IE Newsletter Institutional Ethnography Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems Volume 17 | No. 2 Spring/Summer, 2020 LaNysha Adams Division Chair Edlinguist Solutions lanysha@edlinguist.com Gina Petonito Correspondence and Copy Editor gpetonito@yahoo.com Jayne Malenfant Editor jayne.malenfant@mail.mcgill.ca On the Inside - Members News & Notes - George W. Smith AwardWinner - Welcome New Members! - IE Take on Covid-19 -Virtual Half-Day Meeting George W. Smith Graduate Student Paper Competition Congratulations to June Jeon on winning the 2020 George W. Smith Student Paper Competition for his paper titled ÒInvisibilizing Politics.Ó June Jeon received his PhD in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Tufts University's Tisch College of Civic Life. His research area includes sociology of science, technology, and environment. His works have been appeared in academic journals, includingÊSocial Studies of ScienceÊandÊEngaging Science, Technology, and Society. We are fortunate to be able to publish his abstract below and we look forward to hearing him in person at a later meeting. Abstract:Ê Although sociologists have explored how political and economic factors influence the formation of ignorance in science and technology, we know little about how scientists comply with external controls by abandoning their prior research and leaving scientific innovations incomplete. Most research in science and technology studies (STS) on ignorance has relied on structural and historical analyses, lackingÊin situÊstudies in scientific laboratories. Drawing on institutional ethnographic research, this article examines the habitus of ignorance as a mechanism of the social production of ignorance. Scientists have a set of dispositions that establish practical contexts enabling them to ignore particular scientific content. Leaders of the organization repeatedly legitimate the abandonment of unfinished projects, while ordinary laboratory scientists internalize the normalized view that the scientific field is inherently opportunistic and that unfunded research should be left undone. A cycle of legitimation and acceptance of ignorance by actors at distinctive positions within the organization provides a mechanism of social control of scientific knowledge. As the mechanism is habitually self-governed by the rules of the game of current scientific institutions, the result is an indirect, although deeply subjugating, invisible and consolidating form of political and economic domination of the scientific field. IE in the Time of COVID-19 Jayne MalenfantÕs conversation with Aron Rosenberg resulted in this paragraph about AronÕs doctoral work. Both Jayne and Aron are graduate students at McGill University. Experience, activism, and new ways of connecting during Covid19 Ê One of the things that drew me to institutional ethnography is that peopleÕs everyday experiences are trusted as a valuable source of evidence. In this pandemic many of us are so isolated that the everyday experiences that we rely on are filtered through the internet. As someone who is spending the year offline as part of an I.E. project, I can see that the abstractions that people end up living in are more potent right now. We can build imagined versions of whatÕs happening, or get caught up in conspiracy theories; itÕs harder for many people to have a clear and complicated version of reality that includes all kinds experiences when itÕs solely from your place of knowing. For those who go out and work with people, maybe you get to be in that world where you have other peopleÕs experiences informing your understanding of the pandemic. But the way many of us are impacted by the pandemic right now, I donÕt think these different narratives are being accessed in ways that might complicate policy, grand theories and top-down narratives. Being offline, IÕm missing both these dominant narratives but also the alternatives, that are aimed at organizing and action. IE isnÕt against theory, but it is against taking theory and using it willy-nilly, and right now with Covid, people are adopting theory about what is happening from afar, based on epidemiology, climate change, politics, etc. All of these theories circulating online, are those types of theories that IE is particularly weary of; the kind that, when you try to reapply them to peopleÕs everyday contexts, are completely unrelated. I think for many, having more access to say, online calls by activists (and particularly led by disability activists who have been advocating for these spaces for a long time) where you might explicitly get to hear peopleÕs varied experiences, there may be a greater desire to be doing organizing right now from home. I think IE also needs to have this activist push. Note: Jayne and Aron had this conversation before the mass mobilizations against police violence/racism and George Floyd protests, and want to recognize the amazing activism that is happening right now (and was previously) that is firmly grounded in the everyday experiences of people. An IE analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic from the standpoint of a transnational researcher in Europe, Morena Tartari, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow, University of Antwerp, Belgium This analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic reflects my standpoint as a transnational researcher. This analysis is based on entries from my diary, texts from the mass media and social media, and regulations from universities and research agencies. My current research has different consecutive fieldwork in Italy, the UK, Spain, and Belgium. During the early months of the Covid-19 outbreak (January-May 2020) I stayed in the UK. The onset of the Covid-19 crisis was followed by different restrictive measures and reaction times from the first announced case in these countries, which simultaneously ruled my personal and family life and the ongoing and future activities and expectations of myself and my research participants (single mothers and professionals). My analysis concerns how, continuously, institutions tried to transform the Covid-19 virus into a text, generating competition between different texts in interpreting the virus existence. These competing interpretations tried to gain power over the virus and people by ruling the life of different social groups. Some examples of these competitions come from my research fieldwork and in first-person experience, as follows. 1) The lockdown measures were not applied to parents with childrenÕs shared custody causing a lack of protection for people in the Òat-riskÓ category and showing that family rights come before health rights (stated by the Òstay-at-homeÓ discourse). 2) In the same town, organizations like universities, government, council and schools ruled differently parentsÕ at-home work and childrenÕs schools closing (offering competing interpretations of the virusÕ dangerousness). 3) The Òstay-at-homeÓ measures appeared as gender-insensitive in absence of ad-hoc policies for women. Health discourses seemed to prevail on the rights to work, affecting particularly single mothersÕ incomes. Several other examples are present in my fieldwork experience and could be analyzed deeply. In conclusion, the Covid-19 crisis has made many pre-existing problematics more visible. IE in these Times: Reflections on COVID-19 and the Òeveryday disasterÓ of neoliberalism Lauren E. Eastwood, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY College at Plattsburgh Rebecca Solnit, in her 2009 book ÒA Paradise Built in Hell: The extraordinary communities that arise in disaster,Ó reflects on the fact that the erosion of social welfare systems has created a context where some peopleÕs lives are Òeveryday disasters.Ó Clearly, this is the sort of analysis in which those of us who are influenced by the ontology of institutional ethnography have been engaging as we conduct our research. We are often investigating the impacts of the imperatives of neoliberal economies on individuals who are living and working in such economies. As I reflect on the current times, one thing that has been front and center for me since the pandemic entered into my consciousness, is the fact that it has severed the gossamer threads by which so many of our institutions were hangingÑthose institutions having been eviscerated by recent historical economic trends. Institutional ethnographers have long studied these institutions, and their evisceration. From health care systems, to education systems, and a range of other institutions that can either create a more just society or that can, in their failings, promote injustices, we have been investigating the workings of a society that is organized by larger economic systems. We have been investigating how things are Òput together,Ó and thus are not surprised that the pandemic has served to exacerbate existing inequalities and the tenuous existences of marginalized people. Perhaps also we are not surprised that concerns about the current protests for racial justice are often being caged in public health concerns, rather than in an examination of racism and discomfort with system-level analysis. In other words, as we have engaged in understanding the larger discourses that organize our worlds, we know that it is easier for people to retreat to those discourses that serve to allow them to ÒknowÓ the world in certain ways, rather than to interrogate the systems that have created that knowledge. There is so much that sociologistsÑand institutional ethnographersÑcan analyze in these times. So, where does that leave us? I imagine that, also, moving ÒforwardÓ we can be instrumental in discussions of how best to re-build. So much remains to be seen about how things will go. Will these movements for racial justice be stamped out by a fascist police state? Or will they open the spaces for larger conversations about how things got to be this way? Or perhaps some of both? We have long known that, as institutional ethnographers, our work is important. We do not engage in the production of knowledge for its own sake (whatever that would mean) but instead we are motivated by the need to make social change in the work that we do. In these times, many of us, regardless of where we focus our research attentions, understand that our training as institutional ethnographers has equipped us with the tools to consider the broader implications of the current pandemic, how it disproportionately impacts certain individuals, and what systemic/institutional arrangements need to be re-built in order to create a more just world. My hope is that the drastic changes that we are seeing will open up opportunities for more public discussion about these crucial issues, and that institutional ethnographers can actively participate in these discussions. That is my hope. Musings about COVID-19 Catherine Ringham, Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) Health System Impact Fellow (Postdoctoral), Alberta Health Services and the University of Calgary Faculty of Nursing COVID-19 has undoubtably changed the worldÑthe way we go about our everyday lives, ÒevidenceÓ related to the science of this disease and illness, and the coordination of health services and care for example. The scale of the impact on people locally, and far beyond the reaches of our own social places, has been and will continue to be enormous. My life is organized by a plethora of Zoom meetings and my own self-imposed ÒstructureÓ intended to demonstrate academic productivity. While there is a certain amount of freedom, or perhaps flexibility, in not having to do the daily trek to work, COVID-19 is organizing every aspect of my life: grocery shopping, medical appointments, (cancelled) surgery, job interviews, care of elder family members, and so on. How I do each of these activities has changed. A whole new set of steps is required for shoppingÑhand sanitization and donning a mask, maintaining 6 feet distance from anyone, no longer using cash transactions, follow the arrows on the floor, returning to plastic bag supplied by the store, and the list goes on. In the complex matrix of social order, we have all shifted how we think about and proceed with our daily activities. I was in the midst of data collection and analysis when the COVID pandemic hit, the project: Mapping institutional processes to facilitate scale and spread of Family Integrated Care (FICare). I struggled with whether the work is important at this point given the overwhelming issues my nursing and healthcare provider colleagues are navigating. The study is not directly related to COVID concerns but is important research for sick infants and families who are in the neonatal intensive care, as well health system decisions leaders who are working to implement new care practices. The social organization of implementation is fascinating and complex, and the map of the processes, texts and activities involved stretches across a large whiteboard in my office. There will be no more data collection so I must work with what IÕve got, yet the halting of non-COVID research is lovely data in itself! I have the privilege of showing how implementation activities, done by real people in real places in particular moments of time, are changed by unexpected happenings that shapes how research, practice changes, and decision making unfolds. As I reflect on the state of COVID-19 and how this pandemic has impacted my life, I muse about how IE can offer a unique perspective on how health policy actually plays out in practice with actual people. And I realize there is more work to be done than I have the capacity to do in my lifetime! Can IE Save the University from Itself? Gina Petonito, Visiting Associate Professor, Miami University The academic mission of any university is to teach students, and the faculty sit at this missionÕs center. Over the past 30 years, however, facultyÕs position at the heart of the university is gradually eroding. Administrators routinely, it seems, replace tenured lines with underpaid visiting faculty who are easily swapped with a new crop of visiting faculty after five years. Courses not assigned to tenure, tenure track and visiting faculty are farmed out to adjuncts, who are paid by the course, receive no benefits and of course, have no job security. A parallel trend is the rise of teaching instructors, faculty whose sole responsibility is to teach. Typically, they have a higher teaching load than tenure and tenure track faculty, and of course, lower salaries. Often, only MasterÕs degrees confer eligibility for such jobs. According to the AAUP, such non tenure type appointments account for over 70% of all instructional staff appointments in US institutions of higher education. According to a 2009 Department of Education report, 51.6 are women, and 81.9% are white. People of color, then account for 18.1% of contingent faculty. Looking at the statistics again in 2016, the TIAA institute concluded that faculty are becoming slightly more diverse, but not on the tenure track. Underrepresented minorities hold 13% of faculty jobs in 2013, but only 10% of tenured jobs. Women hold 49% of totally faculty posts but only 38% of tenured jobs. The diversification of the professoriate by gender and race is closely associated with precarity. Enter COVID-19. When the economic shut down government, businesses and schools began, institutions of higher education got hit with dizzying projections of multi-millions and even billions of dollars in budget shortfalls. Administrators moved to take draconian measures to balance strained budgets. And the immediate reaction at several schools was to jettison the cadre of contingent faculty. My university, Miami University in Ohio cut 200 faculty from its ranks. Ohio University cut 53. Missouri Western cut 31. And the list grows. Perusing a Facebook faculty site reveals that people are still waiting to hear if their job is next on the chopping block. Yes, staff and administrators at these various universities are also losing their positions, but my focus is on faculty, workers who directly advance the universityÕs teaching mission. What will happen to the courses they teach, and the students who want to take them? Some will be absorbed by the mandated higher teaching loads tenure and tenure track faculty are asked to bear. Undoubtedly, some courses will evaporate. And what departments will be negatively impacted: Social Sciences and Humanities, WomenÕs Studies and Black Studies? Are Business and Engineering Departments losing faculty at the same rate? How many of these faculty are now facing tenuous existences, devoid of health insurance in the middle of a pandemic? It seems that the higher education mission can be sidestepped or reconfigured at any time just by activating a text (the one-year or course by course contract) to flimsily connect the contingent faculty to the institution. Clearly, approaches like IE are needed, to examine how institutions find it so easy to organize so that they can easily sacrifice the most vulnerable on the altar of balanced budgets. Further, IEÕs unique stance allows us to critique the larger structural forces that create these inequities and to examine the discourses and rhetoric that justify such processes. Hopefully, IE activists will apply the approach to re-create a university that is just, equitable and true to its mission. Welcome New Members Twelve new members have joined the IE Division since the publication of our last newsletter. Welcome all! Laura Connoy Tanis Crawford Joseph Andrew Guzman Alex Hotere-Barnes Barbara Imle Jaein Josefina Lee Kristen Angela Livera Laura Lubin Linn-Marie Lillehaug Pederson Courtney R. Petruik Ashley N. Robinson Astrid Schorn Members News and Notes Naomi Nichols and her graduate student Sarah Lewington have published a new article. The citation is: N. Nichols & Lewington, S. (2020).ÊÒStepped CareÓ and the Work of Being Well on Campus: An institutional ethnography.ÊYouth Studies. Here is a link to access a free eversion: ÊÊhttps://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/SMA9VVFEVH3GHU7WMAZA/full?target=10.1080/13676261.2020.1757633Ê Chris Hurl and Janna Klostermann recently published an article,ÊÒRemembering George W. SmithÕs Life WorkÓÊ(2020) inÊStudies in Social JusticeÊthat revisits political activist ethnographer George W. SmithÕs intellectual and political legacy, with a focus on his engagement with and conception of Òlife work.Ó Ê Janna Klostermann, Samantha McAleese, Lauren Montgomery and Sarah Rodimon recently published a reflection piece,ÊÒWorking the ProjectÓÊ(2020), in theÊCanadian Review of SociologyÊthatÊprovides four condensed research proposals ? on the social organization of care work, sex work, criminal justice, and abortion care ? to support emerging institutional ethnographers with scholarly writing and research design. Eric Mykhalovskiy, Jacqueline Choiniere, Pat Armstrong, and Hugh Armstrong, edited a book in 2020 titled Health Matters: Evidence, Critical Social Science and Health Care in Canada.ÊIt is published by theÊUniversity of Toronto Press.ÊÊhttps://utorontopress.com/ca/health-matters-2 Eric Mykhalovskiy, Chris Sanders, ColinÊHastings, and Laura Bisaillon published an article in 2020 titled ÒExplicitly Racialised and Extraordinarily Over-Represented:ÊBlackÊImmigrant Men in 25 Years of News Reports on HIV Non-Disclosure CriminalÊCases in CanadaÓ inÊCulture, Health and Sexuality. Êhttps://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/EP2RJHVP5FQP87B3TSUY/full?target=10.1080/13691058.2020.1733095 Colin Hastings, Eric Mykhalovskiy, Chris Sanders, and Laura Bisaillon published an article in 2020 titled ÒDisrupting a Canadian Prairie Fantasy and Constructing Racial Otherness: An Analysis of News Media Coverage of Trevis SmithÕs Criminal HIV Non-DisclosureÓ in Canadian Journal of Sociology.45(1):1-22.Ê https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/cjs/index.php/CJS/article/view/29472/21504 Catherine Ringham, Janet Rankin, and L. Marcellus published an article in 2020 titled ÒThe social organization of neonatal nursesÕ feeding work,Ó in Neonatal Network: The Journal of Neonatal Nursing, 39(5). Catherine Ringham and Karen MacKinnon published a paper in 2019 titled ÒMothering work and perinatal transfer: An institutional ethnographic investigation,Ó in Canadian Journal of Nursing Research. DOI: 10.1177/0844562119884388 Resources for a Study of IE and Policing Given the recent call for defunding the police by BLM and other activists, we compiled this list of recent published articles dealing with IE (or IE inspired) investigations of policing. We hope such a list will inspire future work, or simply help readers become more fully informed about investigations of policing from an IE perspective. Nancy Naples, (2008), Economic restructuring and the social regulation of citizenship in the heartland, in People at work: Life, power, and social inclusion in the new economy. DeVault, Marjorie L., (Ed); pp. 112-138; New York, NY, US: New York University Press. Naomi Nichols & Jessica Braimoh, (2018) ÒCommunity Safety, Housing Precariousness and Processes of Exclusion: An Institutional Ethnography from the Standpoints of Youth in an ÔUnsafeÕ Urban Neighbourhood,Ó Critical Sociology, 44: 157-172. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/ejournals/article/350535881 Ana Muniz, (2014), Maintaining Racial Boundaries: Criminalization, Neighborhood Context, and the Origins of Gang Injunctions, Social Problems, Volume 61, Issue 2, 1 May 2014, Pages 216Ð236. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.miamioh.edu/10.1525/sp.2014.12095 Kevin Walby, (2005), ÒHow Closed-Circuit Television Surveillance Organizes the Social: An Institutional Ethnography,Ó Canadian Journal of Sociology, 30: 189-214. IE Doctoral Defense Colin Hastings, Sociology, York University, Toronto, Canada successfullyÊdefended his dissertation entitledÊWriting for digital news: The social organization of news stories about HIV criminalization in an age of convergence journalism on March 20, 2020Ê His dissertation was also nominated for a University thesis prize.ÊCongratulations Dr. Hastings! SSSP in San Francisco Cancelled Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic Half Day Virtual Meeting Friday, August 7 from 12:00pmÐ5:00pm (EDT). The schedule of events will include: SSSP Business Meeting 12:00-1:00 pm Presidential Address 1:15-2:15pm Awards Recognition 2:30-3:15 pm Plenary Pandemic Focused Session 3:30-5:00 pm This program is offered as aÊcomplimentaryÊbenefit to current SSSP members. SSSP sends a special thanks to the Mansfield Institute for Social Justice and Transformation at Roosevelt University and Oxford University Press for their financial contributions to these virtual program activities. Remembering Happy Times Photo of Dorothy Smith and workshop attendees in Edmonton a couple of years ago. How many disciplines can say they have a founder who is so generous in giving of her time and expertise? Looking forward to meeting again. Stay safe and healthy everyone