Mapping Ruling Relations: Advancing the Use of Visual Methods in Institutional Ethnography

In institutional ethnography studies, maps are often the outcome of making visible the mechanisms through which informants are hooked into ruling relations. As a complement to this conventional approach, this chapter outlines a mapping exercise that was embedded within interviews with family caregivers of older adults who are living with dementia. In addition to providing an overview to the organization and execution of the mapping exercise, the author includes examples to illustrate the ways this visual method served as a data elicitation tool, used to support and visualize caregiver informants’ exploration and articulation of their often-invisible care-related information activities. As a prompt for further conversations on this topic, the chapter concludes by proposing three advantages of using visual methods in institutional ethnography: maintaining a grounding in informants’ everyday experiences, preserving a privileging of informants’ work knowledges, and ensuring informants’ invisible, background work is revealed.