micro and individual-society distinctions and dualisms.

The theoretical, methodological and onto-epistemological underpinnings of IE have grown in and responded to debates in sociology and feminist studies, particularly the methodological discussions related to the linguistic turn, the critique-of-representation and processes of objectification in mainstream sociology. Smith developed a thorough critique of theory-driven research as well as positivist ideals and principles in knowledge production (Smith 2005). In her book The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge (1990a), Smith noted how theory-driven knowledge production involves the reproduction of institutional orders, of ideology, and ultimately societal orders and inequity in terms of whose experiences and interests gain representation:

The categories structuring data collection are already organized by predetermined schema; the data produced becomes the reality intended by the schema; the schema interprets the data […] though it is perfectly possible to prove or disprove statements, issues of objectivity must be framed within established structure. Issues, questions, and experience that do not fit the framework and the interrelated relations of categories and schemata do not get entry to the process, do not become part of the textual realities …

(Smith 1990a, 93–94)

In her critique of objectifying processes, she notes how it happens in at least four ways. (1) The subject disappears and is replaced by social facts or social phenomena, e.g. through the nominalization of verbs. (2) Agency is transferred from the subject to the social phenomenon. Hence the social phenomenon, rather than people and their actual relations, becomes the object of study. (3) People’s actual sayings and doings are translated into an expression of discourse or category, and the researcher’s theoretical narrative. People are held accountable to discourse and categories, but discourse or categories are not held accountable to people. (4) The subject is reconstructed as a category identified through looking for discursive attributes (e.g. gender, class and ethnicity) (Smith 1999).

Smith developed IE in order to understand processes of objectification in research and other institutions, and to challenge such processes, not to overthrow them. Indeed, no form of research can overthrow processes of objectification “that would be a contradiction”. Rather, by acknowledging that all knowledge claims are embedded in values and are essentially contested, Smith suggests that we can challenge dominant knowledge claims by starting inquiry from the standpoint of people whose “knowing” and “interests” have hitherto been downplayed in institutional representations. The epistemic privilege ascribed to a particular experience and standpoint is not automatic but empirically and contextually justified (e.g. Lund 2015). Through people’s everyday embodied experience and work-knowledge, understood generously as “everything people do, from they get up till they go to bed, that takes time, effort and emotion, as they participate in or resist institutional orders” (see Smith 2005), we may learn how institutions are made to work and shape people’s lives in ways that are not necessarily in their own best interests. In learning from what people know, the institutional ethnographer should avoid institutional capture, that is, avoid treating concepts and discourses as if they are descriptive of experience rather than organizers of experience.

As with all Smith’s concepts, institutions or the institutional are understood in a manner that privileges inquiry above theory. There is

… a complex of relations forming part of the ruling apparatus, organized around a distinctive function – education, health care, law and the like. In contrast to such concepts as bureaucracy, “institution” does not identify a determinate form of social organization, but rather the intersection and coordination of more than one relational mode of the ruling apparatus.

(Smith 1987, 160)

The relational modes occur on at least two levels: the local and the translocal. While the local is the immediate site of our embodied practice (e.g. the act of writing, teaching, sitting in a meeting, engaging with a client), some of the translocal social relations that organize and regulate our lives in contemporary society operate in objectified forms (e.g. the discourses, concepts, rules and regulations that shape the local activity and coordinates across space and time). The objectified relational mode is captured in Smith’s concept of ruling relations (see 1999, 73), developed through a reinterpretation of Marx (2004, 1999, 1990a). Ruling relations are:

… text-mediated and text-based systems of ‘communication’, ‘knowledge’, ‘information’, ‘regulation’, ‘control’ and the like. The functions of ‘knowledge, judgment, and will’ that Marx saw as wrested from the original ‘producer’ and transferred to capital become built into a specialized complex of objectified forms of organization and relationship […] Knowledge, judgment, and will are less and less properties of the individual subject and more and more of objectified organization. They are constituted as actual forms of concerting and concerted activities and can be investigated as such. ‘Objectivity’, the focus of postmodern critique, is only one form of objectification, though objectified organization relies extensively on text-mediated virtual realities […] Social consciousness exists now as a complex of externalized or objectified social relations through which people’s everyday/everynight activities organize and coordinate contemporary society […] The concept of the ruling relations identifies a historical development of forms of social consciousness that can no longer be adequately conceived as arising in the life conditions of actual individuals.

(Smith 1999, 77–78)

The fact that local and translocal modes are relational highlights how individuals and agency never disappear. People coordinate their activities, produce and change institutional relations. Institutional relations, in turn, involve the coordination of activities. Discovering the ruling relations should hence return us to the standpoint – the experience – from which we started.

Why a book about IE in the Nordic countries?

IE, as a school of thought, emerged in North America and has primarily been shaped in scholarly debates in Canada and USA. Gradually it has spread across the world, becoming recognized as an important contribution to the social sciences in, for example, Australia, Argentina, Taiwan, Japan, UK and the Nordic countries. When IE is taken up and activated in other contexts, it necessarily responds to the legacies and characteristics of social inquiry wherever that might be. Distinct characteristics define the institutions explored, new methodological issues arise, indeed the context of debate and justification differs. Our motivation for writing this book has emerged out of a recognition that the debates and usage of IE take a particular form in particular contexts.

