In this edited collection, institutional ethnographers draw on their field research experiences to address different aspects of institutional ethnographic practice. As institutional ethnography embraces the actualities of people's experiences and lives, the contributors utilize their research to reveal how institutional relations and regimes are organized. As a whole, the book aims to provide readers with an accurate overview of what it is like to practice institutional ethnography, as wel...

Despite the swift spread of social network concepts and their applications and the rising use of network analysis in social science, there is no book that provides a thorough general introduction for the serious reader. Understanding Social Networks fills that gap by explaining the big ideas that underlie the social network phenomenon. Written for those interested in this fast moving area but who are not mathematically inclined, it covers fundamental concepts, then discusses netwo...

Long a fruitful area of scrutiny for students of organizations, the study of institutions is undergoing a renaissance in contemporary social science. This volume offers, for the first time, both often-cited foundation works and the latest writings of scholars associated with the "institutional" approach to organization analysis.In their introduction, the editors discuss points of convergence and disagreement with institutionally oriented research in economics and political science,...

Prominent sociologist Dorothy Smith outlines a method of inquiry that uses everyday experience as a lens to examine social relations and social institutions. Concerned with articulating an inclusive sociology that goes beyond looking at a particular group of people from the detached viewpoint of the researcher, this is a method of inquiry for people, incorporating the expert's research and language into everyday experience to examine social relations and institutions. The book begins by ex...

Evaluation—whether called by this name, quality assurance, audit, accreditation, or others—is an important social activity. Any organization that "lives in public" must now evaluate its activities, be evaluated by others, or evaluate others. What are the origins of this wave of evaluation? And, what worthwhile results emerge from it?The Evaluation Society argues that if we want to understand many of the norms, values, and expectations that we, sometimes unknowingly, bring ...

This new edition of Karen O’Reilly’s popular Ethnographic Methods provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the technical, practical and philosophical issues that arise when employing traditional and innovative research methods in relation to human agents.Using a wide range of case studies and source material to illustrate the dilemmas and resolutions that an ethnographic researcher may encounter, this textbook guides the reader from the initial design and pl...

Doing News Framing Analysis provides an interpretive guide to news frames – what they are, how they can be observed in news texts, and how framing effects are uncovered and substantiated in cultural, group, and individual sites. Chapters feature framing analysts reflecting on their own empirical work in research, classroom, and public settings to address specific aspects of framing analysis. Taken together, the collection covers the full range of ways in which framing has been the...

The widespread use of the measurement of educational outcomes in order to compare the performance of education within and across countries seems to express a real concern for the quality of education. This book argues that the focus on the measurement of educational outcomes has actually displaced questions about educational purpose. Biesta explores why the question as to what constitutes good education has become so much more difficult to ask and shows why this has been detrimental for th...

Online technologies excite the public imagination with narratives of democratization. The Internet is a political medium, borne of democracy, but is it democratizing?Late modern democracies are characterized by civic apathy, public skepticism, disillusionment with politics, and general disinterest in conventional political process. And yet, public interest in blogging, online news, net-based activism, collaborative news filtering, and online networking reveal an el...

This volume highlights the integration of qualitative research methods into traditional journalism, offering new ways of expanding and enhancing news coverage. Designed for readers without prior experience in social science research, this collection presents a wide variety of qualitative techniques and their applications in journalistic practice. The work brings together contributions from professional journalists and journalism scholars who are highly experienced in conducting qualitative...

Just as newspapers do not, typically, engage with the ordinary experiences of people′s daily lives, so organizational studies has also tended largely to ignore the humdrum, everyday experiences of people working in organizations. However, ethnographic approaches provide in-depth and up-close understandings of how the ′everyday-ness′ of work is organized and how, in turn, work itself organizes people and the societies they inhabit.Organizational Ethnography brings contributions from...

A step-by-step, hands-on guide to the theory and practice of ethnography researchIn the newly revised second edition of Ethnography Essentials: Designing, Conducting, and Presenting Your Research, author Julian M. Murchison delivers a comprehensive, hands-on guide to ethnographic research. The book walks you through the process from start to finish, from choosing a topic to selecting a research design, conducting data collection, analysis, and paper writin...