In Incorporating Texts into Institutional Ethnographies, Dorothy E. Smith and Susan Marie Turner present a selection of essays highlighting perhaps the single most distinctive feature of the sociological approach known as Institutional Ethnography (IE) – the ethnographic investigation of how texts coordinate and organize people’s activities across space and time. The chapters, written by scholars who are relatively new to IE as well as IE veterans, illustrate the wide variety of ways in which IE investigations can be done, as well as the breadth of topics IE has been used to study.

Both a collection of examples that can be used in teaching and research project design and an excellent introduction to IE methods and techniques, Incorporating Texts into Institutional Ethnographies is an essential contribution to the subject.

Dorothy E. Smith is an adjunct professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Victoria and the author of Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (UTP 1988) and The Conceptual Practices of Power (UTP 1990).

Dorothy E. Smith's profile page

Susan Marie Turner is an associate scholar with the Centre for Women’s Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

Susan Marie Turner's profile page

‘Smith’s conceptualization of texts and their powerful role in contemporary society is a vital contribution for all sociologists, not just institutional ethnographers.’

Sociology vol 49:06:2015