With the books The Everyday World as Problematic. A Feminist Sociology (1987), Texts, Facts and Femininities: Exploring Relations of Ruling. (1990a), The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge (1990b) and Writing the Social. Critique, Theory and Investigations (1999), Smith set the stage for IE, providing theoretical reflections on the production of knowledge and the conceptual apparatus fundamental to the approach. A more thorough methodology was outlined and developed in her books Institutional Ethnography. A Sociology for People (2005) and Institutional Ethnography as Practice (2006). The most recent books, Incorporating Texts into Institutional Ethnographies (Smith and Turner 2014) and Under New Public management. Institutional Ethnographies of Changing Front-line Work (Griffith and Smith 2014), both co-edited by Smith, include several empirical chapters from scholars using IE in their research. Foundational to IE as a school of thought, these books – predominantly authored by North American and Canadian scholars and anchored in North American and Canadian scholarly debates and specific social problematics – have acquired an instructive position as to how people understand, evaluate and use IE across the world. This is despite of the fact that Smith emphasizes that “there is no one way of conducting institutional ethnography” (2006) and that concepts within IE have been developed to privilege inquiry above theory. Hence, the above-mentioned books have contributed, unintentionally, to a certain IE jargon and meticulousness that appears to be institutionally capturing, leaving little room for contextual and linguistic variation. Given the ontological grounding of IE and the intention of questioning objectification in knowledge production, IE scholars in other contexts should take part in the wider discussion of how IE could be developed and used in diverging ways, drawing attention to legacies, controversies, and characteristics of its use in other contexts.

In the Nordic countries, and particularly Norway, IE has increasingly gained recognition over the past decade. The first well-known article about IE in Norwegian was written by Karin Widerberg, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo, in 2007. Published in one of the leading sociological journals in Norway, the article title proposes that IE offers a new possibility for qualitative research, and since then Widerberg has been an important proponent of IE in the Nordic countries. In 2011 she established the Nordic network for institutional ethnographers, which has been growing ever since. The responsibility for coordinating the network has travelled between Norwegian universities, engaging scholars in different disciplines and departments. The network has initiated and facilitated PhD courses, book-projects, seminars and conference streams, and meets twice annually to discuss the latest research. This book is a product of the joint effort of scholars who are part of the network. The predominantly Norwegian presence in the network is reflected among the authors of this book, whereof 15 are affiliated to Norwegian universities, 3 to Finnish universities (Homanen, Kuronen and Lund), 2 to Swedish universities (Sataøen and Sørensen) and 1 to a Danish university (Høgsbro).

The first collection on IE in and about the Nordic region was also a product of the network. Edited by Karin Widerberg, I hjertet av velferdsstaten. En invitasjon til institusjonell etnografi [At the Heart of the Welfare State. An Invitation to Institutional Ethnography] (2015) consists of chapters authored by Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Finnish early career academics, engaged in exploring the changing nature of Nordic welfare state policies and institutions. The book covers a wide range of empirical explorations into the ruling relations of and dilemmas existing within childcare, family support, rehabilitation, working life and disability, care for the elderly, refugee policy, isolation in jails and academia. Although it is a significant contribution to knowledge about the changing welfare state and provides insight into how IE is interpreted in different ways by different scholars, the book does not engage in an explicit positioning of Nordic IE as a contribution to the broader debates on the conceptual, theoretical and methodological interpretation and development of IE. Moreover, the book is written in Norwegian, rendering it inaccessible to an international audience.

The aim of this book is to depict Nordic use of, and responses to, IE. What characterizes IE in the Nordic context? How is it justified? Which topics do institutional ethnographers address in the Nordics, and how do they go about doing their research? How do they combine IE with different theories and other methodologies in order to address particular problematics? And finally, and most importantly, what insights can the Nordic IE studies contribute to the development of the approach as such?

The Nordics – some characteristics

The Nordics refers to a region in Northern Europe, known as “Norden”, which literally translates to the North. The region consists of five countries: Denmark (including Greenland and the Faroe Islands), Finland (including the Åland Islands archipelago), Iceland, Norway (including the Svalbard archipelago) and Sweden. In sum, it encompasses almost 27 million people, spread across 3.5 million square kilometres. Sweden is the most populous country, with almost 10 million citizens, followed by Denmark, Finland and Norway, all comprising of 5–6 million people. Iceland is the smallest of the five countries, with a population of less than 500,000. Whilst Denmark, Finland and Sweden have joined the European Union (EU), Norway and Iceland have opted to stay out.

The majority of the people in the Nordics are Scandinavian, i.e. Danish, Norwegian or Swedish. Indeed, Scandinavia/Scandinavian are terms that are often used interchangeably with the Nordics/Nordic, despite the fact that Scandinavia only refers to the three monarchies of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The Scandinavian languages are mutually understandable both orally and in writing, and have their roots in the old Norse language, as is also the case with Icelandic. The Nordic region, however, also comprises of Finns, who form the majority of Finland, and the indigenous Sami people and Greenlandic Inuits. Like the Sami languages and Greenlandic, Finnish is a non-Germanic language bearing no similarities to the Scandinavian languages. However, Swedish is, alongside Finnish, recognized as an official language in Finland, and it is compulsory to learn Swedish at school.

“Nordic” is usually used as an identity marker that complements, rather than stands in oppositio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of table
• List of contributors
• Part 1 Contextualizing IE in the Nordics
• Part 2 Conversations between IE and other theories
• Part 3 Application of institutional ethnography in Nordic countries
• Part 4 The transformative potential of IE in the Nordics
• Wrapping it all up: future prospects of IE in the Nordics
• Index