Provocations,Re-Un-Visions,Death,and Other Possibilities of “Data”

Blaikie (2003) proposed that “in the context of social research, the concept of data is generally treated as being unproblematic [emphasis added]. Data are simply regarded as something we collect and analyze in order to arrive at research conclusions” (p. 15). Data has become a key element of one of the main grand narratives of research. Data is survey responses, numbers, interview transcripts, artifacts, texts, observations, notes, images, and so on. We have textbooks that tell us how to collect it; how to sort and sift it; how to tell the good data—the stuff that is trustworthy, relevant, valid, meaningful—from the bad. The “usual way” of treating such data in the context of qualitative research, then, is as passive objects, waiting to be coded or granted shape and significance through the interpretive work of researchers. Oftentimes data is considered to be knowable, completely accessible, and collectible while at other times data may be taken as something secretive and sacred. It may be considered as secretive in the sense that “data secrets,” or unexpected appearances are covered up. Details of data’s unanticipated becoming might not be released in the fear of judgment or invalidation, or because it has been manipulated prior making it public or accessible to others. Sacred data, on the other hand, cannot tolerate critique or reflect discrepancies or complexities of life. Sacred data has one appearance, form, and correct use.

We worry about these uncritical notions, definitions, enactments, and treatments of data and thus want to provoke discontinuation of data as we have come to know of it through postpositivism, empiricism, text books, research training, and other grand narratives. This special issue is dedicated to (un)knowing and (un)doing data. Our challenge to the authors was to problematize conceptualizations of data as known, familiar, and inert objects, and to imagine more complex, creative, and critical engagements with data in the conduct of research. Following this problematization, the word data in this special issue should be read as “data,” data (under erasure), data-undone, data-rethought, data-particles, or maybe data-becoming.

It was our plan to invite “provocative” contributions that might help to re-think and re-animate data in qualitative research. How, we asked, can we do data differently in our research and teaching practices? Our questions were, of course, themselves animated by major methodological upheavals that have shaken the ground of qualitative inquiry over the last 30 years, in the wake of the various “turns” that have convulsed the humanities and social sciences: poststructuralist, postmodernist, deconstructive, Deleuzian, performative, affective, material feminist. These theoretical shifts and movements have challenged customary conceptualizations of knowledge, thought, and being. The implications for how (and indeed whether) we should work with data are profound, and provocative uses and notions of data have been proposed. However these provocative uses have been often marginalized and potentially dismissed, allowing those static and often positivist conceptualizations of data that we described above to continue to prevail in methods textbooks and in grant proposal designs. For example, even though St. Pierre’s (1997) visionary piece on different reconceptualizations of data has influenced many scholars, including many of the authors in this issue, St. Pierre’s visions of data were not widely implemented at the time of the publication. Although there have been other more recent examples that critically and productively diversify and reconceptualize data (e.g., Mazzei & McCoy, 2010; Schostak & Schostak, 2008), these too have yet to influence and impact the majority of published and funded research examples.

However, it could be argued that today there is greater methodological diversity and that postfoundational and deconstructive qualitative research practices are more established. Now might be a fertile time therefore to interrogate some of the taken-for-granted notions of data and analysis. The large number of abstract submissions we received for this special issue also indicates that this might be an auspicious time personally, discursively, and politically to process and revisit qualitative researchers’ notions of data.

We were also interested in the possibility of more active and significant roles for data. Generally, as we have noted, data is condemned to a subordinate or supplementary role in research processes—as mere “examples” of more abstract themes or concepts; or as “evidence” of arguments or conclusions; or as representations of an underlying reality. Yet data can be much more than a containable and controllable object of research. For example, Nietzsche would focus on expressions of will, Bergson on intuition, Marx on material impact, Spinoza on substance, Deleuze on intensities, and Heidegger on Dasein and being there in everyday happenings. Might data look different then, or do more than merely nod in agreement with researchers’ interpretations and generalizations?

Furthermore, we wonder whether data has a future. What if data is a dirty word, contaminated by the odor of scientistic certainty that still clings to it? Or potentially data is equally tainted by a persistent humanism that still lurks in qualitative research, even of a poststructural or posthumanist orientation, perpetually reinstating the autonomous human subject behind its own back, and relegating data once more to a subordinate role. Alternatively it could be productive to consider how data would work, and where it would “be,” especially within materialist ontologies that have challenged the very notion of a separation between “dumb matter” and the linguistic and cultural systems that “represent” it, and supposedly give it life and meaning.

