For institutional ethnography: geographical approaches to institutions and the everyday.

Article

For institutional ethnography:Geographical approaches toinstitutions and the everyday

Emily BilloGoucher College, USA

Alison MountzWilfrid Laurier University, Canada

AbstractIn this paper we unpack how geographers have studied institutions, focusing specifically on institutionalethnography, often called ‘IE’. Sociologist Dorothy Smith is widely credited with developing institutionalethnography as an ‘embodied’ feminist approach. Smith studies the experiences of women in daily life, and thecomplex social relations in which these are embedded. Institutional ethnography offers the possibility tostudy up to understand the differential effects of institutions within and beyond institutional spaces andassociated productions of subjectivities and material inequalities. We suggest that geographical scholarshipon institutions can be enhanced and, in turn, has much to contribute to the broader interdisciplinary field oninstitutional ethnography, such as understandings of institutions that account for spatial differentiation. Weargue 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 territorialforces. In spite of recent interest by geographers, the broader literature on institutional ethnography remainsunder-engaged and under-cited by human geographers. Critical of this lack of engagement, we suggest that ithas left a gap in geographical research on institutions. Our aim is to analyze and advance existing scholarshipand 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 bygeographers.

Keywordsethnography, everyday, institutional ethnography, institutions, studying up

Over the last two decades, geographers haveexpressed renewed interest in ethnography(Herbert, 2000) and institutions (e.g. Anderson,1991; Herbert, 1997; Schoenberger, 1997; DelCasino et al., 2000; Hyndman, 2000; Nevins,2002; Mountz, 2010), and growing interest ininstitutional ethnography. Whereas Steve Her-bert (2000) argued ‘for ethnography’ in thisjournal 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, GoucherCollege, 1021 Dulaney Valley Road, Baltimore, MD 21204,USA.Email: [email protected]

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approaches by unpacking how geographersgo about studying institutions, with particularattention to institutional ethnography.

Institutional ethnography was originally con-ceptualized and coined by sociologist DorothySmith (1987, 2006), developed subsequentlyby other feminist social scientists (e.g. Camp-bell and Gregor, 2004; Devault, 2006), andoperationalized recently by geographers usinga range of methodological approaches. Institu-tional ethnography has explicit critical or libera-tory goals in its exploration of processes ofsubordination. Rooted in Marxist and feministscholarship, 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 mothersconstructed as ‘defective’ within dominantsocial narratives, including schooling and healthcare. The role of the researcher in this case is touncover the ‘ruling relations’ that produce sin-gle mothers as outside the norm, exposing howteachers and other institutional actors are boundup in the production of dominant narratives andpractices. Institutional ethnography brings tothe fore these kinds of ‘problems’ in the systemthat discriminate against single mothers andmaps 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-spatialrelations, effects in daily life – and potentialcontributions to social justice movements. Inspite of recent interest among geographers, thebroader literature on institutional ethnography(often called ‘IE’) remains under-engaged andunder-cited by human geographers. Critical ofthis lack of engagement, we suggest that it hasleft a gap in geographical research on institu-tions. Rather than explore the reasons why geo-graphers have not engaged existing scholarshipmore deeply, we explore its potential contribu-tions to geography, and from geography, in turn,

to the broader field of IE. Our aim is to analyzeand advance existing scholarship and offer thisarticle as a tool for geographers thinking aboutemploying IE, which is practiced in a varietyof ways.

We argue that IE holds potential to enrichgeographical research not only about a multi-tude of kinds of institutions, but about themany structures, effects, and identities work-ing through institutions as territorial forces.We advocate for continued development ofinstitutional ethnography and find that geo-graphic scholarship on institutions will be muchenhanced through engagement with scholarshipbeyond the discipline. Furthermore, engage-ment with scholarship beyond the discipline’sborders will not only enhance scholarship oninstitutions, but potentially enhance contribu-tions of research on institutions to social justicemovements.

We begin with a brief overview of how geo-graphers have studied institutions over time inorder to situate the recent upswing. We thenexplain institutional ethnography in more detailas an interdisciplinary field developed by fem-inist scholars from the late 1980s to the present.In our penultimate section, we examine howgeographers have recently used institutionalethnography with a typology of approaches. Thesection ends with an exploration of avenues tomore sustained, critical engagement with othersocial scientists working on and in institutions.We conclude with a summary of contributionsand new questions.

I Placing IE in geography: Anecessarily incomplete genealogyof disciplinary engagement withinstitutionsGeographers have debated methods with whichto research institutions (Flowerdew, 1982; DelCasino et al., 2000; Herbert, 2000) and episte-mological frames through which to understandthem (Philo and Parr, 2000). We aim here to

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situate geographers’ recent interests in institu-tions within a broader history within the disci-pline, without necessarily establishing directmovement or causality between one momentof institutional engagement and the next (as inthe genealogical tradition). Underlying shiftsin the discipline will be recognizable, includinghumanism and managerialism of the 1960s and1970s, the cultural and institutional turns of the1980s and 1990s, and the influence of postmo-dern, poststructural, and feminist thought in the1990s and 2000s. Geographers have examinedinstitutions in fits and starts over time, oftenlacking the history of disciplinary engagementand contemporary scholarship on institutionsthriving 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 werelargely managerialists who, influenced by beha-vioralist geographers, tended to critique the ideaof the institution as monolith and analyze therole of different government institutions, theireffects 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 ofmanagerialists, examining how managers shapesocial realities through the internal cultures oforganizations. Ley, for example, contested aWeberian approach that conceptualized institu-tions as efficient and rational bodies with ‘perfectaccess to information’ (1983: 220). He observeda ‘lack of everyday empirical analysis’ (Ley,1983: 220). This dearth of empirical evidenceand the failure to examine quotidian practices arerecurring themes in geographers’ approaches toinstitutions. Such an inductive approach wouldpay more attention to the everyday contexts outof which organizational actions emerge and tothe meanings of events to organizational mem-bers who lie behind their initiatives andresponses (Ley, 1983: 225). As precursor to

contemporary forms of institutional ethnogra-phy, Ley (1983) explored internal subculturesof urban institutions and the rise of organiza-tional consciousness that accompanied explosivegrowth in institutions in the 1960s and 1970s. Hecritiqued the ‘pure’ or ‘total’ organization ofWeber and of Goffman (1961), analyzing insteadhow distinctly and unevenly institutions operatedon the ground (see also Kariya, 1993).

Geographical analyses of institutions haveshifted between macro-theoretical structures tomicro-level theories. Some approached themat finer scales, focusing on spatial arrangementswithin institutions (Philo and Parr, 2000: 514).Others deemed this approach a ‘middle way’;following Giddens’ (1984) structuration theoryand associated debates about structure andagency in the 1980s and 1990s, institutionsoffered an ‘interim’ level of social systems,or the social practices that regulate daily life.This meso-level approach proved significantamong economic geographers who respondedto 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 andorganizations are defined and studied methodo-logically.1 Del Casino and co-authors (2000)outline three frameworks for analysis: spatialscience, critical realism, and poststructuralism.They argue that spatial scientists tend to believethat social relations can readily and literally bemapped onto the landscape through rules andpatterns that govern and explain human beha-vior. Critical realists similarly believe in thematerial realities and effects of institutions. Incontrast, poststructuralists tend to look beneaththe surface to understand the underlying condi-tions, social relations and discourses that broughtsuch material relations into existence.

Drawing on Foucault (1970, 1995, 1997) andexemplified by Gibson-Graham (1996), a con-structivist approach focuses on discourses, such

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as economy, society, and politics, ‘that bringforth objects and events and determine theirrelationship to one another’ (Del Casino et al.,2000: 526). In this framework, institutions donot emerge out of preexisting conditions, but areproduced and discursively constructed as enti-ties with particular social significance and sub-jectivities (Del Casino et al., 2000). In theFoucauldian tradition, scholars mapped pro-cesses of deinstitutionalization and the entranceof mechanisms of social regulation into therealm of the social body. This approach under-stands subjectivity to be constituted throughwebs of legal, medical, and social relationshipsthrough which power shifts, operating in moredispersed, topological fashion (Martin andSecor, 2014) and highlighting the relationshipbetween social and spatial relations. Constructi-vism fueled development of new approaches tothe state and other institutions that grew moreconcerned with discourse and representation(e.g. Olsson, 1974; Jackson, 1989; Anderson,1991; Driver, 1991) and critiqued spatiallyfixed and bounded notions of institutions. Con-structivists understood institutions as activelyproduced through daily social contexts.

Rather than as a repressive, autonomousbody that affects social relations, poststructural-ists conceptualize institutions as themselvessocial constructions able to produce knowledgeand identities. This approach – influenced byFoucauldian understandings of power and dis-course and actor network theory, among otherideas – understands institutional powers andeffects as dispersed, embedded, and entangled,with more permeable boundaries dividing whatand 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 lookingat institutions as sites where employees enactpolicies across time and space, where theeveryday relations among those theoreticallyconceived of as ‘outside’ bleed into daily

institutional life and vice versa. This geogra-phical imagination of the institution positsboundaries as fluid in daily practice. Such anunderstanding requires a method that holdsquotidian life as its main focus: ethnography.

Ethnography holds potential to address dailyempirical knowledge on institutions and oftenreveals the unevenness of institutional practicesand effects. As the study of daily life, ethnogra-phy has been important to the discipline sincethe early days of cultural geography. Duncanand Duncan (2009) note that Carl Sauer’sdetailed observations of the landscape drawnfrom interviews, archives, and observationswould today likely be considered ethnographic.The method came fully into practice throughhumanistic geographers (Ley, 1974) mappingdetailed observation of daily interactionsbetween individuals and their environment. Therecent surge in ethnography once again exam-ines the cultural dimensions of daily work ofinstitutions (e.g. Herbert, 2000; Hyndman,2000; Mountz, 2010; Belcher and Martin,2013; Kuus, 2013; Delaney, 2014). Many eth-nographies can be found among recent doctoraldissertations, evidence of renewed interestamong a new generation of geographers (Ashu-tosh, 2010; Hiemstra, 2011; Houston, 2011;Lindner, 2012; Santiago, 2013; VandeBerg,2013). Institutional ethnographies have grownin popularity as one incarnation of this trend(e.g. Perreault, 2003a, 2003b; King, 2009; Lar-ner and Laurie, 2010; Billo, 2015).

II What is institutionalethnography?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 thanthe conduct of interviews. Participant-observationand archival analysis enable the ethnographer tostudy how people interact and interpret meaning:‘what people do as well as what they say’



(Herbert, 2000: 552). This need to observe is cru-cial to the workings of institutions. While inter-views lend insight into actors and operations ofinstitutions, participant-observation, fieldnotes,and detailed archival study enable spatial analysisand associated insights into power relations.Where, for example, are different workers locatedwithin a building and by social location? How areembodiments and encounters gendered, racia-lized, classed, and sexualized? The ethnographerunravels patterns of behavior and interaction,categories of identification, modes of manage-ment, exercises in power and interpretation ineveryday life.

Ethnographic approaches to institutions havebeen popular since anthropologist Laura Naderpublished a seminal piece in 1972 where sheargued that anthropologists ‘study up’ in orderto better understand how institutions structuredaily life. She suggested that through this effort,anthropologists could expand analyses beyondthose marginalized peoples upon whom theyhad built the discipline. She emphasized howlittle most people knew about bureaucracies andorganizations that had lasting material effectson them (1972: 294). She argued that peopleshould have access to institutions and knowl-edge about how they function:

A democratic framework implies that citizensshould have access to decision-makers, institu-tions of government, and so on. This implies thatcitizens need to know something about majorinstitutions, government or otherwise, that affecttheir lives. (Nader, 1972: 294).

Institutional ethnography later became a keymethod of ‘studying up’. Below, we discuss thedevelopment of the approach by feminist scho-lars and, subsequently, by geographers.

Dorothy Smith’s conception of institutionalethnography relies on a dispersed model of theinstitution and its effects, with a focus on map-ping the daily lived ‘relations of ruling’. Smithstudies processes and practices that determinesocial relations from standpoints grounded in

the everyday. Her approach to institutional eth-nography begins with situated experiences ofwomen in daily life, then explores relations inwhich these experiences are embedded: a com-plex of interactions between individuals, institu-tions, and society. Smith argues that sociology’sways of knowing the world operate within theframework of dominant institutions that devaluewomen, differentially positioned by class,race, and other axes of difference. Social rela-tions engender ‘relations of the ruling’ thatguide, control, coordinate and regulate societies.Smith developed this approach to create ‘asociology for women’, to explore how womenare ‘organized and determined by social pro-cesses’ that extend beyond their immediateeveryday worlds (Smith, 1987: 152). For DeVault(2006: 295), ‘ruling relations’ function not simplyas ‘heuristic device’, but closely connect thecontemporary everyday with historic, capitalistrelations that privilege certain understandingsof motherhood and women over others. Theserelations are represented visually in feministgeographer Isabel Dyck’s (1988) diagram inFigure 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).

Figure 1. Isabel Dyck’s (1988) p. 131 adaptation ofDorothy Smith’s institutional ethnography. Repro-duced with kind permission of the author.

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Methods include interviews, participant-observation, and textual analysis. The interviewprocess includes not just a focus on the ‘subjec-tive state’ of the interviewee, but a means tomove onto next steps in an ongoing process ofinquiry (DeVault and McCoy, 2002). Theresearcher must identify the key ‘problematic’before moving to the next stage of analysis.Interviews prove insufficient to address ‘corepower issues that impede social change’ (Winkel-man and Halifax, 2007: 132). Therefore, institu-tional ethnography also often involves archivalwork, textual analysis, or recollection, as deter-mined by the investigation (Smith, 1987).

In this tradition, analysis emerges deduc-tively from empirical observations attentive tothe role of policy documents such as medicalcharts and plans as key organizing sites. IE isdesigned to ‘reveal the organizing power oftexts’ in order to link local and extralocal activ-ities (DeVault, 2006: 295). Texts allow theresearcher to ‘reach beyond the locally observa-ble and discoverable into the translocal socialrelations and organization that permeate andcontrol the local’ (Smith, 2006: 65).

Smith designed IE to facilitate collabo-ration among researchers (DeVault, 2006). Theapproach is considered an ongoing, evolvingpractice, rather than a clearly demarcated orcompleted project; the practice grows throughnetworking, relationships, and group meetingsamong feminist scholars. The field has expandedbeyond 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 withidentification of an experience, followed by not-ing the institutional processes that produce theexperience, and then investigation of processesidentified (Dyck, 1997; DeVault and McCoy,2002). Dyck (1988) exemplifies this approachin her adaptation in Figure 1. She explains in a

subsequent publication how Smith’s conceptua-lization of institutional ethnography framedresearch with immigrant women: ‘we consid-ered the way women talked of their experiencesas a starting point to discovering the social rela-tions organizing their day-to-day lives’ (1997:189). What emerged out of these studies werecomplex 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 howthe approach is rooted in feminist praxis and apolitics of location, committing researchers tobegin from their own socioeconomic locationsand experiences. From there, researchers endea-vor to address ‘problematics’ and focus on ‘puz-zles emerging in everyday life’ (2004: 7). IEdoes not set out to develop generalized theory,but rather to explicate ‘experiential data’(Campbell and Gregor, 2004: 8). Campbell andGregor explain frequently how IE is distinctfrom ‘conventional research’ in its requirementthat the researcher be ‘a knower located in theeveryday world and find meaning there, in con-trast to reliance on library research and theapplication of theories’ (2004: 11). Winkelmanand Halifax (2007) distinguish between IE and‘conventional ethnography’ by suggesting thatIE takes both subjective and objective viewsof 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-reflexivityexplored by feminist geographers (Katz, 1996;Mullings, 1999; Pratt, 2000; Moss, 2002).

Scholars in this tradition collaborate, engagewith each other’s work to build upon previouswork and advance the field. Building on thisunderstanding and operationalization of IE, oth-ers have focused on neoliberalism and post-Fordist restructuring as an extension of Smith’swork (see Naples, 1997). Neoliberalism is



analyzed as ‘meta-discourse’ that determinesparticular institutional relationships, makingway for other IE studies to focus on the ‘intellec-tual institutions’ that develop the meta-discourses(DeVault, 2006). Ultimately, scholars doing IEconnect through their scholarship with an ontolo-gical commitment to examining ‘ruling relations’at work in historically-specific activities. Indi-vidual studies build toward meta-discoursesthat cross social arenas and create spaces fornew discourses and political projects to emerge(DeVault, 2006).

While conceptually inspiring, we note twoshortcomings that make space for geographicalcontributions to IE. First, IE produces somewhataspatial understandings of institutions. The use ofthe term mapping in this approach is a figure ofspeech. Smith endeavors to write for the massesin ways that should be readily accessible as a mapwould be (Campbell and Gregor, 2004: 9). Map-ping itself and spatial analysis more broadlyremain largely absent from the approach. Whiledeeply rooted in the everyday and feminist epis-temology, the approach lacks spatial analysis ofthe institutional geographies and their effects.The method of IE does not place as much empha-sis on differentiation between different spaces ofthe institution. As a result, the institution remainsflat, leaving room for more complex analyses ofthe spaces of institutional productions of power.Second, IE is conceptually problematic in itsquest for a ‘meta-narrative’ that risks losing sightof the messiness of institutional relationships ineveryday contexts.

In contrast, geographical approaches to IE canand do account for the spatial differentiation bylocating marginal spaces and spaces of exception,for example, within, through, and beyond theinstitution. Geographers often examine institu-tions as structures that influence society: asylumsand hospitals, for example, seek to control andregulate, restrain or treat human minds and bodies(Philo and Parr, 2000: 514). Philo and Parr (2000:515) argue that the geography of institutions andtheir relative location to people, land uses, and

resources contribute to understanding social andspatial relationships that can challenge this disci-plinary process. Institutional analyses addressdaily happenings within and between institutionsand their relationships to larger economic, politi-cal and cultural processes (Philo and Parr, 2000:514–15).

Methodologically, institutional ethnographyenables location of the institution in the spatialrelationships of multi-scalar everyday interactionsto avoid characterizing it as a ‘repressive autono-mous body that affects social relations’ (Mountz,2010: xxiv). Ethnographic analysis can point tothe ‘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 overlappingprocesses of claims to territory and sovereignty.

Geographers’ ethnographies can documentand produce more geographically texturedunderstandings of institutions. In Herbert’s(1997) ethnography of local policing carried outby the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD),for example, the method of conducting ride-alongs with officers draws into relief individualofficers’ interpretations and productions of ter-ritoriality in local neighborhoods. His approachalso highlights the nuances and intimacies ofboundaries drawn between private domestic andpublic policing spheres.

Social scientists ‘study up’ by researchinginstitutions of all kinds. Critical ethnographyenables an approach to the state as ‘a set of socialpractices’ (Painter, 1995: 34) and diverse institu-tional actors exercising agency through quotidianbureaucratic arrangements (e.g. Herbert, 1997).Ethnographies of the state are another recentexample 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)

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advocated localized, ethnographic approaches tothe state centered in the field and relying heavilyon participant-observation (e.g. Herbert, 1997).As Timothy Mitchell (2002) suggested, analysisof disciplinary power must occur at ‘the level ofdetail’, or the scale of the everyday. Relateddevelopments are anthropology of bureaucracy(Heyman, 1995; Gupta, 1995), ethnographies ofmodernity (Englund and Leach, 2000), globaliza-tion (Burawoy et al., 2000), neoliberalism(Colloredo-Mansfeld, 2002), and events (Brosiusand Campbell, 2010).

Institutional ethnography can address the pro-duction of institutions and subjectivities in partic-ular places and moments that become imbuedwith meaning. Institutions provide an impor-tant and necessary entry point into boundary-making, categorization, and subjectivity-making(Anderson, 1991, Ashutosh, 2010). To explorethese possibilities more deeply, we examinerecent work in geography characterized byauthors as institutional ethnography. We alsonote, though, the significant omission of engage-ment with work by Smith and other IE scholarsamong some geographers doing institutionalethnography.

III How geographers haveconducted institutionalethnographyThis review provides a foundation for morecross-referencing and fuller engagement, offer-ing potential to develop and expand ethno-graphic approaches to institutions within thediscipline. In the first part of this section weexplore studies by geographers who explicitlyidentify their own work as institutional ethno-graphy, beginning with the earliest such refer-ences that we could find. Our findings arebased on key term searches for ‘institutionalethnography’ and ‘geography’ in Google scho-lar, WorldCat dissertations database, and for‘institutional ethnography’ in the followingjournals: Annals of the Association of American

Geographers, Progress in Human Geography,Transactions of the Institute of British Geogra-phers, The Canadian Geographer, Area, and TheProfessional Geographer. We include scholar-ship by anyone who framed writing as institu-tional ethnography and was either housed in ageography department, publishing in a geographyjournal, or trained as a geographer. Additionally,we presented the work at a national conference,workshopped the paper with graduate studentsin a large geography department in North Amer-ica, and asked 15 additional geographers workingin related fields to provide feedback on this paperand apprise us of any omissions.

In this section, we track uses of the term insti-tutional ethnography by geographers (listed inTable 1), and then explain and illustrate a typol-ogy of ethnographic approaches to institutionsmore broadly (located in Table 2). Table 1shows geographical scholarship where authorsexplicitly frame research as institutional ethnogra-phy. We note the specific methods (interviews,participant-observation, and textual analysis) usedin each study. In every case, interviews provedcentral, but only half used all three methods.As a study of daily life, we suggest that ethno-graphy must involve more than interviews, orwhat participants say, as Herbert (2000) notes.We ask what makes these studies ethnographicif, in some cases, everyday life in the institutionis overlooked?

The earliest use of the term institutional eth-nography that we could find was by feministgeographer Isabel Dyck (1988, 1997), followedby Jennifer Hyndman (1996, 2000). Bothapplied Smith’s approach to governmental andsupra-governmental organizations. Both scho-lars began from experience, in Hyndman’s caseprior employment with the agency studied. Theylocate the institution in daily life by following thequotidian experiences of people and policies.Dyck’s (1988, 1997) work in health geographytracked health-related institutions through peo-ple’s daily encounters, and she also studied theexperiences of immigrant women. Hyndman



(1996, 2000) researched the practices andeffects of the United Nations High Commis-sioner for Refugees’ management of refugeecamps in Kenya. She merges political economywith feminist analysis to understand how donorstates and governments hosting refugees workthrough the organization across sites and scalesto ultimately manage bodies, subjectivities,and resources on the ground.

The next usage of the term institutional eth-nography occurs among geographers doingwork related to environmental and develop-ment agencies (Perreault 2003a, 2003b; King,2009; Larner and Laurie, 2010; Wolford,2010a). Beginning less often with personalexperience, this scholarship attends closely tothe movement of ideas, discourses and policiesabout development, beginning within and ema-nating outward from institutions and oftenfocused on the role of elites within institutions.King (2009) suggests that institutional ethno-graphy, development ethnography, and networkethnography are interchangeable terms, linkedby their ‘concern with penetrating organizationsand 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 asthe World Bank (Bebbington et al., 2004), whereand how conflict transpires and consent is pro-duced, sometimes exploring the internaldynamics of large development institutions (Hart,2004). In these studies, the researcher usuallyconducts interviews with or analyzes discussionsof those on the inside (Perreault, 2003a, 2003b;Bebbington et al., 2004; Goldman, 2004, 2005;King, 2009; Wolford, 2010a).

Whereas Table 1 includes only those whoframe their own work as IE, Table 2 broadensthe analysis to include recent ethnographicapproaches to institutions undertaken by geo-graphers, whether explicitly labeled ‘institu-tional ethnography’ or not. We designed atypology to categorize these studies by metho-dological approach in order to discern differentethnographic approaches to institutions, as

Table 1. Scholarship characterized by geographers as institutional ethnography.

Year, General topic (citation)Participant-observation Interviews

Archival ortextual

1997 Health care(Dyck 1988, 1997)

p p p

2000 UN management of refugee camps(Hyndman 1996, 2000)

p p

2003 Indigenous organizations(Perreault, 2003a)

p p p

2007 Federal immigration bureaucracy (Mountz 2007,2010)

p p p

2009 Conservation organizations(King 2009)

p p p

2010 Policy development(Larner and Laurie 2010)

p p

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

Disaster management (Grove 2013)p p

2013 UN agency fighting piracy(VandeBerg 2013, Gilmer 2014)6

p p

Billo and Mountz 9


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 spatialdimensions of each approach.

1. A typology of approaches to institutionsWe delineate five ethnographic approaches toinstitutions in our typology. The first,

‘following’, refers to the tendency of res-earchers to follow institutional actors in theirdaily work. This following relies heavily onparticipant-observation to document powerrelations at a microscale, such as movementsinto and out of the material structure of the insti-tution, and along territories constructed by insti-tutional actors, such as neighborhoods, refugeecamps, and border crossings. As noted earlier,Herbert’s (1997) ethnography with the LAPD

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

Methodologicalapproach

Types ofinstitutionsstudied

Geographicalconceptualizationof the institution Authors8

1. Following Following actors,participant-observation,interviews

Enforcementagencies, CSR,health andhumanitarianagencies

Transnational,translocal,institution thatproducesterritoriality,people who crossthresholds

Herbert (1997, 2000),Hyndman (2000),Nevins (2002), Larnerand Laurie (2010),Wolford (2010b),Moran et al. (2012,2013), Billo (2012, 2015)

2. Time on theinside

Participant-observation,interviewsinside theinstitution (aspecific place)

Asylums,bureaucracies

More attention tothe rhythms ofinteriorinstitutionsspaces, observingroles andinteractions

Kariya (1993), Hyndman(1996, 2000), Parr(2000), Mountz (2010),Houston (2011), Moran,Gill, and Conlon (2013),Vandeburg (2013),Gilman (2014)

3. Getting at theinside:interviewswithorganizationalactors

Interviews,discourseanalysis

Development,governmentaland non-governmentalagencies

Interviews may takeplace inside oroutside theinstitution

Perreault (2003a, 2003b),Bebbington et al. (2004),King (2009), Peck andTheodore (2010),Wolford (2010a),Houston (2011), Grove(2013)

4. Influencing lifeon the outside

Participant-observation andinterviews,textual analysisfrom outside ofthe institution

Governmentaland non-governmentalagencies

Constituted bypeople onceinside, now onthe outside

Dyck (1988, 1997),Hiemstra (2011),Bhungalia (2013),Moran, Piacentini, andPallot (2013)

5. Eventethnography

Short-termparticipant-observation ofkey events

Development,environmentalevents wherepolicy isdeveloped

Fleeting temporaland spatialdimensions

Brosius and Campbell(2010), Corson andMcDonald (2012),Suarez and Corson(2013)



involved riding with police officers to under-stand how constructions of space and renderingsof the boundaries of neighborhoods enacted vio-lence on residents. Like Herbert, Nevins (2002)did ride-alongs with US border patrol along theMexico-US border to understand how readingsof the landscape and daily transgressions thereinenabled authorities to enact racialized violencethat built on historical dispossession in theregion. Although Herbert, Nevins, and others(e.g. Hiemstra, 2011; Bhungalia, 2013) do notlabel their work institutional ethnography, wefind these to be contemporary and ethnographi-cally rich accounts of institutions located alongborders and carrying out bordering processesbeyond office walls. Other geographers have con-ducted research that we find to be important to thedevelopment of ethnography in the discipline, ifnot 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 researcherplacing more emphasis on dwelling in theoffices of the institution, and particularly inthe bureaucracy. Whereas Herbert (1997) andNevins (2002) spent more time in the fieldfollowing actors in their work outside of theoffice (with occasional visits to the field beyondoffice), for example, Mountz (2010) and Vande-Berg (2013) spent more time studying dailywork within bureaucratic offices of federal andUN agencies (with occasional visits to beyond).Importantly, both of these first two categoriesinvolved participant-observation, which lentinsights into the daily life of institutional spaces,whether in the office or the field. While time onthe inside reveals much about the operation ofpower within the institution, less time is gener-ally spent beyond the institution looking at insti-tutional effects. This may relate to the topicitself, such as the difficulty of pursuing peopleinvolved in piracy (VandeBerg, 2013) or humansmuggling at sea (Mountz, 2010).

As an illustrative example, we explore Gil-mer’s (2014) work in greater depth.3 Gilmerworked for the UN agency created to combatpiracy in and around Somalia. Like previousscholarship on agencies that regulate mobility(Herbert, 1997; Hyndman, 2000), Gilmer makesextensive use of participant-observation. Hiredby the agency to design and implement a publiccampaign to assist in this fight, Gilmer builds onher insider perspective to undertake a criticalethnography of the agency and its constructionof pirates and piracy. She finds that many of theinitiatives fail to thwart piracy, instead liningthe coffers of development workers who them-selves become the lucrative subjects of securiti-zation as they compete for funding and becomewhat she calls ‘piratized’ in the process. By‘following’ and ‘spending time on the inside’,Gilmer’s analysis addresses distinct sociallocations of those who work across the hierar-chy of the organization, with English-speakingemployees from countries of the Global Northperforming the higher skilled and higher paidjobs, for example. She is also able to observe theminutiae of daily work, the power strugglesover decisions made within the office and thecorruption encountered on her trips into Soma-lia and island prisons where people arrested forpiracy are held and interviewed.

One of the challenges of this approach involvesthe intimate entanglements that emerge throughfriendship 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 andphysical effects of participant-observation thatmay involve witnessing violence or discrimina-tory behavior or omitting information from theanalysis. Such violence may be another reasonwhy those who spend more time on the insideare sometimes less able to gain access to thosewho are biopolitically managed by institutions.

The third category, ‘getting at the inside:interviews with organizational actors’, is

Billo and Mountz 11


perhaps the most common approach among geo-graphers identifying their work as ‘institutionalethnography’ over the last ten years. Thisapproach relies less on participant-observation,and more heavily on analysis of interviews anddocuments to access the institutional structure,sometimes characterized as a ‘black box’ (Beb-bington et al., 2004: 37). In these studies, theresearcher is usually located outside of the insti-tution and accesses information about the institu-tion by conducting interviews and correspondingwith institutional actors or accessing discoursesof 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 institutionaldiscourses travel into the world beyond theinstitution (Bebbington et al., 2004). Thesestudies have tended to adopt more boundednotions of the institution with more clearlydefined populations, policies, and cultures(e.g. Goldman, 2004; 2005; Lewis and Mosse,2006; King, 2009) and have drawn on discourseand debates among elites (e.g. Bebbingtonet al., 2004) to understand how institutions andindividual actors within them shape develop-ment (e.g. Goldman 2004, 2005).

