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. 

Compensatory Justice and Social Institutions

1985 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph H. Carens
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Ought Implies Can ◽  
The Social ◽  
Compensatory Justice ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Moral Philosophers

Moral philosophers are fond of the dictum “ought implies can” and even deontologists normally admit the need to take account of consequences in the design of social institutions. Too often, however, philosophers fail to take advantage of the knowledge provided by the social sciences about the constraints and consequences of alternative forms of social organization. By discussing ideals in abstraction from the problems of institutionalization, they fail at least to see some of the important consequences and costs of a proposed ideal, and sometimes they fail even to understand the ideal itself.

scholarly journals Negotiating the Social Organization of School Library Work

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Crispin
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
School Library ◽  
Media Specialist ◽  
Collaboration Technology ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
The Social ◽  
School Librarianship ◽  
And Function ◽  
Role And Function

I investigated how school library work is socially organized and how that social organization affects cooperation with teachers and others in the school. The research uses the institutional ethnography frame of inquiry, providing a way of looking at how the role and function of the school librarian/ school media specialist is socially-organized and institutionally-oriented. The social organization was apparent in the categories of collaboration, technology, and access. A better understanding of how library work is socially organized will help working librarians understand how to negotiate their workplace more effectively. An understanding of how to examine the social organization of an institution can help inform research and teaching in school librarianship as well. This presentation is a follow-up to a presentation at IASL 2008 conference in Berkeley, California.

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.

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

scholarly journals Chiefdom as a Concept of Sociology: The Complexity of Interpretation

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-26
Author(s):  
Sergey A. Davydov
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Central America ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Subject Field ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Unambiguous Interpretation

The purpose of this article is to identify the reasons which limit the conceptualization of the concept of chiefdom, and to find analytical means to overcome it. The author notes that at the present time sociology has developed criteria which facilitate the understanding of chiefdom as a type of social organization and historical stage in the development of society. However, the process of developing an unambiguous interpretation of the concept of chiefdom has not yet been completed. The article suggests that this is a consequence of two main limitations. The first of these lies outside the field of science and is associated with the diversity of the morphology of chiefdoms, with them having accumulated signs of “higher” and “lower” forms of social organization, and with chiefdom being characterized by ambiguity of data. The second limitation is brought forth by science itself, which happened to attach different conceptual grids to various types of chiefdom and had been unable to solve the problem of polysemia of the concepts which underlie the methodological analysis of archaic societies. The author focuses on the problem of “semantic twins” of chiefdom, the existence of which is due to the established tradition of word usage. The problem of identifying such “twins” is solved based on analyzing the social institutions and structures of ancient societies, while relying on the results of archaeological and anthropological studies, texts of literary artifacts. As a result, the author argues that in many cases the barbaric “kingdom” of Western Europe, Asia and Africa, the Eastern European “principalities” and the “empires” of Central Asia and Central America should be called chiefdoms. It is concluded that managing conceptual space allows for expanding the subject field of analysis, enriching the analytical tools of research and as a result discovering new facets of chiefdom as a form of social organization.

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.

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 DISCOURSE AGONALITY AND RESOURCES OF ITS REALIZATION

2016 ◽  
pp. 66-71
Author(s):  
O. Kochubeynyk
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Symbolic Violence ◽  
Contest Competition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The article problematize the relationship of discourse to inequality, exclusion, subjugation, dominance and privilege. The linkages between discourse, modes of social organization, lived experience and strategies of resistance is discussed. Discourse is understood as both an expression and a mechanism of power, by which means particular social realities are conceived, made manifest, legitimated, naturalized, challenged, resisted and reimagined. The term discourse has also been used to designate particular ‘modes of talking’ associated with particular social institutions and reproduced by them. It means that social institutions produce specific ways or modes of talking about certain areas of social life, which are related to the place and nature of that institution. The main attention in the article is paid to illuminating the generative power of discourse in constructing, sustaining and challenging inequitable modes of social organization. The author has proposed a model that accounts for the two ways in which power is present in discourse and thus in society - a model which might be used as a basis for the development of a framework for discourse analysis as well as for the conceptualization of social change and its relation to language change. The author has used the notion of agon to explain some processes which occurred in constructing of social reality. Agon comes from the Greek word agōn, which is translated with a number of meanings, among them «contest,» «competition at games,» and «gathering». Agonality (agon) is declared as main specialty of discourse. It is proposed to see in the agonality the striving of discourse to its own self-assertion, which is manifested in the clash of forces, which potentially lies in social inter-relations. The author also considers the category of «symbolic violence» as a function of the power, the ability to impose values and recognize their legitimacy. In the social system of symbolic violence is implemented through the discursive implications and is carried out in two ways - through the textual and non-textual resources.

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