This book explores recent developments in Institutional Ethnography (IE) and offers reflective accounts on how IE is being utilised and understood in social research. IE is a sociological sub-discipline developed by Dorothy E. Smith that seeks to explicate the textual mediation of people’s everyday experiences in their local sites of being.

Prominent sociologist Dorothy Smith outlines a method of inquiry that uses everyday experience as a lens to examine social relations and social institutions. Concerned with articulating an inclusive sociology that goes beyond looking at a particular group of people from the detached viewpoint of the researcher, this is a method of inquiry for people, incorporating the expert's research and language into everyday experience to examine social relations and institutions. The book begins by examining the foundations of institutional ethnography in women's movements, differentiating it from other related sociologies; the second part offers an ontology of the social; and the third illustrates this ontology through an array of institutional ethnography examples. This will be a foundational text for classes in sociology, ethnography, and women's studies.

A comprehensive guide to the alternative sociology originating in the work of Dorothy E. Smith, this Handbook not only explores the basic, founding principles of institutional ethnography (IE), but also captures current developments, approaches, and debates. Now widely known as a “sociology for people,” IE offers the tools to uncover the social relations shaping the everyday world in which we live and is utilized by scholars and social activists in sociology and beyond, including such fields as education, nursing, social work, linguistics, health and medical care, environmental studies, and other social-service related fields. Covering the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of IE, recent developments, and current areas of research and application that have yet to appear in the literature, The Palgrave Handbook of Institutional Ethnography is suitable for both experienced practitioners of institutional ethnography and those who are exploring this approach for the first time.

This book explores recent developments in Institutional Ethnography (IE) and offers reflective accounts on how IE is being utilised and understood in social research. IE is a sociological sub-discipline developed by Dorothy E. Smith that seeks to explicate the textual mediation of people’s everyday experiences in their local sites of being.

A form of critical ethnography introduced to the social sciences in the late 1990s, institutional ethnography uncovers how things happen within institutional sites, providing a new and flexible tool for the study of how “work” is co-constituted within sites of writing and writing instruction. The study of work and work processes reveals how institutional discourse, social relations, and norms of professional practice coordinate what people do across time and sites of writing. Adoption of IE offers finely grained understandings of how our participation in the work of writing, writing instruction, and sites of writing gives material face to the institutions that govern the social world. In this book, Michelle LaFrance introduces the theories, rhetorical frames, and methods that ground and animate institutional ethnography. Three case studies illustrate key aspects of the methodology in action, tracing the work of writing assignment design in a linked gateway course, the ways annual reviews coordinate the work of faculty and writing center administrators and staff, and how the key term “information literacy” socially organizes teaching in a first-year English program. Through these explorations of the practice of ethnography within sites of writing and writing instruction, LaFrance shows that IE is a methodology keenly attuned to the material relations and conditions of work in twenty-first-century writing studies contexts, ideal for both practiced and novice ethnographers who seek to understand the actualities of social organization and lived experience in the sites they study. Institutional Ethnography expands the field’s repertoire of research methodologies and offers the grounding necessary for work with the IE framework. It will be invaluable to writing researchers and students and scholars of writing studies across the spectrum—composition and rhetoric, literacy studies, and education—as well as those working in fields such as sociology and cultural studies.

Housing in the Margins offers a theoretically informed and empirically detailed exploration of unruly housing practices and their governance at the periphery of Berlin. An original empirical contribution to understanding housing precarity in the context of the German housing crisis A novel approach to theorizing the nexus of informality and the state in ways that bridge analytical divides between debates about Northern and Southern states An innovative account of urban development in Berlin that contributes to the limited discussions of urban informality in Euro-American cities A theoretical understanding of the ways in which negotiations and transgressions are embedded in the making of urban order A historically informed narrative of the development of allotment gardens in Berlin with a particular focus on housing practices at these sites

This book uses social practice theory to offer a new perspective on the professional world of higher education. It presents a practice sensibility that helps to identify the successful paths to changes for enhancement in teaching and learning regimes.

In this edited collection, institutional ethnographers draw on their field research experiences to address different aspects of institutional ethnographic practice. As institutional ethnography embraces the actualities of people's experiences and lives, the contributors utilize their research to reveal how institutional relations and regimes are organized. As a whole, the book aims to provide readers with an accurate overview of what it is like to practice institutional ethnography, as well as the main varieties of approaches involved in the research.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY licence. Young people transitioning out of care towards independence, work and adulthood are on the edge of these phases of life. Considering previously neglected groups of care leavers such as unaccompanied migrants, street youth, those leaving residential care, young parents and those with a disability, this book presents cutting-edge research from emerging global scholars. The collection addresses the precarity experienced by many care leavers, who often lack the social capital and resources to transition into stable education, employment and family life. Including the voices of care leavers throughout, it makes research relevant to practitioners and policymakers aiming to enable, rather than label, vulnerable groups.

This book integrates two different but equally prominent themes in the management field: mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). It explores questions such as whether strategic goals overlap or conflict with sustainability choices, what the strategic and sustainability tensions are confronting expanding companies, and whether these companies can grow and be socially responsible for a variety of stakeholders. The authors provide a fresh perspective on the study of acquisitions, aiming to inspire the M&A field and using examples from different global and institutional contexts in both developed and developing economies. This ground-breaking book addresses the gap that has existed between acquisitions on the one hand and social responsibility and sustainability on the other, for an integrative perspective on enacting M&As and achieving the triple people-planet-profits bottom line.