IE NEWSLETTER Institutional Ethnography Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems Fall 2012 Vol. 9, No. 2 Janet M. Rankin Division Chair University of Calgary jmrankin@ucalgary.ca Send correspondence to: Cheryl Zurawski Correspondence and Copy Editor cdz@arialassociates.com Send photos and other images to: Gina Petonito Production and Picture Editor petonig@muohio.edu On the inside -Member news and notes -Minutes of business meeting -2012 George W. Smith Award -Responses to burning IE questions -The line-up for New York From the Division Chair, Janet Rankin The IE Division of the SSSP is thriving. The SSSP executive tells us that ours is one of the most active divisions in terms of membership, division meeting attendance and paper submissions. In order to maintain the energy generated from this infrastructure, I urge all IE Division members to consider more involvement with the SSSP on the various committees. The infrastructure support we receive through the SSSP has provided resources for the IE sessions and most recently for the IE workshops organized in conjunction with the SSSPs annual meeting. I would like to acknowledge Michele Smith Koontz for her work to support the work of the IE Division Chair and the workshop registration. Also tanks to Marie Campbell, Alison Griffith, Patti Hamilton, Elena Kim, Dorothy Smith and Susan Turner for the thinking and planning that made the Denver workshop so rich. In order to maintain the energy generated from this infrastructure, once again I urge all IE Division members to consider more involvement with the SSSP on the various committees. For more information, please go to http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/310 I was disappointed not to be able to attend the International Sociological Association Forum in Buenos Aires, Argentina. From all accounts, the fledgling IE Thematic Group provided an avenue to network with a broader circle of international IE researchers. The ad hoc IE workshop committee has started to plan for New York. I recently distributed a “survey monkey” to evaluate the Denver workshop and to get feedback that will help us to plan for New York. Please take the time to reflect on the workshop and provide your input to the anonymous survey. It was wonderful to catch up with old colleagues and to meet new ones in Denver. I am looking forward to seeing everyone back in New York next August. In the meantime, please keep the IE news flowing. Minutes of the IE Division’s 2012 business meeting Janet Rankin, Division Chair, provides minutes of the August 16 business meeting. 1. Ellen Pence Memorial: The business meeting opened with a memorial to Ellen Pence who passed away on January 6, 2012. 2. Introductions: Janet Rankin, current Division Chair, introduced and welcomed Chair Elect Lauren Eastwood. Lauren will serve as Division Chair from 2013-2015. 3. George W. Smith Graduate Student Paper Award: Faezeh Bahreini is the 2012 winner of the IE Division’s George W. Smith Graduate Student Paper Award. Her paper is titled: You may smother my voice, but you will hear my silence: An autoethnography on street sexual harassment, the discourse of shame and women’s resistance in Iran. While Faezeh’s paper will not be posted on the IE Division’s website, her contact information will be available there for members who would like to request a copy of her paper. Thanks to the reviewers of the 2012 submissions – Marie Campbell and Laura Bisaillon. 4. Newsletter: Roz Stooke who has been the newsletter editor since 2008 has resigned her newsletter duties. Enormous appreciation was extended to Roz for the last four years of quarterly letters. The new newsletter editor is Cheryl Zurawski who has been working with Roz. She will be joined by Gina Petonito. Please submit newsletter items directly to Cheryl at cdz@arialassociates.com 5. Sessions for 2013: The theme for the August 9-11, 2013 SSSP Annual Meeting in New York is Re-imagining Social Problems: Moving Beyond Social Constructionism. A number of sessions, either sponsored by the IE Division alone or with other special problems divisions of the SSSP, are being organized. 6. Terms of the George W. Smith Graduate Student Paper Award: The adjudicators for the 2012 award requested clarification of the criteria for the award and brought a proposal for revised wording for the call for papers to the business meeting. There was good discussion about adopting the revised wording with disagreement about whether the student paper could be submitted or accepted for publication. At a subsequent meeting of SSSP Division Chairs, more discussion ensued about whether to standardize criteria across divisions. The Division Chairs agreed to establish a standard deadline for submissions in order to facilitate the winners applying for travel support. The deadline will be January 31, 2013. The adjudicators for the 2013 award competition are Marjorie DeVault, Lauren Eastwood and Faezeh Bahreini. 7. 2013 IE Workshop (US) Another IE Workshop is being planned to coincide with the SSSP meetings in New York next year. An ad hoc organizing committee was formed during the business meeting and includes: Janet Rankin, Lauren Eastwood, Alison Griffith, Paul Luken, Marie Campbell, Roxanna Ng, Susan Turner and Mandy Frake-Mistak. 8. 2013 IE Workshop (Canada) Alison Griffith is following up on the possibility of also organizing an IE Workshop in conjunction with the annual conference of the Canadian Sociological Association (CSA) in Victoria, BC. The CSA’s annual conference runs June 3-8, 2013 as part of the Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences Congress. 