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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 examining the foundations of institutional ethnography in women's movements, differentiating it from other related sociologies; the second part offers an ontology of the social; and the third illustrates this ontology through an array of institutional ethnography examples. This will be a foundational text for classes in sociology, ethnography, and women's studies.