Queer Possibilities for Institutional Ethnography?

• In Event: Roundtable: Methodological Issues & Challenges in Queer Criminological Resarch

Abstract

Institutional Ethnography (IE) has long been employed by feminist researchers in an attempt to understand how people’s everyday experiences connect with ruling relations. This methodology allows researchers to make sense of how people implicated in systems and institutions make sense of these organizations, encourages researchers to consider how their positionality affects their perspective, and it allows for a shift away from a top-down approach. Additionally, institutional ethnographers use a variety of methods including interviews and textual analyses, with some ethnographers solely examining textual materials. Could this approach add to understandings of hard to reach and protected populations such as queer youth and incarcerated LGBTQIA people through analysis of more accessible textual materials associated with systemic and institutional checks on their lives and livelihoods? How could this methodology be adapted to serve the needs of queer criminologists?

Author

• Aimee Wodda, Pacific University