9. IE Working Group: The IE Working Group meets monthly on Tuesdays from 2:00 - 3:30 pm (MT) via elluminate-live. Contact Janet Rankin to be a guest or a regular participant in this working group: jmrankin@ucalgary.ca 10. Dorothy E. Smith Scholar-Activist Award: There have been no nominations for this award since 2010. Paul Luken, Suzanne Vaughn and Lauren Eastwood have agreed to seek and review nominations for this award for 2013. 2012 George W. Smith Award Winner Faezeh Bahreini, a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of South Florida is the 2012 winner of the George W. Smith Graduate Student Paper Award. To the right of the photo of Faezeh is an abstract of her award-winning paper, titled You may smother my voice, but you will hear my silence: An autoethnography on street sexual harassment, the discourse of shame and women’s resistance in Iran. Abstract: Employing the method of autoethnography, I narrate my lived experiences as an Iranian woman to illustrate how women negotiate their survival from sexual harassment on a daily basis in the streets of Tehran. Grounded in the theoretical and methodological approach of institutional ethnography, I illustrate how the textually mediated social organizations subjugate women’s everyday experiences of sexual assault; and how women’s silent reaction to these experiences is both the result of such subjugation and also a strategic form of resistance. Social interactions encourage women to remain silent about the harassment through reinforcement of the culture of shame, and this expected silence encourages women to resist harassment and negotiate their survival not through words but with their performative reactions. This paper argues that Iranian women’s responses to public sexual harassment should be considered as both an agentic and a subjugated response. A look back at the IE Workshop The day after the SSSP annual meeting wrapped up, a full-day IE workshop was held. The focus of the morning session, organized by Marie Campbell and Alison Griffith, was on doing IE analysis. The afternoon session featured Dorothy Smith and Susan Turner leading discussion on a wide range of IE topics that included, but certainly were not limited to, the importance of standpoint in exploring ruling relations and finding ways to communicate IE research discoveries publicly. There were numerous opportunities for workshop attendees to contribute to the dialogue. Many questions were asked, experiences shared and thoughtful comments made. Two workshop attendees, Olive Fast of Mount Royal University and Tricia Lirette of MacEwan University share their reflections on the workshop. Olive writes: “I was thrilled at being ‘in the room’ with the gurus of IE. It was a big confidence booster for someone who has not yet done IE research to have questions answered by experienced IEers. I could not believe how much enthusiasm and commitment to the work of IE that they and others displayed. It was a real privilege to participate.” For her part, Tricia notes: “I would highly recommend the workshop to others. I have experienced the IE researchers who attend to be a very supportive community of learners who are extremely generous with their wisdom and advice. When they pose a question about your research, you inevitably gain new insight.” The next IE workshop will be held on August 12, 2013, the day after the SSSP meetings in New York. As plans unfold, details will be included in the newsletter. Member news and notes Laura Bisaillon sends word about a forthcoming book that she has edited. The Impact of Public Policy on Everyday Life: The Policy Stories That People Tell (Springer Press, The Netherlands) will appear simultaneously in print and electronic versions in 2013. In this interdisciplinary, international, nine-chapter volume, the consequences of a wide variety of public policies are examined ‘from the ground up’. Chapters report findings from theoretically informed empirical research (institutional ethnography) conducted in numerous countries including Canada, Germany, Kyrgyzstan, Taiwan, and the United States. For more information, contact Laura Bisaillon at lbisa082@uottawa.ca Laurie Clune passes along news that she has accepted an appointment as the Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies in the University of Regina’s Faculty of Nursing. In addition, Laurie has been named a scientist in two health research networks. The first is the Pan-Canadian Health Human Resources Network (CHHRN) comprised of national expert researcher and policy makers and the second is the Ontario Health Human Resources Research Network (OHHRRN), a provincial network linking health human resource researchers and community decision-makers/partners. Ian Hussey recently had an essay revisiting and expanding upon George W. Smith’s landmark article titled Political activist as ethnographer (1990) published in the Canadian Journal of Sociology. To download a free copy of the essay, please go to http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/CJS/article/view/10214 Birgit Prodinger (Western University) recently defended her doctoral dissertation titled: Being an Austrian mother with rheumatoid arthritis: An institutional ethnography about the social organization of everyday life. Birgit also announces the publication this month of a co-authored article. The citation follows: Prodinger, B., Shaw, L., Laliberte Rudman, D., & Townsend, E. (2012). Arthritis-related occupational therapy: Making invisible ruling relations visible using institutional ethnography. British Journal of Occupational Therapy; 75(10). Cheryl Zurawski also recently defended her dissertation (The Work of Work-Related Learning: An Institutional Ethnography) as a doctoral student in the University of Regina’s Faculty of Education. Cheryl studied how texts shape and determine what employees think and do as they work to meet employer expectations about the way in which and the extent to which they are to participate in continuous or lifelong work-related learning as a requirement of their jobs. Welcome to new members The following people have joined the IE Division since our last newsletter. Welcome all! LaNysha Adams Faezeh Bahreini Richard Darville Emily Doyle Olive Fast Amber Harris-Fillius Floribert Kamabu Katharine Larose-Hebert Carl Milofsky Jeff Myers Michelle Peria Sigrid Quack Shelley Quinlan Lynne Scalia IE and patients’ health care experiences Daniel Grace, Manda Ann Roddick and I (Dorothy Smith) have been talking about putting together a collection of studies describing from an experiential standpoint how patients manage their physical situations as well as their active part in coordinating the institutional processes of the health care system. We want to take up people’s experience as patients, drawing, of course, on the previous work of Eric Mykhalovskiy and Liza McCoy, but extending our knowledge of the experience of managing health problems and pains in the context of health care institutions. For example, Manda Ann Roddick has written a very interesting paper on this topic; Sheri Watkins recently completed a fascinating thesis in sociology at the University of Victoria, based on her own experience. We are going to be looking for more experiential accounts using the concept of work that institutional ethnographers have found useful – as you probably know it stretches the ordinary use to include more generally what people do that takes time, effort, is intended, and gets done in actual situations (so, for example, sitting in an emergency room waiting to see a doctor can be recognized as work). We are also interested in the work – in the same sense – that patients do to coordinate the work of health care professionals whose specialties separate them in dealing with people. We want to get the word out so that those of you who have been doing or planning to do institutional ethnographies of patients’ experience, their own or others they learned from, can get in touch with us. My email address is desmith@uvic.ca. Of course, down the line we’re looking for chapters, but we would be interested in hearing about what you are developing to get us started thinking about possibilities and directions. And, by the way, I know some spoke to me at the IE workshop on the Sunday in Denver and I got some emails, but then my computer went wonky and I lost a lot – so by all means please contact me again. Responses to burning IE questions Melody Ninomiya of Memorial University is doing research with people in rural and remote Labrador who are living with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). She submitted two burning questions for an IE scholar to answer. Laura Bisaillon of McGill University responds below. Question 1: How is IE being presented before a research study to prospective funders who want clear objectives, practical applications, and a knowledge translation plan. Answer 1: I respond from my experience presenting my doctoral study to external funders. (I was successfully funded). I am not of the mind that the challenge of presenting a solid and convincing study using IE is greater than when another approach is used. This is to say that the ingredients of skillful writing and concise explanation – where you demonstrate a clear, achievable, and necessary plan of inquiry – are consistent with other social science approaches. The assignment is just as challenging! In my work, I have found it helpful to draw parallels between the aims of an IE project and those pursued in other approaches. This achieves two purposes, the first of which is to display your knowledge of the method you purposefully adopted, IE. This framing brings you to a place of displaying your familiarity with other methods, which is an opportunity and strategy to showcase your broader knowledge base. Question 2: Similarly, how is IE being presented after a research study to decision and policy makers who make "evidence-based" decisions? In many cases, "evidence-based" decisions strongly prefer quantitative research results that are assumed to speak for themselves. Is it possible or problematic to present IE results in a way that can also speak for itself? Is there room to include numbers, such as descriptive statistics, into the IE research reports to somehow engage our intended audience better? Answer 2: In answer to your three-part question, I would first like to call attention to the point that presenting results is as much an issue of communicating substantive findings as it is about framing the issue(s) for discussion. Knowing and talking with confidence (and unapologetically) about the analysis produced through your project framed by IE is important. There is a rich methodological literature defining terms and concepts. Drawing on this literature as a resource, as well as the array of exemplars of IE projects that are on record, will lend strength to your work and how you present it. Doing this will also situate your work within a family of social science research that enjoys a track record of contributing