For Institutional Ethnography

Article

For institutional ethnography: Geographical approaches to institutions and the everyday

Emily Billo

Goucher College, USA

Alison Mountz

Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada

Progress in Human Geography

1–22

ª The Author(s) 2015

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DOI: 10.1177/0309132515572269

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Abstract

In this paper we unpack how geographers have studied institutions, focusing specifically on institutional

ethnography, often called ‘IE’. Sociologist Dorothy Smith is widely credited with developing institutional

ethnography as an ‘embodied’ feminist approach. Smith studies the experiences of women in daily life, and the

complex social relations in which these are embedded. Institutional ethnography offers the possibility to

study up to understand the differential effects of institutions within and beyond institutional spaces and

associated productions of subjectivities and material inequalities. We suggest that geographical scholarship

on institutions can be enhanced and, in turn, has much to contribute to the broader interdisciplinary field on

institutional ethnography, such as understandings of institutions that account for spatial differentiation. We

argue that IE holds potential to enrich geographical research not only about a multitude of kinds of insti-

tutions, but about the many structures, effects, and identities working through institutions as territorial

forces. In spite of recent interest by geographers, the broader literature on institutional ethnography remains

under-engaged and under-cited by human geographers. Critical of this lack of engagement, we suggest that it

has left a gap in geographical research on institutions. Our aim is to analyze and advance existing scholarship

and offer this article as a tool for geographers thinking about employing IE. We develop a typology, cate-

gorized by methodological approach, to highlight ethnographic approaches to institutions undertaken by

geographers.

Keywords

ethnography, everyday, institutional ethnography, institutions, studying up

Over the last two decades, geographers have

expressed renewed interest in ethnography

(Herbert, 2000) and institutions (e.g. Anderson,

1991; Herbert, 1997; Schoenberger, 1997; Del

Casino et al., 2000; Hyndman, 2000; Nevins,

2002; Mountz, 2010), and growing interest in

institutional ethnography. Whereas Steve Her-

bert (2000) argued ‘for ethnography’ in this

journal 15 years ago, we argue for institutional

ethnography in geography. Given geographers’

different ways of studying institutions and con-

ducting ethnography, this article parses out

Corresponding author:

Emily Billo, Environmental Studies Program, Goucher

College, 1021 Dulaney Valley Road, Baltimore, MD 21204,

USA.

Email: [email protected]

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2 Progress in Human Geography

approaches by unpacking how geographers

go about studying institutions, with particular

attention to institutional ethnography.

Institutional ethnography was originally con-

ceptualized and coined by sociologist Dorothy

Smith (1987, 2006), developed subsequently

by other feminist social scientists (e.g. Camp-

bell and Gregor, 2004; Devault, 2006), and

operationalized recently by geographers using

a range of methodological approaches. Institu-

tional ethnography has explicit critical or libera-

tory goals in its exploration of processes of

subordination. Rooted in Marxist and feminist

scholarship, institutional ethnography encom-

passes an integrated approach. Smith (1987)

developed institutional ethnography as an

‘embodied’ feminist approach. Her first analy-

sis began from the example of single mothers

constructed as ‘defective’ within dominant

social narratives, including schooling and health

care. The role of the researcher in this case is to

uncover the ‘ruling relations’ that produce sin-

gle mothers as outside the norm, exposing how

teachers and other institutional actors are bound

up in the production of dominant narratives and

practices. Institutional ethnography brings to

the fore these kinds of ‘problems’ in the system

that discriminate against single mothers and

maps paths to social change.

Institutional ethnography is valuable, useful,

and productive for geographers as it holds poten-

tial to broaden their work on institutions –

including their conceptualization, socio-spatial

relations, effects in daily life – and potential

contributions to social justice movements. In

spite of recent interest among geographers, the

broader literature on institutional ethnography

(often called ‘IE’) remains under-engaged and

under-cited by human geographers. Critical of

this lack of engagement, we suggest that it has

left a gap in geographical research on institu-

tions. Rather than explore the reasons why geo-

graphers have not engaged existing scholarship

more deeply, we explore its potential contribu-

tions to geography, and from geography, in turn,

to the broader field of IE. Our aim is to analyze

and advance existing scholarship and offer this

article as a tool for geographers thinking about

employing IE, which is practiced in a variety

of ways.

We argue that IE holds potential to enrich

geographical research not only about a multi-

tude of kinds of institutions, but about the

many structures, effects, and identities work-

ing through institutions as territorial forces.

We advocate for continued development of

institutional ethnography and find that geo-

graphic scholarship on institutions will be much

enhanced through engagement with scholarship

beyond the discipline. Furthermore, engage-

ment with scholarship beyond the discipline’s

borders will not only enhance scholarship on

institutions, but potentially enhance contribu-

tions of research on institutions to social justice

movements.

We begin with a brief overview of how geo-

graphers have studied institutions over time in

order to situate the recent upswing. We then

explain institutional ethnography in more detail

as an interdisciplinary field developed by fem-

inist scholars from the late 1980s to the present.

In our penultimate section, we examine how

geographers have recently used institutional

ethnography with a typology of approaches. The

section ends with an exploration of avenues to

more sustained, critical engagement with other

social scientists working on and in institutions.

We conclude with a summary of contributions

and new questions.

I Placing IE in geography: A

necessarily incomplete genealogy

of disciplinary engagement with

institutions

Geographers have debated methods with which

to research institutions (Flowerdew, 1982; Del

Casino et al., 2000; Herbert, 2000) and episte-

mological frames through which to understand

them (Philo and Parr, 2000). We aim here to

Billo and Mountz 3

situate geographers’ recent interests in institu-

tions within a broader history within the disci-

pline, without necessarily establishing direct

movement or causality between one moment

of institutional engagement and the next (as in

the genealogical tradition). Underlying shifts

in the discipline will be recognizable, including

humanism and managerialism of the 1960s and

1970s, the cultural and institutional turns of the

1980s and 1990s, and the influence of postmo-

dern, poststructural, and feminist thought in the

1990s and 2000s. Geographers have examined

institutions in fits and starts over time, often

lacking the history of disciplinary engagement

and contemporary scholarship on institutions

thriving in other disciplines (e.g. Iskander,

2010; Rodriguez, 2010). The result is a frag-

mented history of engagement.

Our review begins in the 1960s and 1970s,

when geographers studying institutions were

largely managerialists who, influenced by beha-

vioralist geographers, tended to critique the idea

of the institution as monolith and analyze the

role of different government institutions, their

effects on cities and populations, and their geo-

graphical patterns (Pahl, 1977; Flowerdew,

1982; Ley, 1983; Kariya, 1993; Philo and Parr,

2000: 515).

