Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People

Having developed a feminist theory of the "relations of the ruling" in such works as Everyday World as Problematic (1987), Conceptual Practices of Power (1990), and Texts, Facts, and Femininity (1990), Smith (emerita, sociology and equity studies in education, U. of Toronto, Canada) applies the theory to examination of the social organization of knowledge. She first describes the foundations of her "sociology for people" in the women's movement and differentiates from other sociologies with apparently similar political commitments. She then constructs an "ontology of the social" that is connected to the phenomena of language and the actualities of people's lives. Finally, she translates this ontology into a general framework for conducting institutional ethnography, a sociology that aims to spell out how the everyday experience of women is put together by relations that extend beyond the everyday. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR