Institutional Ethnography and Actor-Network Theory: In Dialogue

Abstract

Institutional ethnography (IE) is a sociology that focuses on the everyday world as problematic. As a theory/method of discovery, it focuses on how the work people do is organized and coordinated by text-mediated and text-regulated social organization. Actor-network Theory (ANT) is a theory/method that is concerned with how realities get enacted. ANT focuses on a multiplicity of human and nonhuman actors (e.g., computers, documents, and laboratory equipment) and how the relations between them are constituted and how they are made to hang together to create certain realities. In this chapter, we discuss some of the similarities and differences between IE and ANT. We begin with an overview of IE and ANT and focus on their ontological and epistemological “shifts.” We then discuss some of the similarities and differences between IE and ANT, particularly from an IE stance. In doing so, we put these approaches into dialog and allude to some of the potential benefits and pitfalls of combining these approaches.

Citation

Corman, M.K. and Barron, G.R.S. (2017), "Institutional Ethnography and Actor-Network Theory: In Dialogue", Reid, J. and Russell, L. (Ed.) Perspectives on and from Institutional Ethnography (Studies in Qualitative Methodology, Vol. 15), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 49-70. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1042-319220170000015006