Humanist geographers challenged the work of

managerialists, examining how managers shape

social realities through the internal cultures of

organizations. Ley, for example, contested a

Weberian approach that conceptualized institu-

tions as efficient and rational bodies with ‘perfect

access to information’ (1983: 220). He observed

a ‘lack of everyday empirical analysis’ (Ley,

1983: 220). This dearth of empirical evidence

and the failure to examine quotidian practices are

recurring themes in geographers’ approaches to

institutions. Such an inductive approach would

pay more attention to the everyday contexts out

of which organizational actions emerge and to

the meanings of events to organizational mem-

bers who lie behind their initiatives and

responses (Ley, 1983: 225). As precursor to

contemporary forms of institutional ethnogra-

phy, Ley (1983) explored internal subcultures

of urban institutions and the rise of organiza-

tional consciousness that accompanied explosive

growth in institutions in the 1960s and 1970s. He

critiqued the ‘pure’ or ‘total’ organization of

Weber and of Goffman (1961), analyzing instead

how distinctly and unevenly institutions operated

on the ground (see also Kariya, 1993).

Geographical analyses of institutions have

shifted between macro-theoretical structures to

micro-level theories. Some approached them

at finer scales, focusing on spatial arrangements

within institutions (Philo and Parr, 2000: 514).

Others deemed this approach a ‘middle way’;

following Giddens’ (1984) structuration theory

and associated debates about structure and

agency in the 1980s and 1990s, institutions

offered an ‘interim’ level of social systems,

or the social practices that regulate daily life.

This meso-level approach proved significant

among economic geographers who responded

to the broader institutional turn within geogra-

phy with an understanding that economic deci-

sions were rooted in social institutions (Martin,

2000; Jessop, 2001).

Differing epistemological approaches con-

tribute significantly to how institutions and

organizations are defined and studied methodo-

logically.1

Del Casino and co-authors (2000)

outline three frameworks for analysis: spatial

science, critical realism, and poststructuralism.

They argue that spatial scientists tend to believe

that social relations can readily and literally be

mapped onto the landscape through rules and

patterns that govern and explain human beha-

vior. Critical realists similarly believe in the

material realities and effects of institutions. In

contrast, poststructuralists tend to look beneath

the surface to understand the underlying condi-

tions, social relations and discourses that brought

such material relations into existence.

Drawing on Foucault (1970, 1995, 1997) and

exemplified by Gibson-Graham (1996), a con-

structivist approach focuses on discourses, such


as economy, society, and politics, ‘that bring

forth objects and events and determine their

relationship to one another’ (Del Casino et al.,

2000: 526). In this framework, institutions do

not emerge out of preexisting conditions, but are

produced and discursively constructed as enti-

ties with particular social significance and sub-

jectivities (Del Casino et al., 2000). In the

Foucauldian tradition, scholars mapped pro-

cesses of deinstitutionalization and the entrance

of mechanisms of social regulation into the

realm of the social body. This approach under-

stands subjectivity to be constituted through

webs of legal, medical, and social relationships

through which power shifts, operating in more

dispersed, topological fashion (Martin and

Secor, 2014) and highlighting the relationship

between social and spatial relations. Constructi-

vism fueled development of new approaches to

the state and other institutions that grew more

concerned with discourse and representation

(e.g. Olsson, 1974; Jackson, 1989; Anderson,

1991; Driver, 1991) and critiqued spatially

fixed and bounded notions of institutions. Con-

structivists understood institutions as actively

produced through daily social contexts.

Rather than as a repressive, autonomous

body that affects social relations, poststructural-

ists conceptualize institutions as themselves

social constructions able to produce knowledge

and identities. This approach – influenced by

Foucauldian understandings of power and dis-

course and actor network theory, among other

ideas – understands institutional powers and

effects as dispersed, embedded, and entangled,

with more permeable boundaries dividing what

and who lies within and beyond the institution

(Rutherford, 2007) and tends to focus on opera-

tions beyond the architecture of the institution,

such as subjectivity formation and daily life

(Ashutosh, 2010). This approach entails looking

at institutions as sites where employees enact

policies across time and space, where the

everyday relations among those theoretically

conceived of as ‘outside’ bleed into daily

institutional life and vice versa. This geogra-

phical imagination of the institution posits

boundaries as fluid in daily practice. Such an

understanding requires a method that holds

quotidian life as its main focus: ethnography.

Ethnography holds potential to address daily

empirical knowledge on institutions and often

reveals the unevenness of institutional practices

and effects. As the study of daily life, ethnogra-

phy has been important to the discipline since

the early days of cultural geography. Duncan

and Duncan (2009) note that Carl Sauer’s

detailed observations of the landscape drawn

from interviews, archives, and observations

would today likely be considered ethnographic.

The method came fully into practice through

humanistic geographers (Ley, 1974) mapping

detailed observation of daily interactions

between individuals and their environment. The

recent surge in ethnography once again exam-

ines the cultural dimensions of daily work of

institutions (e.g. Herbert, 2000; Hyndman,

2000; Mountz, 2010; Belcher and Martin,

2013; Kuus, 2013; Delaney, 2014). Many eth-

nographies can be found among recent doctoral

dissertations, evidence of renewed interest

among a new generation of geographers (Ashu-

tosh, 2010; Hiemstra, 2011; Houston, 2011;

Lindner, 2012; Santiago, 2013; VandeBerg,

2013). Institutional ethnographies have grown

in popularity as one incarnation of this trend

(e.g. Perreault, 2003a, 2003b; King, 2009; Lar-

ner and Laurie, 2010; Billo, 2015).

II What is institutional

ethnography?

Ethnography is the detailed study of everyday life,

the ethnographer’s tools participant-observation,

fieldnotes, and interviews (Emerson et al.,

1995). Crucially, ethnography involves more than

the conduct of interviews. Participant-observation

and archival analysis enable the ethnographer to

study how people interact and interpret meaning:

‘what people do as well as what they say’

Billo and Mountz 5

(Herbert, 2000: 552). This need to observe is cru-

cial to the workings of institutions. While inter-

views lend insight into actors and operations of

institutions, participant-observation, fieldnotes,

and detailed archival study enable spatial analysis

and associated insights into power relations.

Where, for example, are different workers located

within a building and by social location? How are

embodiments and encounters gendered, racia-

lized, classed, and sexualized? The ethnographer

unravels patterns of behavior and interaction,

categories of identification, modes of manage-

ment, exercises in power and interpretation in

everyday life.

Ethnographic approaches to institutions have

been popular since anthropologist Laura Nader

published a seminal piece in 1972 where she

argued that anthropologists ‘study up’ in order

to better understand how institutions structure

daily life. She suggested that through this effort,

anthropologists could expand analyses beyond

those marginalized peoples upon whom they

had built the discipline. She emphasized how

little most people knew about bureaucracies and

organizations that had lasting material effects

on them (1972: 294). She argued that people

should have access to institutions and knowl-

edge about how they function:

A democratic framework implies that citizens

should have access to decision-makers, institu-

tions of government, and so on. This implies that

citizens need to know something about major

institutions, government or otherwise, that affect

their lives. (Nader, 1972: 294).

Institutional ethnography later became a key

method of ‘studying up’. Below, we discuss the

development of the approach by feminist scho-

lars and, subsequently, by geographers.

Dorothy Smith’s conception of institutional

ethnography relies on a dispersed model of the

institution and its effects, with a focus on map-

ping the daily lived ‘relations of ruling’. Smith

studies processes and practices that determine

social relations from standpoints grounded in

Figure 1. Isabel Dyck’s (1988) p. 131 adaptation of

Dorothy Smith’s institutional ethnography. Repro-

duced with kind permission of the author.

the everyday. Her approach to institutional eth-

nography begins with situated experiences of

women in daily life, then explores relations in

which these experiences are embedded: a com-

plex of interactions between individuals, institu-

tions, and society. Smith argues that sociology’s

ways of knowing the world operate within the

framework of dominant institutions that devalue

women, differentially positioned by class,

race, and other axes of difference. Social rela-

tions engender ‘relations of the ruling’ that

guide, control, coordinate and regulate societies.

Smith developed this approach to create ‘a

sociology for women’, to explore how women

are ‘organized and determined by social pro-

cesses’ that extend beyond their immediate

everyday worlds (Smith, 1987: 152). For DeVault

(2006: 295), ‘ruling relations’ function not simply

as ‘heuristic device’, but closely connect the

contemporary everyday with historic, capitalist

relations that privilege certain understandings

of motherhood and women over others. These

relations are represented visually in feminist

geographer Isabel Dyck’s (1988) diagram in

Figure 1.

In feminist approaches to institutional ethno-

graphy, these processes are constructions of

‘text-based methodologies and practices of for-

mal organization’ (Smith, 1987: 152–3; 2006).


Methods include interviews, participant-

observation, and textual analysis. The interview

process includes not just a focus on the ‘subjec-

tive state’ of the interviewee, but a means to

move onto next steps in an ongoing process of

inquiry (DeVault and McCoy, 2002). The

researcher must identify the key ‘problematic’

before moving to the next stage of analysis.

Interviews prove insufficient to address ‘core

power issues that impede social change’ (Winkel-

man and Halifax, 2007: 132). Therefore, institu-

tional ethnography also often involves archival

work, textual analysis, or recollection, as deter-

mined by the investigation (Smith, 1987).

In this tradition, analysis emerges deduc-

tively from empirical observations attentive to

the role of policy documents such as medical

charts and plans as key organizing sites. IE is

designed to ‘reveal the organizing power of

texts’ in order to link local and extralocal activ-

ities (DeVault, 2006: 295). Texts allow the

researcher to ‘reach beyond the locally observa-

ble and discoverable into the translocal social

relations and organization that permeate and

control the local’ (Smith, 2006: 65).

Smith designed IE to facilitate collabo-

ration among researchers (DeVault, 2006). The

approach is considered an ongoing, evolving

practice, rather than a clearly demarcated or

completed project; the practice grows through

networking, relationships, and group meetings

among feminist scholars. The field has expanded

beyond sociology, extending into other disci-

plines with both professional and scholarly appli-

cations (Campbell and Gregor, 2004; DeVault,

2008), the ideas especially influential in nursing

(Winkelman and Halifax, 2007), social work,

and education (DeVault, 2006).

An institutional ethnography begins with

identification of an experience, followed by not-

ing the institutional processes that produce the

experience, and then investigation of processes

identified (Dyck, 1997; DeVault and McCoy,

2002). Dyck (1988) exemplifies this approach

in her adaptation in Figure 1. She explains in a

subsequent publication how Smith’s conceptua-

lization of institutional ethnography framed

research with immigrant women: ‘we consid-

ered the way women talked of their experiences

as a starting point to discovering the social rela-

tions organizing their day-to-day lives’ (1997:

189). What emerged out of these studies were

complex and contextual understandings of iden-

tity, gendered and racialized subjectivities, and

‘more nuanced accounts of relations of oppres-

sion’ (Dyck, 1997: 198).

In their didactic text Mapping Social Rela-

tions, Campbell and Gregor (2004) show how

the approach is rooted in feminist praxis and a

politics of location, committing researchers to

begin from their own socioeconomic locations

and experiences. From there, researchers endea-

vor to address ‘problematics’ and focus on ‘puz-

zles emerging in everyday life’ (2004: 7). IE

does not set out to develop generalized theory,

but rather to explicate ‘experiential data’

(Campbell and Gregor, 2004: 8). Campbell and

Gregor explain frequently how IE is distinct

from ‘conventional research’ in its requirement

that the researcher be ‘a knower located in the

everyday world and find meaning there, in con-

trast to reliance on library research and the

application of theories’ (2004: 11). Winkelman

and Halifax (2007) distinguish between IE and

‘conventional ethnography’ by suggesting that

IE takes both subjective and objective views

of social relations, whereas conventional ethno-

graphy focuses more on participants’ or insi-

ders’ views (Winkelman and Halifax, 2007).2

As such, the approach is consistent with the poli-

tics of location, positionality, and self-reflexivity

explored by feminist geographers (Katz, 1996;

Mullings, 1999; Pratt, 2000; Moss, 2002).

Scholars in this tradition collaborate, engage

with each other’s work to build upon previous

work and advance the field. Building on this

understanding and operationalization of IE, oth-

ers have focused on neoliberalism and post-

Fordist restructuring as an extension of Smith’s

work (see Naples, 1997). Neoliberalism is

Billo and Mountz 7

analyzed as ‘meta-discourse’ that determines

particular institutional relationships, making

way for other IE studies to focus on the ‘intellec-

tual institutions’ that develop the meta-discourses

(DeVault, 2006). Ultimately, scholars doing IE

connect through their scholarship with an ontolo-

gical commitment to examining ‘ruling relations’

at work in historically-specific activities. Indi-

vidual studies build toward meta-discourses

that cross social arenas and create spaces for

new discourses and political projects to emerge

(DeVault, 2006).

While conceptually inspiring, we note two

shortcomings that make space for geographical

contributions to IE. First, IE produces somewhat

aspatial understandings of institutions. The use of

the term mapping in this approach is a figure of

speech. Smith endeavors to write for the masses

in ways that should be readily accessible as a map

would be (Campbell and Gregor, 2004: 9). Map-

ping itself and spatial analysis more broadly

remain largely absent from the approach. While

deeply rooted in the everyday and feminist epis-

temology, the approach lacks spatial analysis of

the institutional geographies and their effects.

The method of IE does not place as much empha-

sis on differentiation between different spaces of

the institution. As a result, the institution remains

flat, leaving room for more complex analyses of

the spaces of institutional productions of power.

Second, IE is conceptually problematic in its

quest for a ‘meta-narrative’ that risks losing sight

of the messiness of institutional relationships in

everyday contexts.

In contrast, geographical approaches to IE can

and do account for the spatial differentiation by

locating marginal spaces and spaces of exception,

for example, within, through, and beyond the

institution. Geographers often examine institu-

tions as structures that influence society: asylums

and hospitals, for example, seek to control and

regulate, restrain or treat human minds and bodies

(Philo and Parr, 2000: 514). Philo and Parr (2000:

515) argue that the geography of institutions and

their relative location to people, land uses, and

resources contribute to understanding social and

spatial relationships that can challenge this disci-

plinary process. Institutional analyses address

daily happenings within and between institutions

and their relationships to larger economic, politi-

cal and cultural processes (Philo and Parr, 2000:

514–15).

Methodologically, institutional ethnography

enables location of the institution in the spatial

relationships of multi-scalar everyday interactions

to avoid characterizing it as a ‘repressive autono-

mous body that affects social relations’ (Mountz,

2010: xxiv). Ethnographic analysis can point to

the ‘frustrations, subversions and networks’

amongst various actors, contributing to the ‘break-

ing points theorized as an institutional arrange-

ment of social practices’ (Mountz, 2010: xxv).

Ethnography and attention to the spatial relation-

ships in these processes can link the particular his-

tories of places with ongoing and overlapping

processes of claims to territory and sovereignty.

Geographers’ ethnographies can document

and produce more geographically textured

understandings of institutions. In Herbert’s

(1997) ethnography of local policing carried out

by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD),

for example, the method of conducting ride-

alongs with officers draws into relief individual

officers’ interpretations and productions of ter-

ritoriality in local neighborhoods. His approach

also highlights the nuances and intimacies of

boundaries drawn between private domestic and

public policing spheres.

Social scientists ‘study up’ by researching

institutions of all kinds. Critical ethnography

enables an approach to the state as ‘a set of social

practices’ (Painter, 1995: 34) and diverse institu-

tional actors exercising agency through quotidian

bureaucratic arrangements (e.g. Herbert, 1997).

Ethnographies of the state are another recent

example emerging among geographers (Mountz,

2007, 2010; Houston, 2011) and other scholars

(Nelson, 1999; Ferguson and Gupta, 2002;

Sharma and Gupta, 2006; Iskander, 2010; Rodri-

guez, 2010). Hansen and Stepputat (2001)


advocated localized, ethnographic approaches to

the state centered in the field and relying heavily

on participant-observation (e.g. Herbert, 1997).

As Timothy Mitchell (2002) suggested, analysis

of disciplinary power must occur at ‘the level of

detail’, or the scale of the everyday. Related

developments are anthropology of bureaucracy

(Heyman, 1995; Gupta, 1995), ethnographies of

modernity (Englund and Leach, 2000), globaliza-

tion (Burawoy et al., 2000), neoliberalism

(Colloredo-Mansfeld, 2002), and events (Brosius

and Campbell, 2010).

Institutional ethnography can address the pro-

duction of institutions and subjectivities in partic-

ular places and moments that become imbued

with meaning. Institutions provide an impor-

tant and necessary entry point into boundary-

making, categorization, and subjectivity-making

(Anderson, 1991, Ashutosh, 2010). To explore

these possibilities more deeply, we examine

recent work in geography characterized by

authors as institutional ethnography. We also

note, though, the significant omission of engage-

ment with work by Smith and other IE scholars

among some geographers doing institutional

ethnography.

III How geographers have

conducted institutional

ethnography

This review provides a foundation for more

cross-referencing and fuller engagement, offer-

ing potential to develop and expand ethno-

graphic approaches to institutions within the

discipline. In the first part of this section we

explore studies by geographers who explicitly

identify their own work as institutional ethno-

graphy, beginning with the earliest such refer-

ences that we could find. Our findings are

based on key term searches for ‘institutional

ethnography’ and ‘geography’ in Google scho-

lar, WorldCat dissertations database, and for

‘institutional ethnography’ in the following

journals: Annals of the Association of American

Geographers, Progress in Human Geography,

Transactions of the Institute of British Geogra-

phers, The Canadian Geographer, Area, and The

Professional Geographer. We include scholar-

ship by anyone who framed writing as institu-

tional ethnography and was either housed in a

geography department, publishing in a geography

journal, or trained as a geographer. Additionally,

we presented the work at a national conference,

workshopped the paper with graduate students

in a large geography department in North Amer-

ica, and asked 15 additional geographers working

in related fields to provide feedback on this paper

and apprise us of any omissions.

In this section, we track uses of the term insti-

tutional ethnography by geographers (listed in

Table 1), and then explain and illustrate a typol-

ogy of ethnographic approaches to institutions

more broadly (located in Table 2). Table 1

shows geographical scholarship where authors

explicitly frame research as institutional ethnogra-

phy. We note the specific methods (interviews,

participant-observation, and textual analysis) used

in each study. In every case, interviews proved

central, but only half used all three methods.

As a study of daily life, we suggest that ethno-

graphy must involve more than interviews, or

what participants say, as Herbert (2000) notes.

We ask what makes these studies ethnographic

if, in some cases, everyday life in the institution

is overlooked?

The earliest use of the term institutional eth-

nography that we could find was by feminist

geographer Isabel Dyck (1988, 1997), followed

by Jennifer Hyndman (1996, 2000). Both

applied Smith’s approach to governmental and

supra-governmental organizations. Both scho-

lars began from experience, in Hyndman’s case

prior employment with the agency studied. They

locate the institution in daily life by following the

quotidian experiences of people and policies.

Dyck’s (1988, 1997) work in health geography

tracked health-related institutions through peo-

ple’s daily encounters, and she also studied the

experiences of immigrant women. Hyndman

Billo and Mountz 9

Table 1. Scholarship characterized by geographers as institutional ethnography.

Participant-

Archival or

Year, General topic (citation) observation Interviews textual

1997 Health care

(Dyck 1988, 1997)

2000 UN management of refugee camps

(Hyndman 1996, 2000) 2003 Indigenous organizations

(Perreault, 2003a)

2007 Federal immigration bureaucracy (Mountz 2007,

2010)

2009 Conservation organizations

(King 2009)

2010 Policy development

(Larner and Laurie 2010)

p p p

p p

p p p

p p p

p p p

p p

2012 Corporate social responsibility (Billo 2012, 2015) p p

Disaster management (Grove 2013) p p

2013 UN agency fighting piracy p p

(VandeBerg 2013, Gilmer 2014)6

(1996, 2000) researched the practices and

effects of the United Nations High Commis-

sioner for Refugees’ management of refugee

camps in Kenya. She merges political economy

with feminist analysis to understand how donor

states and governments hosting refugees work

through the organization across sites and scales

to ultimately manage bodies, subjectivities,

and resources on the ground.

The next usage of the term institutional eth-

nography occurs among geographers doing

work related to environmental and develop-

ment agencies (Perreault 2003a, 2003b; King,

2009; Larner and Laurie, 2010; Wolford,

2010a). Beginning less often with personal

experience, this scholarship attends closely to

the movement of ideas, discourses and policies

about development, beginning within and ema-

nating outward from institutions and often

focused on the role of elites within institutions.

King (2009) suggests that institutional ethno-

graphy, development ethnography, and network

ethnography are interchangeable terms, linked

by their ‘concern with penetrating organizations

and social networks to understand how particular

discourses and policies are created’ (King, 2009:

409). Scholars working in the field of environ-

ment and development (cf. Watts, 2001, 2002;

Perreault, 2003a, 2003b; Wainwright, 2008;

King, 2009) have asked how ideas about develop-

ment become institutionalized, which gain cur-

rency in ‘battlefields over knowledge’ such as

the World Bank (Bebbington et al., 2004), where

and how conflict transpires and consent is pro-

duced, sometimes exploring the internal

dynamics of large development institutions (Hart,

2004). In these studies, the researcher usually

conducts interviews with or analyzes discussions

of those on the inside (Perreault, 2003a, 2003b;

Bebbington et al., 2004; Goldman, 2004, 2005;

King, 2009; Wolford, 2010a).

Whereas Table 1 includes only those who

frame their own work as IE, Table 2 broadens

the analysis to include recent ethnographic

approaches to institutions undertaken by geo-

graphers, whether explicitly labeled ‘institu-

tional ethnography’ or not. We designed a

typology to categorize these studies by metho-

dological approach in order to discern different

ethnographic approaches to institutions, as


Table 2. Typology of approaches to institutional ethnography within geography.7

Methodological

Types of

institutions Geographical

conceptualization

approach studied of the institution Authors8

1. Following Following actors, Enforcement Transnational, Herbert (1997, 2000),

participant- agencies, CSR, translocal, Hyndman (2000),

observation, health and institution that Nevins (2002), Larner

interviews humanitarian produces and Laurie (2010),

agencies territoriality, Wolford (2010b),

people who cross Moran et al. (2012,

thresholds 2013), Billo (2012, 2015) 2. Time on the Participant- Asylums, More attention to Kariya (1993), Hyndman

inside observation, bureaucracies the rhythms of (1996, 2000), Parr

interviews interior (2000), Mountz (2010),

inside the institutions Houston (2011), Moran,

institution (a spaces, observing Gill, and Conlon (2013),

specific place) roles and Vandeburg (2013),

interactions Gilman (2014) 3. Getting at the Interviews, Development, Interviews may take Perreault (2003a, 2003b),

inside: discourse governmental place inside or Bebbington et al. (2004), interviews analysis and non- outside the King (2009), Peck and with governmental institution Theodore (2010), organizational agencies Wolford (2010a), actors Houston (2011), Grove

(2013) 4. Influencing life Participant- Governmental Constituted by Dyck (1988, 1997),

on the outside observation and and non- people once Hiemstra (2011),

interviews, governmental inside, now on Bhungalia (2013),

textual analysis agencies the outside Moran, Piacentini, and

from outside of Pallot (2013)

the institution 5. Event Short-term Development, Fleeting temporal Brosius and Campbell

ethnography participant- environmental and spatial (2010), Corson and

observation of events where dimensions McDonald (2012),

key events policy is Suarez and Corson

developed (2013)

well as some associated insights and shortcom-

ings. Our typology notes distinctions in meth-

ods used (participant-observation, interviews,

textual and discourse analysis), and the spatial

dimensions of each approach.

1. A typology of approaches to institutions

We delineate five ethnographic approaches to

institutions in our typology. The first,

‘following’, refers to the tendency of res-

earchers to follow institutional actors in their

daily work. This following relies heavily on

participant-observation to document power

relations at a microscale, such as movements

into and out of the material structure of the insti-

tution, and along territories constructed by insti-

tutional actors, such as neighborhoods, refugee

camps, and border crossings. As noted earlier,

Herbert’s (1997) ethnography with the LAPD

Billo and Mountz 11

involved riding with police officers to under-

stand how constructions of space and renderings

of the boundaries of neighborhoods enacted vio-

lence on residents. Like Herbert, Nevins (2002)

did ride-alongs with US border patrol along the

Mexico-US border to understand how readings

of the landscape and daily transgressions therein

enabled authorities to enact racialized violence

that built on historical dispossession in the

region. Although Herbert, Nevins, and others

(e.g. Hiemstra, 2011; Bhungalia, 2013) do not

label their work institutional ethnography, we

find these to be contemporary and ethnographi-

cally rich accounts of institutions located along

borders and carrying out bordering processes

beyond office walls. Other geographers have con-

ducted research that we find to be important to the

development of ethnography in the discipline, if

not labeled as institutional ethnography, includ-

ing Anderson’s (1991) and Houston’s (2011)

work on city government and Schuurman’s

(2008) innovative database ethnographies.

The second approach, ‘time on the inside’,

overlaps with the first, but has the researcher

placing more emphasis on dwelling in the

offices of the institution, and particularly in

the bureaucracy. Whereas Herbert (1997) and

Nevins (2002) spent more time in the field

following actors in their work outside of the

office (with occasional visits to the field beyond

office), for example, Mountz (2010) and Vande-

Berg (2013) spent more time studying daily

work within bureaucratic offices of federal and

UN agencies (with occasional visits to beyond).

Importantly, both of these first two categories

involved participant-observation, which lent

insights into the daily life of institutional spaces,

whether in the office or the field. While time on

the inside reveals much about the operation of

power within the institution, less time is gener-

ally spent beyond the institution looking at insti-

tutional effects. This may relate to the topic

itself, such as the difficulty of pursuing people

involved in piracy (VandeBerg, 2013) or human

smuggling at sea (Mountz, 2010).

As an illustrative example, we explore Gil-

mer’s (2014) work in greater depth.3

Gilmer

worked for the UN agency created to combat

piracy in and around Somalia. Like previous

scholarship on agencies that regulate mobility

(Herbert, 1997; Hyndman, 2000), Gilmer makes

extensive use of participant-observation. Hired

by the agency to design and implement a public

campaign to assist in this fight, Gilmer builds on

her insider perspective to undertake a critical

ethnography of the agency and its construction

of pirates and piracy. She finds that many of the

initiatives fail to thwart piracy, instead lining

the coffers of development workers who them-

selves become the lucrative subjects of securiti-

zation as they compete for funding and become

what she calls ‘piratized’ in the process. By

‘following’ and ‘spending time on the inside’,

Gilmer’s analysis addresses distinct social

locations of those who work across the hierar-

chy of the organization, with English-speaking

employees from countries of the Global North

performing the higher skilled and higher paid

jobs, for example. She is also able to observe the

minutiae of daily work, the power struggles

over decisions made within the office and the

corruption encountered on her trips into Soma-

lia and island prisons where people arrested for

piracy are held and interviewed.

One of the challenges of this approach involves

the intimate entanglements that emerge through

friendship and working ethnographic relation-

ships in which researchers become embroiled,

and the inevitable betrayal that ensues (Stacey,

1988; Visweswaran, 1994; Mountz, 2007). Her-

bert (2000) writes about the emotional and

physical effects of participant-observation that

may involve witnessing violence or discrimina-

tory behavior or omitting information from the

analysis. Such violence may be another reason

why those who spend more time on the inside

are sometimes less able to gain access to those

who are biopolitically managed by institutions.

The third category, ‘getting at the inside:

interviews with organizational actors’, is


perhaps the most common approach among geo-

graphers identifying their work as ‘institutional

ethnography’ over the last ten years. This

approach relies less on participant-observation,

and more heavily on analysis of interviews and

documents to access the institutional structure,

sometimes characterized as a ‘black box’ (Beb-

bington et al., 2004: 37). In these studies, the

researcher is usually located outside of the insti-

tution and accesses information about the institu-

tion by conducting interviews and corresponding

with institutional actors or accessing discourses

of those on the inside through reports and publi-

cations (Perreault, 2003a, 2003b; Goldman,

2004, 2005; King, 2009; Wolford, 2010a).4

Analysis may also examine how institutional

discourses travel into the world beyond the

institution (Bebbington et al., 2004). These

studies have tended to adopt more bounded

notions of the institution with more clearly

defined populations, policies, and cultures

(e.g. Goldman, 2004; 2005; Lewis and Mosse,

2006; King, 2009) and have drawn on discourse

and debates among elites (e.g. Bebbington

et al., 2004) to understand how institutions and

individual actors within them shape develop-

ment (e.g. Goldman 2004, 2005).

Perreault (2003a, 2003b), for example, draws

on interviews with key informants to examine

how ethnicity, territory, and identity intersect

in an indigenous Kichwa organization in Ecua-

dor, producing a discourse through which indi-

genous peoples participate in development

processes. His analysis focuses on the ways in

which indigenous organizations ‘resist, refract,

and at times reproduce dominant narratives of

development, modernization, and citizenship’

(Perreault, 2003a: 586). Perreault (2003a: 602)

aims to uncover the organization’s political stra-

tegies to contest and negotiate processes of

development and ‘social transformation’. King

(2009) analyzes the centrality of a neoliberal

commercialization discourse in a South African

conservation organization, while Goldman

(2004, 2005) focuses on the production of the

World Bank’s ‘authoritative green knowledge’.

These studies are linked by their ‘liberatory

potential’ in negotiation of development pro-

cesses (Perreault, 2003a: 603), but limited in

their articulation of the daily operation of insti-

tutions and the social locations or embodiment

of those who do (and do not) inhabit them.

While acknowledging the partiality of their

findings, these studies produce disembodied

institutions, rather than what the anthropologist

Clifford Geertz (1973) famously called ‘thick

description’ of daily life of and in the institution.

While not working under the rubric of institu-

tional ethnography, Bebbington and co-authors

(Bebbington et al., 2004, 2006) study discursive

debates over the concept of social capital tran-

spiring in the World Bank. They explore the

relationship between the institution’s inside

and out, arguing ‘that ‘‘getting inside’’ develop-

ment institutions is important for understanding

how and why certain discourses emanate from

them, for interpreting the significance of these

discourses, and for understanding the indetermi-

nate relationship between discourse and practice’

(Bebbington et al., 2004: 34). Through discourse

analysis of publications and personal communi-

cations, the authors find:

different arenas in which the contests are waged:

internally among its staff (the battlefield we focus

on here); externally with non-Bank actors and

those encountered in the course of implementing

projects; and – more intriguingly – cross-border

battles in which different sub-communities within

the Bank are linked to different communities out-

side the Bank, and where the battles engage larger

communities whose memberships transcend insti-

tutional boundaries. (Bebbington et al., 2004: 38)

In this approach, the embodiment and positional-

ity of researchers is not the starting point. Instead,

researchers examine the discourses and players at

work within a powerful institution and struggles

over knowledge production among them. They

accomplish this through examination of texts

rather than the social locations of their authors.

Billo and Mountz 13

These studies did not involve participant-

observation in the form of following actors or

spending time on the inside, but tended to involve

the conduct of interviews with employees both

within and beyond institutional spaces. As Kuus

(2013) argues, this limitation may reflect the chal-

lenge of actually conducting ethnographic study

of policy issues.5

Yet data drawn from interviews

without the insights of participant-observation

limit the claims a study can make to understand

and interpret daily life in Geertz’s (1973) terms:

detailed-oriented ‘thick description’.

In contrast, anthropologist Diane Nelson

(1999) makes related arguments in her ‘ethno-

graphy of the state’, studying representations

of indigenous and state identities in Guatemala

with a distinct approach. She posits the state is

imagined and lived through multiple ‘bodies

politic’ of Mayan women, rooted in ‘manipula-

tion and violence’ tied to indigenous rights and

nation-building. She operates not only within a

distinct discipline, but with a distinct set of

epistemological frameworks from development

ethnographies: feminist, postmodern, and post-

structural approaches. The result is a more dis-

persed understanding of institutions and their

embeddedness in daily life. Sawyer (2001,

2004), also an anthropologist, examines the daily

social and environmental consequences of

increased demand for oil via indigenous mobili-

zations in Ecuador. She employs participant-

observation and interviews to explore social

relationships between an indigenous organiza-

tion, multinational oil companies, and the state

that produce ‘indigenous opposition to economic

globalization in its neoliberal guise’ (Sawyer,

2004: 7). She focuses specifically on the power

inequalities that emerge in this ‘terrain of strug-

gle’ over ‘identities, territories, and relations’

as indigenous peoples sought recognition and

rights in a plurinational Ecuadorian state (2004:

222). In these analyses, people themselves

embody, inhabit, and shape institutional struc-

tures at the same time that they are shaped by

them.

While some geographers engage in discourse

and ideas on the inside, others use ethnography

to understand how institutions influence life on

the outside. The fourth and fifth categories,

‘influencing life on the outside’ and ‘event eth-

nography’, involve even more distance from the

physical spaces of the institution, deriving

material from purviews outside of institutional

spaces, either through interviews, archives, or

observations that provided more limited

glimpses and allow for less triangulation than

sustained time on the inside. Although they do

not characterize their work as institutional eth-

nography, for example, both Hiemstra (2011)

and Bhungalia (2013) conducted ethnographic

research on US agencies: detention and deporta-

tion systems run by the Department of Home-

land Security and the work of US AID in

Palestine, respectively. Their ethnographies

were not in the headquarters in countries where

these institutions are based, but rather in the

remote locations where the effects of their insti-

tutional policies and practices were felt power-

fully. Hiemstra worked with deportees and

their families in Ecuador to learn about deten-

tion in and deportation from the United States.

Bhungalia worked in Palestine with organiza-

tional actors securing funding from US AID.

The result is a decentralized landscape of the

institution – what some would call a govern-

mentality approach (Foucault, 1991) or ‘state

effects’ (Mitchell, 2002) – with effects that

extend into daily life well beyond the borders

of the institution or that reverberate transna-

tionally (Hiemstra, 2011; Bhungalia, 2013).

Research in the margins holds potential to shift

understandings of power in and of hegemonic

institutions that advance imperialism and con-

finement of populations.

While these more spatially removed

approaches may not come as close to the daily

rhythms of life inside the institution, including

institutional oppression, they also result, we

suggest, in a more geographically dispersed

topography of the institutions being studied and


a rich rendering of the effects of institutions in

the daily lives of those whom they affect. Their

analyses show production of subjectivities of

aid workers in the West Bank and detainees and

deportees in Cuenca, Ecuador, shaped by US-

based national agencies, uncovering mundane

acts of resistance in daily life. Both authors

show the racialized, gendered, and classed

dimensions of institutional effects beyond insti-

tutional walls and national boundaries. An obvi-

ous limitation of working ‘from the outside’ is

the lack of direct observation of the daily oper-

ations of the institution, with reliance instead on

narratives about institutional practices or poli-

cies from aid workers and deportees.

The final category, ‘event ethnographies’,

encompasses a recent development undertaken

by 17 scholars in environmental studies work-

ing collaboratively to do short, intensive periods

of participant-observation to study events such

as conferences and workshops of powerful insti-

tutional meetings (Brosius and Campbell, 2010;

Corson and McDonald, 2012; Suarez and Cor-

son, 2013). This approach draws on ethno-

graphic traditions in development rather than

the field of institutional ethnography. Event eth-

nographies differ from other approaches for

their temporality: rather than pursue the tradi-

tion of long periods of time devoted to under-

standing the daily rhythms and relations in

place, the event ethnography is premised on

short-term, yet important (if fleeting), moments

of coming together.

Similar to Wolford’s (2010a) characteriza-

tion of ethnography of a site, yet differing in

their use of participant-observation, Corson and

MacDonald (2012) reconceptualize the field

through the event by drawing on research at the

UN Convention on Biological Diversity. We

find this approach innovative for the character-

ization of the field as a place that brings together

a number of institutions and actors in one time

and place. The opportunity to see people inter-

act in one setting is important, and yet at present

under-developed in the findings reported – the

potential insights of an ethnographic approach

are not yet fulfilled in this incipient work. The

innovative framing of a new field – the event

as place – is at odds with the lack of description

of that place and those within it. Missing from

these analyses is Geertz’s (1973) ‘thick descrip-

tion’. In the decision to conceptualize the event

as a place, the description of its characteristics,

landscape, feel, or context has not yet been illu-

strated. The authors draw primarily on public

statements made in side events, yet those who

spoke them are not described, located, identified

or embodied. The messy, everyday unfolding of

institutional operations that might be con-

structed from fieldnotes would enhance the

development of event ethnography. Participants

in UN conventions generally agree that much

of the ‘real’ conversation and work happens

before the event, with the short event providing

a public forum for the statement of positions

and agendas. What kind of negotiations occurred

before the more public performances quoted?

Does the event ethnography include participant-

observation in the more mundane, daily lead-up

to the annual coming together? As a result of

the decision to focus temporally and spatially

on the event itself, this approach provides new

insights while missing others.

‘Fast policy transfer’ (Peck and Theodore,

2010) and ‘collaborative event ethnography’ are

part of the upsurge in ethnographic research, but

not necessarily engaged with institutional ethno-

graphy. Peck and Theodore (2010) make brief

reference to institutional ethnography in their

writing (citing Larner and Laurie, 2010, who in

turn cite Goldman, 2005). Yet this scholarship

remains largely disconnected from earlier work

on institutional ethnography by geographers and

others. Still, there are important continuities to

observe. As Delaney notes, contemporary trends

in economic geography are influenced by the

Deleuzian assemblage which ‘offers a frame in

which to examine how institutions and policies

‘‘territorialize’’’ and by actor network theory

with its ‘focus on the act of translation in

Billo and Mountz 15

bringing policy and practice networks into coher-

ent structures’ (Delaney, 2014: 19). These

approaches render more dispersed ethnographic

mappings of institutions that could draw from

and advance practices of institutional ethnogra-

phy. They also share thematic interests, such as

advancing understandings of neoliberalism.

Our typology uncovers distinctions in the

methodological approach and epistemology and

ontology of institutions, with spatial differences

tied to ethnographic methods employed by

researchers. We found that studies that either

omit participant-observation as a method or

do not draw on these data in their analyses fail

to observe the influences and embeddedness

of the institution in everyday life. Participant-

observation is attentive to emotion, subjectivity,

power struggles, resistance, and proximity of

the institution. IE is about accessing the every-

day, as is ethnography generally. We still

have much to learn from anthropologists such

as Nelson, who is indiscriminate in engaging

ephemera collected in daily life. Chance

encounters, t-shirt slogans, cartoons, conversa-

tions – all become locations where the institu-

tion, its effects and productive capacity are

readily evident. The result is Clifford Geertz’s

(1973) ‘thick description’ of daily life. This

more textured view of an institution differs from

a more fixed notion of the institution whose pol-

itics, projects, subjects, and discourses are

accessed primarily through interviews – in other

words, the ways that institutional subjects or

employees narrate the institution. The latter

cannot readily account for the sociospatial dif-

ferences in power operating within and across

the daily productions of an institution. Institu-

tional formation and operation across center

and periphery lead to differential outcomes of

discourse and practice, with unequal impacts

and effects. More sustained, critical engage-

ment with heterogeneous and interdisciplinary

approaches to institutional ethnography will

improve understandings of institutions within

and beyond the discipline of geography.

2. Enhancing scholarship on institutions

Here, we explore institutional ethnography from

geographical perspectives. With limited space,

we offer two areas drawn from our own fields

of research to demonstrate how critical engage-

ment across approaches within and beyond the

discipline of geography holds potential to

enhance scholarship on institutions. The two

kinds of institutions we discuss are corporate

social responsibility (CSR) (Billo, 2012, 2015)

and institutions where people are detained (spe-

cifically, detention centers and prisons) (Moran

et al., 2012; Mountz et al., 2013; Loyd et al.,

2012; Mitchelson, 2013; Mountz et al., 2013).

Both are sets of institutions that geographers

have shown more interest in of late (Moran

et al., 2012).

CSR programs are the business response to

social and environmental criticism of corporate

operations (Sadler and Lloyd, 2009 ; The Econ-

omist, 2008; Watts, 2005). In Ecuador, these

programs emerged out of state, corporate, and

indigenous relationships, and are designed to

ensure ongoing resource extraction. Mandated

by the Ecuadorian state, CSR programs incorpo-

rate indigenous peoples in local development

projects, such as drinking water systems and

community infrastructure – things the state

might normally provide. Billo’s (2012) research

uncovers the disciplinary techniques of CSR

programs through implementation of corporate

programs for local development (cf. Foucault,

1991). An IE engages the everyday processes

of implementation of CSR programs that can

at once co-opt and legitimate discourses and

practices of indigenous rights to resources

through the material projects and programs of

CSR. The subsequent presence of CSR programs

in everyday interactions produces ambivalent

indigenous subjects; indigenous entanglement

with dominant power structures complicates

notions of resistance and contributes to new

forms of resource governance and development

processes in Ecuador (Billo, 2012, 2015). In turn,


rather than focus solely on narrowly defined cor-

porate projects labeled CSR, IE seeks to under-

stand the relationships that form within CSR

programs and expand well beyond the local indi-

genous communities, raising questions about

indigenous citizenship and about how the corpo-

rate and philanthropic come together to produce

subjectivities in extractive industries (Billo,

2012).

Scholars have argued that prisons are not

what Goffman (1961) labeled ‘the total institu-

tion’: enclosed facilities that contain everything

and everyone therein (Moran et al., 2013: 110–

12). Rather, they can be conceptualized as more

fluid, ‘transcarceral’ entities (Moran et al.,

2013). Although prisons immobilize and con-

tain those imprisoned, they have surprisingly

permeable boundaries. Many material things

move across prison walls: food, supplies, medi-

cal services, information, capital, paperwork,

statistics, workers, visitors, and detainees them-

selves. This movement proves helpful in study-

ing prisons and detention facilities where people

are held; these are difficult sites for researchers

to access and where researcher access can put

vulnerable populations at further risk. Penal

institutions are therefore highly suited to study

through institutional ethnography in Smith’s

tradition. IE opens the institution to research

in ways that do not necessarily require physical

access. Interviews and participant-observation

may fruitfully be conducted with workers, for-

mer detainees, and visitors such as family,

friends, and lawyers. This opens a broader land-

scape through which to understand the prison.

Focusing on what happens not only within but

across boundaries also fosters research on sensi-

tive topics and vulnerable populations in rela-

tively ‘safe’ ways for those institutionalized.

Conversely, research premised on entry into

prisons would be riskier for participants and

more likely prone to failure should access not

be granted.

Feminist approaches to studying imprison-

ment have fruitfully pursued more dispersed

understandings of the social relations of impri-

sonment with exciting outcomes. Mary Bos-

worth (2005), for example, conducted research

on imprisonment and co-authored findings with

four prisoners who reflected on the experience.

The result is ‘a situated example of, as well as a

call for, dialogue about research across prison

walls’ (2005: 250). The authors aim to destabi-

lize power relations and boundaries between

researcher and researched, ‘make clear the

fundamentally affective nature of qualitative

research’ and show how emotions motivate par-

ticipants in research and, in so doing, that pris-

oners – like researchers – are individuals with

desires and emotions (2005: 251). Bosworth and

co-authors bring to our discussion the alterna-

tive media and kinds of texts that can be part

of IE, such as the role of letters, their potential

to engage a broad emotional register through

their play with time and space beyond and

within the institution (as in the daily nature of

mail call woven into the slow movement of

mail). In so doing, they disrupt boundaries

between inside and outside of prison and

research project, and what counts as personal

and professional interaction. Similarly, Moran

and co-authors (Moran et al., 2013) concep-

tualize Russian prisons as ‘mobile, embodied

and transformative’ transcarceral spaces that

permeate prison walls. By recasting research

as cooperation and intimacy, such approaches

destabilize ownership of research agendas

and outcomes and disrupt masculinist notions

of penetrating institutions, while simultane-

ously reconfiguring geographical understand-

ings of institutions. These approaches have

tended to be feminist, premised on the project

of analyzing women’s experiences (e.g. Dyck,

1997; Bosworth, 2005; Moran et al., 2013).

IV Conclusions

As we have shown in our typology and accom-

panying discussion, geographers have practiced

institutional ethnography in a variety of ways.

Billo and Mountz 17

Yet the collective potential for geographers to

deepen development of institutional ethnogra-

phy and contribute to institutional analyses

remains unrealized. Geographers stand to con-

tribute more sophisticated socio-spatial under-

standings of institutions. Content analysis of

references found shows that geographers often

do not reference earlier ethnographic research

on institutions in geography or the vibrant, inter-

disciplinary field of institutional ethnography.

Our typology of institutions will aid in more

direct engagement and discussion of the benefits

and limitations of varied approaches, resulting in

further development of the field. A deepening

and diversity of approaches to institutions can

advance understanding of micro- and macro-

processes, as well as meta-discourses such as

neoliberalism.

We have called for institutional ethnography

and engagement with literature within and

beyond geography. Indeed, pursuing the same

method in distinct contexts illuminates parallels

in the operation of states, capitalism, and the

punitive and productive natures of institutions.

In this context we note subject formation that

emerges through institutions as mediators

between state and subject, at times ‘erasing’ dif-

ference in the name of securing wealth and

membership in the nation-state (cf. Nelson,

2001; Lindner, 2012). Institutional ethnography

offers the possibility to study up to understand

the differential effects of institutions within and

beyond institutional spaces and associated pro-

ductions of subjectivities and material inequal-

ities. IE can function as an approach to look

within, through, and beyond the architecture,

policies, texts, and problematics of the institu-

tion to understand how, why, and for whom.

Practiced in a variety of ways, IE holds potential

to enrich geographical research, both in kinds of

institutions studied and territorial dynamics

rooted in institutional effects, structures, and

identities.

Our research demonstrates that institutions

are not uniform across times and places,

although they often construct discourses and

practices that produce a coherent, monolithic

appearance. Through discussion of research on

prison facilities and CSR programs, we show

that IE can be attentive to where the institu-

tion is produced and in turn produces daily

lives. Further engagement with subjectivity

and intersectionality will deepen understand-

ings of institutional power and help in the break-

ing down of barriers between those confined and

those on the outside. By attending to gender, race,

ethnicity, sexuality, and class, the approach can

note differences within and among institutional

actors and those affected by institutions. We

argue that this approach is attentive to inequal-

ities, relationships of power, and researchers’

social locations in conceptualizing institutions.

A diversity of approaches will also potentially

result in fewer masculinist constructions of

knowledge predicated on accessing elites.

Our analysis opens a new set of questions yet

unanswered. We are interested to learn more,

for example, about how recent methodological

developments in geography intersect with insti-

tutional ethnography, including fast policy

transfer, event ethnography, actor network

theory, and science and technology studies.

While we have mentioned these approaches

in this text, more work remains to be done

as to their productive intersections and diver-

gence from institutional ethnography as it

has been practiced by geographers and other

social scientists.

We have argued for institutional ethnogra-

phy. Rather than suggest that there is one way

of doing institutional ethnography, our goal has

been to review the range of approaches pursued

by geographers and other scholars and the

potential insights and shortcomings of various

approaches, with the ultimate objective of

broader engagement. Institutions are fundamen-

tally powerful and spatial in nature. As such,

their ethnographic mapping across sites and

scales is essential to advance understandings

of political, economic, and social relations.


Acknowledgements

We are grateful to many insightful readers of earlier

drafts of this article who shared feedback and their

own scholarship: Ishan Ashutosh, Mat Coleman,

Isabel Dyck, Roberta Hawkins, Nancy Hiemstra,

Jennifer Hyndman, Vicky Lawson, Keith Lindner,

Jenna Loyd, Jacob Miller, Dominique Moran,

Lawrence Santiago, Nadine Schuurman, Margaret

Walton-Roberts, Richard Wright, and graduate stu-

dents at the School of Geography and Development

at the University of Arizona. This material is based

upon work supported by the National Science Foun-

dation under Award #0847133 (Principal Investiga-

tor: Alison Mountz). The research in Ecuador was

supported by a National Science Foundation Doc-

toral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant

(#0825763) and by an Inter-American Foundation

Grassroots Development PhD Fellowship.

Notes

1. Del Casino and co-authors (2000) suggest few dif-

ferences between institutions and organizations, both

sites of a ‘coalescing’ of structural relations that

emerge from innovation or habituation of actors

(2000: 525).

2. This position is not unique to IE, but central to feminist

approaches to ethnography and methods more broadly

(cf. McDowell, 1992; Moss, 2002).

3. VandeBerg changed her name to Gilmer between pub-

lication of her dissertation and book.

4. We note that Wolford (2010b) used participant-

observation extensively in her work with Brazil’s Land-

less People’s Movement (MST). While an ethnography

of a social movement, she does not characterize this

work as institutional ethnography.

5. Kuus (2013: 116) distinguishes further between study

of conceptions of policy in the offices of policymakers

and the effects of those policies in other sites.

6. VandeBerg (2013) creates and analyzes an archive of

some 200 media stories, which are about if not of the

institution she studies.

7. Note that there is overlap across the five approaches

delineated in this typology.

8. Our aim in this figure is to create a typology and pro-

vide examples of scholarship that demonstrate these

categories. We do not claim to represent the fullness

or complexity of what these studies actually do and

find.

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