Institutional Ethnography and the Materiality of Affect: Affective Circuits as Indicators of Other Possibilities. (October 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Talbot, Debra
• Is Part Of: Journal of contemporary ethnography. Volume 49:Number 5(2020:Oct.)
• Page Start: 691
• Page End: 709
• Publication Date: 2020-10
• Subjects: affect -- boredom -- institutional ethnography -- resistance -- utopia; Sociology, Urban -- Periodicals; Urban anthropology -- Periodicals; 305.8
• DOI: 10.1177/0891241620943276
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0891-2416

Abstract

Many studies have utilized institutional ethnography (IE) to reveal the social relations that govern how things are put together at the frontline of work, particularly in the public sector and education. The focus has generally been on restrictive practices associated with accountability regimes of new public management. Less analytic attention has been paid, however, to discovering ways in which workers are finding how it can be otherwise. Revisiting the data from a longitudinal study, originally conducted as an IE, provided an opportunity to trace the influence of affect in relation to teachers' practices. Grounded in empirical data, this article makes a case for the methodological innovation of tracing the work done by affect, as part of an IE, in order to reveal possibilities for resistance.