to social change. Second, what is immensely attractive and useful with good research that has used insights from IE is the opportunity for the results to tell a story. People like to hear a good story, and your ethnography will have produced a thorough one. So, in presentations of findings, I have found it useful to situate IE as a theoretically informed social science project, drawing careful attention to the point that findings are empirically supported. Your research process has been based in the material conditions of people’s lives and practices. Calling an audience’s attention to this feature of your work is, in my view, a key ‘selling point’. Because of this analytic position, your project has contributed an evidence informed dimension about X (insert social problem) that decision-makers, policy-makers, your colleagues, the general public, among other actors, can use to understand how that social problem occurs. In this way, the results of your work can and should be “assumed to speak for themselves.” It is, indeed, important to gauge, and where possible, to know, the audience to whom we present our findings. This is true as a general rule of thumb. Regardless of the audience, a goal of presenting results is to have them discussed, understood, and it is to be hoped, used by people. In this way, using language that can be intelligible and understood by person’s uninitiated with IE is critical. I suggest that is it helpful to concisely define and explain methodological terms when you use them. Otherwise, you run the risk of mystifying, annoying or alienating your listeners, which is contrary to what you set out to achieve. For every apparent doubter in the audience, there will be a person who finds your approach and results appealing, exciting, and useful precisely because of the analytic orientation of your work! :) To your last question about integrating numbers, I say, yes! By all means integrate “descriptive statistics” into your work. I would not see this as a tool to “better” engage an intended audience, however. (Though this could, I suppose, be achieved as a by-product of mobilizing quantitative data). I would instead use numbers and statistics where relevant and useful to support lines of inquiry and the caliber of your analyses. Bon succès! [Editors’ note: This Q&A approach has been taken at least once before this edition but we would like to make it a regular feature. Students and others new to IE with a burning question to ask are encouraged to send them to Cheryl Zurawski at cdz@arialassociates.com. Cheryl will, in turn, seek out an answer for publication. Special thanks to Laura Bisaillon for taking the time to respond to Melody’s burning questions for the Fall 2012 edition.] Dorothy E. Smith Award for Scholar-Activism The IE Division is pleased to solicit nominations for the 2013 Dorothy E. Smith Award for Scholar-Activism. This award recognizes the activities of an individual or group who has made substantial contributions to institutional ethnographic scholar-activism in either a single project or some longer trajectory of work. The contributions may involve IE research conducted and used for activist ends, or it may involve activist efforts which have drawn upon or contributed to IE scholarship. The award committee invites members of the IE Division to send a one-page statement describing the contributions of the nominee to Suzanne Vaughan at svaughan@asu.edu by May 1, 2013 George W. Smith Graduate Student Paper Award The IE Division solicits papers for its 2013 George W. Smith Graduate Student Paper Competition. To be considered, papers should advance institutional ethnography scholarship either methodologically or through a substantive contribution. For an overview of institutional ethnography and the purposes of the IE Division, see http://sssp1.org/index.cfm/pageid/1236/m/464. Authors must be currently enrolled graduate students or have graduated within the last 12 months. Submissions are to be 25 pages long or less, excluding notes, references and tables, and be submitted in Word-compatible format, in 12-point Times New Roman font. An electronic letter from the student’s supervisor attesting to the lead author’s student status must accompany the submission. Prizes include a $100 cash award, registration fees, an opportunity to present the winning paper at the 2013 SSSP annual meeting and a ticket to the SSSP awards banquet. The winner of the 2013 paper will be invited to sit on the adjudicating panel for the 2014 paper submissions. Send submissions to ALL of the following members of the 2013 review committee: Marjorie DeVault mdevault@maxwell.syr.edu, Lauren Eastwood, eastwole@plattsburgh.edu and Faezeh Bahreini, fbahreini@mail.usf.edu. The deadline for submissions is January 1, 2013. ISA Forum in Buenos Aires The first two days of the early August, 2012 Forum on Sociology organized by the International Sociological Association in Buenos Aires were especially busy for institutional ethnographers as participants in five sessions organized by the new Thematic Group on Institutional Ethnography. The objectives of the thematic group are: “To develop international contacts among sociologists and social activists interested in institutional ethnography as a mode of inquiry; to encourage the worldwide exchange of research findings, methodological advances and theoretical developments relevant to institutional ethnography; t o promote international meetings and research collaboration by scholars and social activists using institutional ethnography.” Helping