Institutions often appear large, abstract, and impersonal. But it is in the small acts—the hesitant joke, the subtle refusal, the quietly improvised workaround, the blurring of roles—that their logics are revealed, questioned, or reconfigured. These small acts and moments—quiet, routine, but unexpected—reveal how institutional logics (of workplace authority or of workplace expectations) are negotiated and made flexible. This lesson focuses on how minor, everyday actions can bring into view the functioning and contradictions of institutions such as the clinic, the school, the police station, or the factory.
This approach draws on a core sensibility in ethnographic reasoning: the inductive movement from the particular to the conceptual. Rather than beginning with generalized theories about power or order, ethnographers often start from something specific—an overheard comment, a fleeting gesture—and ask what larger patterns it might index. These small moments are not illustrative of institutional dynamics; they are constitutive of them. Ethnographic writing, in turn, foregrounds these scenes not as anecdote but as analytic entry points.
To achieve this kind of institutional reframing in your writing, focus on crafting scenes that foreground specificity while holding open interpretive depth. This often involves zooming in on a single moment and rendering it with precision: who said what, how did they move, what objects or forms were involved, what silences or hesitations punctuated the interaction. Dialogue, gesture, and timing are key tools here—not simply to recreate the moment but to let its institutional stakes emerge. You might also experiment with juxtaposition: placing the small act against the backdrop of the broader system it both reflects and unsettles. Keep in mind that significance need not be declared explicitly; often, letting the scene unfold with restraint can allow its contradictions and meanings to resonate more powerfully. Writing in this mode asks you to trust that the details, when carefully chosen and arranged, can do theoretical work.
Focus
How small events reveal the structure, logics, and contradictions of institutions.
Learning Goals
- Learn to frame bureaucracies, clinics, or schools through embodied scenes.
- Analyze how institutional logics are reproduced or disrupted in moments of friction.
Activities
- Think about and identify a small act that you have observed or experienced at school or workplace and map the institutional systems it touches.
- Write a short scene (150 words max) where a small disruption reveals something about how power works.
- Discuss: When do small acts clarify structure? When do they obscure it?