IE NEWSLETTER Institutional Ethnography Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems Spring/Summer 2016 Vol. 13, No. 3 Naomi Nichols Division Chair McGill University naomi.nichols@mcgill.ca Send correspondence to: Gina Petonito Correspondence and Copy Editor petonig@muohio.edu Lindsay Kerr Proofreader and Editor lindsay.kerr@utoronto.ca On the inside - Congratulations Doctors - MembersÕ news, notes and publications - IE in Australia - IE Sessions in Seattle From the Division Chair Naomi Nichols Hello Institutional Ethnographers. Flowers are blooming, the pop-up street performances have begun, and the terraces are teaming with people in Montreal. Spring has arrived! MontrealÕs vibrant street culture is one of the things l like most about the city. IÕve been informed by graduate students that SeattleÕs public markets offer a similarly vibrant and accessible opportunity to experience the cityÕs food, arts, and culture scenes. Those of us heading to Seattle for the SSSPÕs Annual Meeting are in for a treat! Here is a NYTimes article on things to do while we are there: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/travel/things-to-do-in-36-hours-in-seattle.html As well as opportunities to walk through SeattleÕs beautiful parks and museums, and opportunities to eat in its great restaurants, IÕd like to draw your attention to the IE Workshop on Monday, August 22. The workshop provides opportunities for newer scholars to share their work, ask questions and get feedback from more seasoned folks. The workshop also provides an opportunity for us to collectively reflect on the institutional ethnographic research papers presented at this yearÕs meeting and begin to draw connections between studies of seemingly divergent institutional foci. An opportunity to think collectively about the discreet studies we are producing and have produced is key to institutional ethnographyÕs project, as I understand it. The over-arching point of the work is to look out from the everyday world of embodied action and experience (Smith, 1990) to discover how these experiences are organized to happen as they do. But the individual stories and experiences that comprise the starting place for investigation point us to forms of coordination that traverse time and place, linking seemingly personal experiences into the extra-local social relations that traditional social science understands as structure or discourse. An ontological commitment to treating the social as the co-ordered activities and thoughts of actual people enables institutional ethnographers to see that the phenomena that others understand to be structure as social relations Ð in this case, social relations that have a coordinative or ruling effect. As a field of sociological inquiry, institutional ethnography enables a series of Òinvestigations [that] attempt to map a particular piece of the ruling relationsÓ (Smith, 1999). By bringing these studies together and inviting one another to think across the findings, we bring into view ruling relations that otherwise seem to be organizing our lives and experiences from Òbehind our backsÓ (Griffith & Smith, 2014). This is a chance for us to discover and map more of Griffith and SmithÕs (2014) metaphorical mountain range. When viewed as a collective project, each institutional ethnographic analysis reveals another shadow, crag, or rocky outcropping within the mountain range and through which the range comes to exist and give shape to our lives. Naomi Congratulations Doctors! We are adding a new feature for the Spring/Summer edition of the IE Newsletter, a note of congratulations to graduate students who successfully defended their dissertation during this (and given that this is the first time this feature runs, the previous) academic year. A job well done, indeed! Patricia Waldersee Brock defended her dissertation titled: ÒPerceptions of Facility Influences on Older Adult Acute Care FallsÓ at the University of Phoenix PhD nursing program in July 2015. Her chair was Margaret Kroposki. Ê Ferzana Chaze defended her dissertation titled: "The Social Organization of South Asian Immigrant Women's Mothering in Canada" at York University in November 2015.ÊHer committee members were Susan McGrath (Supervisor), Alison Griffith and Karen Swift. Sonya Jakubec defended her dissertation titled: ÒThe Social Organization of the Right to Mental Health and Development: An Institutional EthnographyÓ at the University of Calgary in August 2015. Her supervisors were Liza McCoy and Janet Rankin. Olive Fast defended her dissertation titled: ÒThe Social Organization of Staffing Work of Nurse Managers: A Critique of Contemporary Nursing Workload TechnologiesÓ in December 2015 at the University of Calgary. She officially submitted the final copy in February 2016. Her supervisor was Janet Rankin. Christine Pinsent-Johnson defended her dissertation titled: ÒManaging and Monitoring Literacy for a ÔKnowledge SocietyÕ: ÊThe Textual Processes of Inequality in Adult Education Policy, Pedagogy and PracticeÓ at the University of Ottawa in April 2014. Her advisor was Maurice Taylor and Richard Darville from Carlton University sat on her committee. Nicola Waters defended her dissertation titled: ÒThe Social Organization of Wound Clinic Work: An Institutional EthnographyÓ in January 2016 at the University of Calgary. Her supervisor was Janet RankinÊ Notes and news from members Ng, S., Bisaillon, L., & Webster, F. (2017). Blurring the Boundaries: Using Institutional Ethnography to Inquire into Health Professions Education and Practice. Medical Education. (Forthcoming, Jan. 2017, Special Issue). Nichols, N. (2016). Investigating the Social Relations of Human Service Provision: Institutional ethnography and activism.ÊJournal of Comparative Social Work, Special Edition on Institutional Ethnography,Ê11(1), available at: