[People are] animal[s] suspended in webs of significance [they themselves] have spun
Geertz (1973:55)
Institutional Ethnography came at a time when sociology's teachings, for the late great Dorothy Smith, were too ingrained into the New German School's teachings. This came with its consequences. Notably, this was defining 'social structure' by the sacred sociology scroll makers: white, old, knights of academia and equally so, their institution leaders (this is still in play today; something Seth Abrutyn (2016) catchily calls the Slavish Adherence Principle).
Sociology, then, in its very divergence and inter-disciplinarian branches, could not facilitate what it was ostensibly studying: relationships, the outcomes of these differences (what we know as inequality), and where they come from.
Unsurprisingly, Dorothy Smith remarked, in one of her talks you should definitely check out - (or even to appreciate her legacy that simply sociology is for everyone, or the sheer eminence in her work on IE)
"What the hell even is a social structure?"
*Well, not exactly verbatim, but to have heard a sociologist mention this, best of all Dorothy Smith herself, it prompted me to add a bit of drama to my impressions of this moment.
Persons were ignored. Sociology was studying the people as the problem, and as such this has entirely ignored the already problematic world of everyday life itself - greed, dominance, assertion: any and all of which formulate sexism, inequality, and power, for instance.
Why Institutional Ethnography?
I wondered.
Why is it, if Dorothy Smith really wanted to focus on the people, did she come up with a qualitative observational method that focused on the very thing that overshadows them?
Well, it comes to how you define* institutions, or for Smith, 'social structures'.
*hint, hint: Thomas and Thomas (1928)
Geertz' adage is key here. In examining a cobweb, we are first able to see the clearer, stringy, sticky webs- these are observable institutions: churches, schools, sports teams and so on. There are, however, ones which we cannot make out so easily, and rely, sometimes tirelessly, on the adjustment of our position. To capture these subliminal strings and thinly threads, we must follow the "spiders' trajectory", and Dr. Smith sums this up so well:
You are not looking for a reality.
You are the reality you share with others.
Simply, if you wanted a loving home, you don't ring up the 'family institution' on speed dial; you look to the builders of this home who maintain and make it what it is through their existence, actions, and experience: family members.
For instance, to recognize the social structure of a clique made of highschoolers who only qualify if they are
1) long-time members of the school / have done something to achieve the 'legend' status, and
2) unpopular or disliked by the majority of their year group - let's say this is as simple as it is (not);
we have to identity the thick, obvious webs of those who are in the popular group, those who are in the old-timer group and how they come to form this group by what they do and why they do it. Only when intentions are established, isolations can be made from the collective, and we can come to understand why individuals suffer from their institutions (or they ways they were enforced, coerced, or lured into doing).
Who lines the prison walls after all? People structuring them outside and the ones scratching them from within.
"Nachbarn." (kurtu via ToonPool.com)
Only when the strings overlap, can we hang on long enough to recognize the more subtle, sous strings that exist within/from it. These strings are made up of normed routines, of accepted doings, of solidified meanings and motivations, and thus it makes up the groups. The person contributes to their people, the strings make up the social structure, and in this:
the sum is the whole.
How do we bring IE to understand the virtual world?
There are literally endless formations of groups and crowds of people, the strings of actions are ones made of lines of codes, pixel to polygons, monetary transactions, and almost all of them are amorphous. This is no easy task.
In some ways, the texts of everyday life are ideal markers to study this - they are the product of power (Smith 2005), carriers of it (propaganda), and tearers (each of the Korean's flyers they drop at each other's border cities).
Do we do what we do because we do, or because something makes us do them?
Cerulo (2009) on nonhumans in social interaction, would argue with Smith that persons, through their actions made up of objects -- should NOT be ignored. They are the problem only if we don't see them as a solution to understanding what our realities are, and why we do things in them.
But luckily, (and maybe controversially) people always build their prisons by feeling/being contained in where they live. With IE, I'll have to understand what it is they do, how they know what to do, and why they think they have to keep doing it...
Oh boy, who am I gonna ask first? Bourdieu and habitus? Berger and space? Merton and symbols? Nietzsche and the lambs? Maybe I should look forward...
That's a snap.
(Fist Published: Feb 7th 2022)
(Revised and Republished: Sep 20th 2022)