scholarly journals Health Inequity and Institutional Ethnography: Mapping the Problem of Policy Change

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-80
Author(s):  
Elizabeth McGibbon ◽  
Katherine Fierlbeck ◽  
Tari Ajadi
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Institutional Ethnography ◽  
Policy Research ◽  
Health Inequity ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Key Points ◽  
The Social ◽  
Policy Narratives ◽  
Critical Policy ◽  
Relations Of Power

Health equity (HE) is a central concern across multiple disciplines and sectors, including nursing. However, the proliferation of the term has not resulted in corresponding policymaking that leads to a clear reduction of health inequities. The goal of this paper is to use institutional ethnographic methods to map the social organization of HE policy discourses in Canada, a process that serves to reproduce existing relations of power that stymie substantive change in policy aimed at reducing health inequity. In nursing, institutional ethnography (IE) is described as a method of inquiry for taking sides in order to expose socially organized practices of power. Starting from the standpoints of HE policy advocates we explain the methods of IE, focusing on a stepwise description of theoretical and practical applications in the area of policymaking. Results are discussed in the context of three thematic areas: 1) bounding HE talk within biomedical imperialism, 2) situating racialization and marginalization as a subaltern space in HE discourses, and 3) activating HE texts as ruling relations. We conclude with key points about our insights into the methodological and theoretical potential of critical policy research using IE to analyze the social organization of power in HE policy narratives. This paper contributes to critical nursing discourse in the area of HE, demonstrating how IE can be applied to disrupt socially organized neoliberal and colonialist narratives that recycle and redeploy oppressive policymaking practices within and beyond nursing.

scholarly journals Coordinating Policy Layers of School Fundraising in Toronto, Ontario, Canada: An Institutional Ethnography

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Winton
Keyword(s):  
Parent Involvement ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Institutional Ethnography ◽  
School Council ◽  
Critical Policy Analysis ◽  
Good Parent ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Policy ◽  
Toronto District School Board

In this article, I report findings from an investigation into the politics and coordination of school fundraising in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Theoretically grounded in institutional ethnography and critical policy analysis, the study began from the standpoint of parents asked to give money to their children’s school(s). I show how provincial and TDSB funding, parent involvement, fundraising, and school council policies organize parents’ experience of school fundraising. I also explore how participating in fundraising enables parents to meet neoliberal expectations of a “good parent” and how through their efforts to secure advantages for their children, fundraising parents are accomplices in the privatization of public education. I conclude by discussing possibilities for intervention into the social organization of school fundraising in TDSB schools.

CERAMIC INDICES OF AZTEC ELITENESS

2000 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher P. Garraty
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Spatial Patterning ◽  
Basin Of Mexico ◽  
The Social ◽  
City State ◽  
Relations Of Power

This article explores the complex, multidimensional nature of Aztec social organization and, specifically, the concept of “eliteness,” as it applies to the Aztecs. I discuss both why we can speak of Aztec “elites” and how we can monitor them using ceramic data. I argue it is possible to distinguish elites archaeologically by identifying the ceramic attributes and variables that best reflect feasting behavior, one of the primary practices the Aztecs used to socially construct and reproduce unequal relations of power, wealth, and estate. Ceramics thus served as one of the primary media through which politically and socially charged “communication” occurred among the Aztecs. I define and evaluate six ceramic indices of eliteness using Late Aztec ceramic data (ca. a.d. 1350–1520) from Teotihuacan, an Aztec period altepetl (city-state) located in the northeastern Basin of Mexico. I use the most effective eliteness indices to interpret the intrasite spatial patterning of elite residences at Late Aztec Teotihuacan and infer some observations about the social and political organization of the altepetl.

Investigating the social organization of family health work: an institutional ethnography

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 554-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Nichols ◽  
Micheal Fridman ◽  
Khaled Ramadan ◽  
Lee Ford Jones ◽  
Niraj Mistry
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Institutional Ethnography ◽  
Family Health ◽  
Health Work ◽  
The Social

Negotiating the Social Organization of School Library Work: An Institutional Ethnography

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Crispin
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Institutional Ethnography ◽  
School Library ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
School Librarian ◽  
The Social ◽  
Milieu Scolaire

This institutional ethnography starts from the standpoint of a school librarian to examine how school library work is coordinated and explained by social institutions. Areas of focus include the work of accounting for materials, the work of accounting for students, and the work of understanding and negotiating schedules.Cette ethnographie institutionnelle s'appuie sur le bibliothécaire en milieu scolaire et examine comment les institutions sociales coordonnent et justifient le travail au sein de la bibliothèque scolaire. Les points à l'étude comprennent : les efforts de justification du matériel, les efforts de représentation des étudiants et les efforts de compréhension et de négociation des horaires. 

scholarly journals I didn’t do that! Contested Definitions of Racialized Immigrant Youth in the Extra-Judicial Sanctions Program: Uncovering Hidden Voices.

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Monetta Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Institutional Ethnography ◽  
Immigrant Youth ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Canadian Society ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
Popular Discourse ◽  
The Social ◽  
Judicial Sanctions

The social organization of knowledge focuses on how knowledge is created, enacted and shared by individuals in order to coordinate people’s actions. Using the frameworks of Institutional Ethnography (IE) and Critical Race Theory (CRT), this paper will look at the process of hearing the cases of racialized immigrant youth who are referred to the Extra-judicial Sanctions program in Calgary. I investigate how cultural knowledge impacts the way in which the youth’s cases are adjudicated.  In particular, looking at how knowledge about various racialized and ethnic groups is gained in an environment of popular discourse, and how this influences the cases of racialized immigrant youth. I then look at how this racialized knowledge impacts the process of the youth and their families attempting to contest the definitions that are assigned to them during the hearing process. I suggest that in the context of a neo-liberal, “colour-blind” Canadian society and policy, workers in the EJS process draw on their own cultural understandings in order to interpret the interactions with racialized immigrant youth, which then impacts the ability of the youth to truly have their voices heard.

scholarly journals Exploring the social relations of Roma employability

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loreni Elena Baciu ◽  
Melinda Dinca ◽  
Theofild Lazar ◽  
Johans Tveit Sandvin
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Institutional Ethnography ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Roma Population ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Formal Employment

The article reports on a qualitative study of Roma employability in Romania. Being the largest ethnic minority group in Europe, the Roma population is the object of profound marginalization in most of the countries where they reside, by measures such as spatial segregation and exclusion from the formal labour market. This article focuses particularly on the Roma living in rural segregated communities. Inspired by institutional ethnography, the aim is to explore the social organization of rural Roma employability from the standpoint of the Roma themselves. The main obstacles to employment, as they are known and shared by our interviewees, are a lack of available jobs within reach, their own lack of education and a rejection by employers on the grounds of them being Roma. As the analyses show, these obstacles, and the individual’s experiences and knowledge about them, are shaped and maintained by extended translocal relations of administration and governance, thus making the rural Roma dependent on a precarious secondary labour market of low-paid day work for neighbouring farmers. The uncertainty of this work, and the organization and work of everyday life it implies for the people inhabiting these communities, further increases the distance to formal employment. It is this complex set of relations coordinating people’s doings that produce the employability of Roma inhabiting the rural segregated communities.

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