Exposing Oppressive Systems

Institutional ethnography (IE) is a useful and systematic process for examining organizations and work data through the lens of stakeholders, at different levels, and different forces. Drawing from ethnomethodology, IE focuses on how everyday experience is socially organized. As an analytic focus, power crosses boundaries, providing researchers a view of social organization that illuminates practices that marginalize. This chapter provides the conceptual underpinnings for considering IE as a methodological tool and affords researchers the opportunity to see how IE has been used in adult and workforce education settings to make invisible practices visible to the victim. The result can often be information that leads to exploring or engaging in emancipatory efforts that lend to different and better future outcomes for other victims in similar situations.