Perreault (2003a, 2003b), for example, drawson interviews with key informants to examinehow ethnicity, territory, and identity intersectin an indigenous Kichwa organization in Ecua-dor, producing a discourse through which indi-genous peoples participate in developmentprocesses. His analysis focuses on the ways inwhich indigenous organizations ‘resist, refract,and at times reproduce dominant narratives ofdevelopment, modernization, and citizenship’(Perreault, 2003a: 586). Perreault (2003a: 602)aims to uncover the organization’s political stra-tegies to contest and negotiate processes ofdevelopment and ‘social transformation’. King(2009) analyzes the centrality of a neoliberalcommercialization discourse in a South Africanconservation organization, while Goldman(2004, 2005) focuses on the production of the

World Bank’s ‘authoritative green knowledge’.These studies are linked by their ‘liberatorypotential’ in negotiation of development pro-cesses (Perreault, 2003a: 603), but limited intheir articulation of the daily operation of insti-tutions and the social locations or embodimentof those who do (and do not) inhabit them.While acknowledging the partiality of theirfindings, these studies produce disembodiedinstitutions, rather than what the anthropologistClifford Geertz (1973) famously called ‘thickdescription’ 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 discursivedebates over the concept of social capital tran-spiring in the World Bank. They explore therelationship between the institution’s insideand out, arguing ‘that ‘‘getting inside’’ develop-ment institutions is important for understandinghow and why certain discourses emanate fromthem, for interpreting the significance of thesediscourses, and for understanding the indetermi-nate relationship between discourse and practice’(Bebbington et al., 2004: 34). Through discourseanalysis of publications and personal communi-cations, the authors find:

different arenas in which the contests are waged:internally among its staff (the battlefield we focuson here); externally with non-Bank actors andthose encountered in the course of implementingprojects; and – more intriguingly – cross-borderbattles in which different sub-communities withinthe Bank are linked to different communities out-side the Bank, and where the battles engage largercommunities 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 atwork within a powerful institution and strugglesover knowledge production among them. Theyaccomplish this through examination of textsrather than the social locations of their authors.



These studies did not involve participant-observation in the form of following actors orspending time on the inside, but tended to involvethe conduct of interviews with employees bothwithin and beyond institutional spaces. As Kuus(2013) argues, this limitation may reflect the chal-lenge of actually conducting ethnographic studyof policy issues.5 Yet data drawn from interviewswithout the insights of participant-observationlimit the claims a study can make to understandand 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 representationsof indigenous and state identities in Guatemalawith a distinct approach. She posits the state isimagined and lived through multiple ‘bodiespolitic’ of Mayan women, rooted in ‘manipula-tion and violence’ tied to indigenous rights andnation-building. She operates not only within adistinct discipline, but with a distinct set ofepistemological frameworks from developmentethnographies: feminist, postmodern, and post-structural approaches. The result is a more dis-persed understanding of institutions and theirembeddedness in daily life. Sawyer (2001,2004), also an anthropologist, examines the dailysocial and environmental consequences ofincreased demand for oil via indigenous mobili-zations in Ecuador. She employs participant-observation and interviews to explore socialrelationships between an indigenous organiza-tion, multinational oil companies, and the statethat produce ‘indigenous opposition to economicglobalization in its neoliberal guise’ (Sawyer,2004: 7). She focuses specifically on the powerinequalities that emerge in this ‘terrain of strug-gle’ over ‘identities, territories, and relations’as indigenous peoples sought recognition andrights in a plurinational Ecuadorian state (2004:222). In these analyses, people themselvesembody, inhabit, and shape institutional struc-tures at the same time that they are shaped bythem.

While some geographers engage in discourseand ideas on the inside, others use ethnographyto understand how institutions influence life onthe outside. The fourth and fifth categories,‘influencing life on the outside’ and ‘event eth-nography’, involve even more distance from thephysical spaces of the institution, derivingmaterial from purviews outside of institutionalspaces, either through interviews, archives, orobservations that provided more limitedglimpses and allow for less triangulation thansustained time on the inside. Although they donot characterize their work as institutional eth-nography, for example, both Hiemstra (2011)and Bhungalia (2013) conducted ethnographicresearch on US agencies: detention and deporta-tion systems run by the Department of Home-land Security and the work of US AID inPalestine, respectively. Their ethnographieswere not in the headquarters in countries wherethese institutions are based, but rather in theremote locations where the effects of their insti-tutional policies and practices were felt power-fully. Hiemstra worked with deportees andtheir 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 theinstitution – what some would call a govern-mentality approach (Foucault, 1991) or ‘stateeffects’ (Mitchell, 2002) – with effects thatextend into daily life well beyond the bordersof the institution or that reverberate transna-tionally (Hiemstra, 2011; Bhungalia, 2013).Research in the margins holds potential to shiftunderstandings of power in and of hegemonicinstitutions that advance imperialism and con-finement of populations.

While these more spatially removedapproaches may not come as close to the dailyrhythms of life inside the institution, includinginstitutional oppression, they also result, wesuggest, in a more geographically dispersedtopography of the institutions being studied and

Billo and Mountz 13


a rich rendering of the effects of institutions inthe daily lives of those whom they affect. Theiranalyses show production of subjectivities ofaid workers in the West Bank and detainees anddeportees in Cuenca, Ecuador, shaped by US-based national agencies, uncovering mundaneacts of resistance in daily life. Both authorsshow the racialized, gendered, and classeddimensions of institutional effects beyond insti-tutional walls and national boundaries. An obvi-ous limitation of working ‘from the outside’ isthe lack of direct observation of the daily oper-ations of the institution, with reliance instead onnarratives about institutional practices or poli-cies from aid workers and deportees.

The final category, ‘event ethnographies’,encompasses a recent development undertakenby 17 scholars in environmental studies work-ing collaboratively to do short, intensive periodsof participant-observation to study events suchas 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 thanthe field of institutional ethnography. Event eth-nographies differ from other approaches fortheir temporality: rather than pursue the tradi-tion of long periods of time devoted to under-standing the daily rhythms and relations inplace, the event ethnography is premised onshort-term, yet important (if fleeting), momentsof coming together.

Similar to Wolford’s (2010a) characteriza-tion of ethnography of a site, yet differing intheir use of participant-observation, Corson andMacDonald (2012) reconceptualize the fieldthrough the event by drawing on research at theUN Convention on Biological Diversity. Wefind this approach innovative for the character-ization of the field as a place that brings togethera number of institutions and actors in one timeand place. The opportunity to see people inter-act in one setting is important, and yet at presentunder-developed in the findings reported – the

potential insights of an ethnographic approachare not yet fulfilled in this incipient work. Theinnovative framing of a new field – the eventas place – is at odds with the lack of descriptionof that place and those within it. Missing fromthese analyses is Geertz’s (1973) ‘thick descrip-tion’. In the decision to conceptualize the eventas a place, the description of its characteristics,landscape, feel, or context has not yet been illu-strated. The authors draw primarily on publicstatements made in side events, yet those whospoke them are not described, located, identifiedor embodied. The messy, everyday unfolding ofinstitutional operations that might be con-structed from fieldnotes would enhance thedevelopment of event ethnography. Participantsin UN conventions generally agree that muchof the ‘real’ conversation and work happensbefore the event, with the short event providinga public forum for the statement of positionsand agendas. What kind of negotiations occurredbefore the more public performances quoted?Does the event ethnography include participant-observation in the more mundane, daily lead-upto the annual coming together? As a result ofthe decision to focus temporally and spatiallyon the event itself, this approach provides newinsights while missing others.

‘Fast policy transfer’ (Peck and Theodore,2010) and ‘collaborative event ethnography’ arepart of the upsurge in ethnographic research, butnot necessarily engaged with institutional ethno-graphy. Peck and Theodore (2010) make briefreference to institutional ethnography in theirwriting (citing Larner and Laurie, 2010, who inturn cite Goldman, 2005). Yet this scholarshipremains largely disconnected from earlier workon institutional ethnography by geographers andothers. Still, there are important continuities toobserve. As Delaney notes, contemporary trendsin economic geography are influenced by theDeleuzian assemblage which ‘offers a frame inwhich to examine how institutions and policies‘‘territorialize’’’ and by actor network theorywith its ‘focus on the act of translation in



bringing policy and practice networks into coher-ent structures’ (Delaney, 2014: 19). Theseapproaches render more dispersed ethnographicmappings of institutions that could draw fromand advance practices of institutional ethnogra-phy. They also share thematic interests, such asadvancing understandings of neoliberalism.

Our typology uncovers distinctions in themethodological approach and epistemology andontology of institutions, with spatial differencestied to ethnographic methods employed byresearchers. We found that studies that eitheromit participant-observation as a method ordo not draw on these data in their analyses failto observe the influences and embeddednessof the institution in everyday life. Participant-observation is attentive to emotion, subjectivity,power struggles, resistance, and proximity ofthe institution. IE is about accessing the every-day, as is ethnography generally. We stillhave much to learn from anthropologists suchas Nelson, who is indiscriminate in engagingephemera collected in daily life. Chanceencounters, t-shirt slogans, cartoons, conversa-tions – all become locations where the institu-tion, its effects and productive capacity arereadily evident. The result is Clifford Geertz’s(1973) ‘thick description’ of daily life. Thismore textured view of an institution differs froma more fixed notion of the institution whose pol-itics, projects, subjects, and discourses areaccessed primarily through interviews – in otherwords, the ways that institutional subjects oremployees narrate the institution. The lattercannot readily account for the sociospatial dif-ferences in power operating within and acrossthe daily productions of an institution. Institu-tional formation and operation across centerand periphery lead to differential outcomes ofdiscourse and practice, with unequal impactsand effects. More sustained, critical engage-ment with heterogeneous and interdisciplinaryapproaches to institutional ethnography willimprove understandings of institutions withinand beyond the discipline of geography.

2. Enhancing scholarship on institutionsHere, we explore institutional ethnography fromgeographical perspectives. With limited space,we offer two areas drawn from our own fieldsof research to demonstrate how critical engage-ment across approaches within and beyond thediscipline of geography holds potential toenhance scholarship on institutions. The twokinds of institutions we discuss are corporatesocial responsibility (CSR) (Billo, 2012, 2015)and institutions where people are detained (spe-cifically, detention centers and prisons) (Moranet al., 2012; Mountz et al., 2013; Loyd et al.,2012; Mitchelson, 2013; Mountz et al., 2013).Both are sets of institutions that geographershave shown more interest in of late (Moranet al., 2012).

CSR programs are the business response tosocial and environmental criticism of corporateoperations (Sadler and Lloyd, 2009 ; The Econ-omist, 2008; Watts, 2005). In Ecuador, theseprograms emerged out of state, corporate, andindigenous relationships, and are designed toensure ongoing resource extraction. Mandatedby the Ecuadorian state, CSR programs incorpo-rate indigenous peoples in local developmentprojects, such as drinking water systems andcommunity infrastructure – things the statemight normally provide. Billo’s (2012) researchuncovers the disciplinary techniques of CSRprograms through implementation of corporateprograms for local development (cf. Foucault,1991). An IE engages the everyday processesof implementation of CSR programs that canat once co-opt and legitimate discourses andpractices of indigenous rights to resourcesthrough the material projects and programs ofCSR. The subsequent presence of CSR programsin everyday interactions produces ambivalentindigenous subjects; indigenous entanglementwith dominant power structures complicatesnotions of resistance and contributes to newforms of resource governance and developmentprocesses in Ecuador (Billo, 2012, 2015). In turn,

Billo and Mountz 15


rather than focus solely on narrowly defined cor-porate projects labeled CSR, IE seeks to under-stand the relationships that form within CSRprograms and expand well beyond the local indi-genous communities, raising questions aboutindigenous citizenship and about how the corpo-rate and philanthropic come together to producesubjectivities in extractive industries (Billo,2012).

Scholars have argued that prisons are notwhat Goffman (1961) labeled ‘the total institu-tion’: enclosed facilities that contain everythingand everyone therein (Moran et al., 2013: 110–12). Rather, they can be conceptualized as morefluid, ‘transcarceral’ entities (Moran et al.,2013). Although prisons immobilize and con-tain those imprisoned, they have surprisinglypermeable boundaries. Many material thingsmove 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 peopleare held; these are difficult sites for researchersto access and where researcher access can putvulnerable populations at further risk. Penalinstitutions are therefore highly suited to studythrough institutional ethnography in Smith’stradition. IE opens the institution to researchin ways that do not necessarily require physicalaccess. Interviews and participant-observationmay 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 butacross boundaries also fosters research on sensi-tive topics and vulnerable populations in rela-tively ‘safe’ ways for those institutionalized.Conversely, research premised on entry intoprisons would be riskier for participants andmore likely prone to failure should access notbe 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 researchon imprisonment and co-authored findings withfour prisoners who reflected on the experience.The result is ‘a situated example of, as well as acall for, dialogue about research across prisonwalls’ (2005: 250). The authors aim to destabi-lize power relations and boundaries betweenresearcher and researched, ‘make clear thefundamentally affective nature of qualitativeresearch’ and show how emotions motivate par-ticipants in research and, in so doing, that pris-oners – like researchers – are individuals withdesires and emotions (2005: 251). Bosworth andco-authors bring to our discussion the alterna-tive media and kinds of texts that can be partof IE, such as the role of letters, their potentialto engage a broad emotional register throughtheir play with time and space beyond andwithin the institution (as in the daily nature ofmail call woven into the slow movement ofmail). In so doing, they disrupt boundariesbetween inside and outside of prison andresearch project, and what counts as personaland professional interaction. Similarly, Moranand co-authors (Moran et al., 2013) concep-tualize Russian prisons as ‘mobile, embodiedand transformative’ transcarceral spaces thatpermeate prison walls. By recasting researchas cooperation and intimacy, such approachesdestabilize ownership of research agendasand outcomes and disrupt masculinist notionsof penetrating institutions, while simultane-ously reconfiguring geographical understand-ings of institutions. These approaches havetended to be feminist, premised on the projectof analyzing women’s experiences (e.g. Dyck,1997; Bosworth, 2005; Moran et al., 2013).

IV ConclusionsAs we have shown in our typology and accom-panying discussion, geographers have practicedinstitutional ethnography in a variety of ways.



Yet the collective potential for geographers todeepen development of institutional ethnogra-phy and contribute to institutional analysesremains unrealized. Geographers stand to con-tribute more sophisticated socio-spatial under-standings of institutions. Content analysis ofreferences found shows that geographers oftendo not reference earlier ethnographic researchon institutions in geography or the vibrant, inter-disciplinary field of institutional ethnography.Our typology of institutions will aid in moredirect engagement and discussion of the benefitsand limitations of varied approaches, resulting infurther development of the field. A deepeningand diversity of approaches to institutions canadvance understanding of micro- and macro-processes, as well as meta-discourses such asneoliberalism.

We have called for institutional ethnographyand engagement with literature within andbeyond geography. Indeed, pursuing the samemethod in distinct contexts illuminates parallelsin the operation of states, capitalism, and thepunitive and productive natures of institutions.In this context we note subject formation thatemerges through institutions as mediatorsbetween state and subject, at times ‘erasing’ dif-ference in the name of securing wealth andmembership in the nation-state (cf. Nelson,2001; Lindner, 2012). Institutional ethnographyoffers the possibility to study up to understandthe differential effects of institutions within andbeyond institutional spaces and associated pro-ductions of subjectivities and material inequal-ities. IE can function as an approach to lookwithin, 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 potentialto enrich geographical research, both in kinds ofinstitutions studied and territorial dynamicsrooted in institutional effects, structures, andidentities.

Our research demonstrates that institutionsare not uniform across times and places,

although they often construct discourses andpractices that produce a coherent, monolithicappearance. Through discussion of research onprison facilities and CSR programs, we showthat IE can be attentive to where the institu-tion is produced and in turn produces dailylives. Further engagement with subjectivityand intersectionality will deepen understand-ings of institutional power and help in the break-ing down of barriers between those confined andthose on the outside. By attending to gender, race,ethnicity, sexuality, and class, the approach cannote differences within and among institutionalactors and those affected by institutions. Weargue that this approach is attentive to inequal-ities, relationships of power, and researchers’social locations in conceptualizing institutions.A diversity of approaches will also potentiallyresult in fewer masculinist constructions ofknowledge predicated on accessing elites.

Our analysis opens a new set of questions yetunanswered. We are interested to learn more,for example, about how recent methodologicaldevelopments in geography intersect with insti-tutional ethnography, including fast policytransfer, event ethnography, actor networktheory, and science and technology studies.While we have mentioned these approachesin this text, more work remains to be doneas to their productive intersections and diver-gence from institutional ethnography as ithas been practiced by geographers and othersocial scientists.

We have argued for institutional ethnogra-phy. Rather than suggest that there is one wayof doing institutional ethnography, our goal hasbeen to review the range of approaches pursuedby geographers and other scholars and thepotential insights and shortcomings of variousapproaches, with the ultimate objective ofbroader engagement. Institutions are fundamen-tally powerful and spatial in nature. As such,their ethnographic mapping across sites andscales is essential to advance understandingsof political, economic, and social relations.

Billo and Mountz 17


Acknowledgements

We are grateful to many insightful readers of earlierdrafts of this article who shared feedback and theirown 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, MargaretWalton-Roberts, Richard Wright, and graduate stu-dents at the School of Geography and Developmentat the University of Arizona. This material is basedupon work supported by the National Science Foun-dation under Award #0847133 (Principal Investiga-tor: Alison Mountz). The research in Ecuador wassupported by a National Science Foundation Doc-toral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant(#0825763) and by an Inter-American FoundationGrassroots 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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For institutional ethnography: geographical approaches to institutions and the everyday.

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