Analysis of Wright's (2003) Institutional Ethnography: A Tool For Merging Research And Practice

Institutional ethnography focuses on how power is socially organized in everyday experience. Studies of institutionalized marginalization (Cunningham 1992; 2000) show insufficiency of conventional theoretical vocabulary to account for effects that practices derived from dominant culture have (Amstutz 1999). The demand to account for social relevance of multiple cultural spaces (Rocco and West 1998), discriminating effects of cultural power (Guy 1999), and external constitution of power relations (Smith 1987) makes necessary the investigation of relations between individuals and external institutional contexts. These concerns have to be remedied by methodological sensitization to institutional relations of power (Thompson and Schied 1996), ethnographic theories of everyday institutional practices (Sissell 2001), and merger of ethnographic research with theorization of large-scale social processes (Ettling 2001; Heaney 2000). Methodology of institutional ethnography concentrates on the intersection of individual experience with discursive practices, relations of ruling, and macro social processes (Smith 1987: 151-152).

Institutional ethnography covers research of "translocal processes of administration" (Devault and McCoy 2001), multi-sited formation of ruling apparatuses (Grahame and Grahame 2000), and textual organization of ruling relations (Campbell and Gregor 2002). Media of communication that lend themselves to textual analysis (Grahame and Grahame 2000) are research vehicle for institutional ethnography that through their investigation trace power relations across contexts. Institutional ethnography in its understanding of power as derivative of the processes of circulation, accumulation, and interaction is not unlike a methodological application of Foucault's theorization of relations of power articulation (1967: 234). In this regard Smith follows Foucault as she posits individuals as points of activation of a "text's ability to coordinate action and to get things done in specific ways" (Wright 2003: 245) whereby social relations of different scales articulate via texts individually reciprocal relations of power.

Applications of institutional ethnography describe how "assumptions are transported through research reports" (Wright 2003: 245) with frequently unaccounted effects of unequal distribution of chances of access to means for social mobility. These tendencies are exacerbated as economic changes setting in during 1980s bring relatively higher rewards to those meeting advanced skill requirements rather than spreading benefits across economic structure (Johnston and Parker 1987). Institutional ethnography reveals the role of textual mediation in relations between state, capital, and labor as it naturalizes differential distribution of economic rewards (Grahame and Grahame 2000: 5). Through research of everyday institutional practices (Grahame and Grahame 2000) institutional ethnography analyzes how "political discourse and organizational knowledge translate into micro practices" (Wright 2003: 246). Social organization of everyday life also allows for historical reconstruction of practices of marginalization, mobilization, and instrumentalization (Askov 2000; Darville 1995).

Institutional ethnography detects the role of such means of activation as "organizational literacy" (Darville 1995), composed of milti-sited discursive knowledge, that through accumulation, transfer, and valorization allows its carriers to successfully "navigate the social and cultural landscape" (Wright 2003: 246). Institutional ethnographic research documents the structural effects of "practical knowledge about how certain information is organizationally relevant" (Darville 1995: 257), which is implicated in the mediation of relations of power through writing (Campbell and Gregor 2002: 12). Scholarly practice becomes more reflexive of its import for liberatory institutional action (Darville 1995) by means of ethnographic research that highlights the "significance of how organizations employ and use knowledge" (Wright 2003: 247).

Institutional ethnography has significant practical potential for wide range of applied organizational contexts that rests on its address of relations between micro and macro processes, employment of multi-sited research methodology, awareness for social practices that texts activate, and facilitation of change on the local level (Wright 2003: 247). While theoretically attuned to exploring the intersection of macro processes and micro practices, the relevance of institutional ethnography to contexts where governmental policies intersect with feminist concerns, where administrative practices and judicial system interact, and where team learning affects organizational power relations makes it into an important methodological approach (Brooks 1997).