to advance these objectives were presenters from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Switzerland and the US. Looking to the future, the thematic group is already making plans for the XXVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology to be held in Yokohama, Japan, July 13-19, 2014. That may seem like a long time off, but it takes a great deal of planning for meetings that attract over 6,000 participants. The call for sessions is scheduled to be posted on January 15, 2013, and the eight sessions allotted to the thematic group will be finalized by March 1. The date for for the call for papers has yet to be announced. Participation in the call for sessions, along with organizing one or more of the sessions, is limited to members, so now is the time to join. The membership is for four years and it will cover both the upcoming World Congress and the Forum of Sociology in 2016. Membership information is at this link (http://www.isa-sociology.org/memb_i/index.htm and be sure to join the thematic group as well as the ISA. Job posting The New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University (ASU) invites applications for the tenure track position of Assistant Professor in Sociology with an emphasis on structures of class inequality. Applicants must have expertise in class inequality in global contexts, including the US. Of particular interest are scholars who explore inequality using historic, comparative, extended case and/or institutional ethnographic methods in their research. To qualify, applicants must have a PhD in Sociology by August 2013, evidence of an ongoing research program and level of publication consistent with experience, and evidence of successful college/university teaching. Application procedure: Send the following items electronically to Jamie Howell at newcollegejobs@asu.edu: 1) a letter of application, 2) a current curriculum vitae, 3) three samples of scholarly work; 4) teaching evaluations or other evidence of teaching accomplishment, and 5) the names and contact information for three references (references will not be contacted without candidate notification). Application deadline is January 7, 2013; if not filled, applications will be reviewed weekly thereafter until the search is closed. For complete application information and requirements see http://newcollege.asu.edu/jobs. Arizona State University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. ASU’s complete non-discrimination statement may be found at https://www.asu.edu/titleIX. The line-up for New York The IE Division will meet from August 9-11, 2013 as part of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the SSSP at The Westin New York at Times Square. Division members are encouraged to present a paper during one of the sessions that make up the line-up for New York. These sessions, being sponsored or co-sponsored by the IE Division, are listed below. For more information about individual sessions, please contact the organizer(s). IE Division Sessions Title: New Directions in IE research This session provides a place to talk about ways of carrying out IE research and presenting analyses to various audiences (practitioners, academics, activists, policymakers, journalists). Aligned with IE’s emphasis on people’s work organized within complexes of social relations – presenters will discuss analysis that moves beyond social constructionism. The emphasis of the session is on trying new things and extending IE’s range. Papers with a predominantly methodological focus whereby innovative modes of data collection, analysis, and dissemination will be considered. Did you develop an interesting way to generate rich data? Did you establish novel connections with community partners? Did you extend institutional ethnographic inquiry into a new-to-IE domain of institutional practice? Did you put your institutional ethnographic analysis into productive conversation with another analytic approach? Did you write up your analysis in a creative way? Did you create presentational materials that speak effectively to different audiences? Did you come up with a new solution to an old problem? Papers are invited which describe and reflect critically on specific empirical research projects, with a focus on matters of method, analysis and/or presentation. Papers that discuss methodological or presentational matters from a hypothetical perspective, or as future plans, will also be considered. Organizers: Janet Rankin, jmrankin@ucalgary.ca and Paul Luken, pluken@westga.edu Thematic Session (Critical dialogue; invited papers only) Title: Re-imagining Governing: Critical Dialogue on E-Governance and the Everyday Work of the Front Line There are growing similarities across the sites of front line work. The institutional technologies coordinating these changes are managerial technologies – technologies for framing up what is going on, coordinating and controlling front line work so that particular kinds of data are available and particular decisions can be made. Yet people work is not easily managed by these coordinative processes. In this session, re-imagining social problems and moving beyond social constructionism, institutional ethnographers describe the changes in front line work as e-governing technologies shape and reshape their everyday work. The session will bring into view the strong similarities in e-governance processes across institutional sites as well as the ways front line workers as diverse as health workers, educators, and community workers, both work with and interrupt those processes.   Organizer: Alison Griffith, agriffith@edu.yorku.ca Title: Law, Policy and IE This session seeks papers that utilize ethnographic methodologies and/or institutional ethnography to analyze law and/or policy activities. For example, research that examines the social organization of policy or the ways in which legal and policy processes organize individuals’ lives would be appropriate for this session. Organizer: Lauren Eastwood, eastwole@plattsburgh.edu Co-Sponsored Sessions Title: The Social Organization of Health Professional Education The aim of this session is to stimulate critical dialogue related to the social organization of health professional education. Emphasis will be placed on extending the current debates related to knowledge production for and in medical education and exploring the uneasy adoption of social science methodologies in medicine. Suggested topics can include but are not limited to: issues of hidden curriculum; the often competing and conflicting roles of science, medicine and social science; the increasing importation of Western-based curriculum to low income countries; and critical perspectives on inter-professional education. Co-Sponsors: IE and Educational Problems Divisions Organizer: Fiona Webster, fiona.webster@gmail.com Title: Management and Ruling Relations Relations of ruling are continually revised and extended through the activities of people in managerial positions. Managers routinely report on, account for, record and/or otherwise take note of particular aspect of the everyday work lives of the people they manage. This session invites submissions from institutional ethnographic researchers whose projects of inquiry shed light on the active part that people in managerial positions play in revising and extending the ruling relations. Regardless of whether managers are employed by a government, for-profit or not-for-profit organization, a great deal of their work involves practices of inscription – or the activities of working with, working from and/or working to produce texts of various kinds. Accordingly, it is anticipated this session will attract submissions from researchers who draw on Dorothy E. Smith’s writing on the text-mediated social organization of knowledge. Co-Sponsors: IE and Labour Studies Divisions Organizer: Cheryl Zurawski, cdz@arialassociates.com Title: Institutional Ethnography Approaches to Gender, Race, Colonization and Migration in Transnational Contexts This session provides opportunities to explore ways in which movements of capital and people transnationally interact and intersect with relations of dominance and subordination (e.g., gender, race, sexualisation, colonization, to name a few) historically and presently. Of special interest is the application of institutional ethnography to these relations, as capitalism shifts and evolves as a dynamic global system. Co-Sponsors: IE and Global Divisions Organizers: Roxana Ng, roxana.ng@utoronto.ca and Samit Dipon Bordoloi, diponbordoloi@gmail.com Title: Knowledge, Power and the Politics of Reality This session seeks papers that explore contestations over knowledge and power in everyday life, professional practice, policy, and/or social problem construction. Of particular interest are papers that consider the ways that texts—defined broadly to include both written and audio-visual texts, as well as both virtual and material texts—mediate knowledge of social reality and, in turn, the ways that power affects the forms that reality takes in those texts, as well as the prevailing meaning of them in everyday, institutional, and public discourses. Priority consideration will be given to papers that explicitly use institutional ethnography and/or social problems theory; however, any paper that fits the broad focus of the session will be considered. Co-Sponsors: IE and Social Theory Divisions Organizer: Jared Rosso, jared.delrosso@du.edu Title: IE as Activism This session will open up a critical dialogue on the relationship between IE and activism. To this end, papers on methodological and theoretical considerations on the relationship between institutional ethnography and activism are welcome. Papers comparing various activist research approaches, traditions and methods are also welcome (e.g. militant ethnography, ethnography from below, and participatory action research). The hope for this session is that the presenters and the audience can further the theorization and practice of institutional ethnography as an activist research method, and can promote the sharing and cross-pollination between various forms of activist ethnography. Co-Sponsors: IE and Conflict, Social Action and Change Divisions Organizer: Ian Hussey, ihussey@york.ca Title: Teaching Institutional Ethnography Institutional ethnographers teach IE in a variety of institutional and educational settings (education, social work, nursing and sociology faculties for example) and often use tools and methods outside regular course formats. Some have developed innovative strategies for taking up IE texts and engaging students in learning how institutional ethnography is practiced. The session invites papers/presentations that tell concretely what people are doing, and learning from teaching IE. For example, are there some aspects of IE that are more difficult to teach? How do you deal with the problems generated for students who have been trained to think with concepts antithetical to IE? Co-Sponsors: IE and Teaching Social Problems Divisions Organizer: Susan Marie Turner, turnersusanm@gmail.com