Some authors in this issue, in response to such wonderings, are encouraging us to give up the concept of “data” altogether (Denzin and St. Pierre). It may be time to pronounce data dead, illusionary, decaying, or disappearing (Denzin, Gildersleeve, & Kuntz, Koro-Ljungberg, Holmes, & Jones, and Nordstrom), though such pronouncements are not necessarily negative: decay, disappearance, or illusion may have a paradoxical liveliness that resists the complacency of settled knowledge. Other contributors put data under erasure, considering it an inaccurate but perhaps necessary concept and label (Bridges-Rhoads & Van Cleave, Brkich & Barko, and Hofsess & Sonenberg). Some authors propose that data is always in making and can be only found in its becoming, wonder, doing, or in its materialization (Amatucci, Banerjee, & Blaise, Benozzo et al., Holmes & Jones, Laura, MacLure, Petersen, Reinertsen, & Otterstad, Swirski and Senior & Solomon).

We have resisted creating a strictly thematic organization for the issue, preferring a looser chaining of articles based on resonances and dissonances across the contributions, in the hope of creating productive tensions and provocation points. We begin the issue with St. Pierre’s article that asks readers to forget normative ontology and brute data. It is possible to detect thematic connections across some of the ensuing articles: for instance, Gildersleeve & Kuntz and Bridges-Rhoads & Van Cleave on dialogue; or Charman followed by Gershon on matter. MacLure and Reinertsen & Otterstad offer wonder and dreams as stimulating contexts for data. And nearer the end of issue we move toward affect and various intensities of data including the ultimate culmination of forces when data dies (Swirski, Denzin, and Holmes & Jones). But we have also placed articles interruptively—using visual images to break the illusion of smooth text or the dominance of argument (e.g., Hofsess & Sonenberg, Nordstrom, Senior, & Solomon). Overall, it is our hope that the articles included in this issue could prompt readers to reflect on their own notions of data and stimulate some contemplation especially when scholars face an urge to label something as data. We vision that in this way the seeds of deconstruction and creative scientific practices may have been planted.

To counter the limited space that conventional qualitative research often allows to conceptualize, “create, collect, document,” and define data, we invited contributors to develop encounters with data “outside of habitual framing mechanisms” (Jones, Holmes, MacRae, & MacLure, 2010, p. 488), by recognizing the disjointed and unfinished qualities of data, and their capacities to exceed our expectations and prompt new thought. We wondered how expanded notions of data could help scholars to conduct research that can make a difference and that serves others. Our questions proliferated. How could responsibility and data be connected or create productive tension? What could be data beyond presence—for example, data as an error, or an absence? What could be data that exceed researchers’ capacity to know them? What can count as data, and how do we recognize it when we see (or sense) it? To put it differently, how does data appeal to us? Is there agency in data? Can data set things in motion, or is it condemned to its subordinate and passive status? If we choose not simply to “interpret,” what else can we do with data; and what does it do to us? We invited authors to imagine more fluid, virtual, transformative, radical, political, and democratic conceptualizations and operations of data. We welcomed work in, and at the intersections of, cultural studies, critical interpretive research methodologies, and cultural critique; work in the state of paradox and unknowing.

The situation is not simply contradictory or irrational—it is paradoxical state—the state of too much reality, too much positivity, too much information. In this state of paradox, faced with extreme phenomena, we do not know exactly what is taking place. (Baudrillard, 2000, p. 67)

Revisioning data and provocations of data turned out not to be an easy task. The paradoxical nature of data can easily become paralyzing creating a sense of containment and disempowerment. In common with other authors, we found it hard to problematize our own relationships with data and to think about how we could approach data differently. It was difficult to let go and move beyond conventional and postpositivistic notions of data. Sometimes, even while attempting to respond to our blizzard of questions about data, authors seemed to find it easier in their first drafts to discuss everything but data. We received papers about collection, analysis, visualization, and representation of data, or fairly abstract theorizing about data, but some of us were hesitant or challenged by the invitation to connect reconceptualizations (in theory) with our practice (data examples, or data in action). It turned out to be hard to interrogate data and data grand narratives. Indeed sometimes, it seemed that when you begin to think about data it disappears. It vanishes when you are trying to capture it. Data seemed to act at times like the vanishing goods in the sheep’s shop in Alice in Wonderland, which fascinated Deleuze in his Logic of Sense: “whenever Alice looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite empty [emphasis in original], though the others were crowded as full as they could hold” (Deleuze, 2004, p. 49, quoting Alice). This tendency of data to disappear or refuse to offer itself up to close scrutiny is disconcerting, but we need not necessarily feel defeated by it. Perhaps the very capriciousness and elusiveness of data—so familiar and seemingly docile, yet liable to absent itself when we try to grasp it, only to appear on the next shelf up—points to something mobile and productive associated with data. Something necessary despite all the good reasons that can be advanced for dispensing with it. For Deleuze, the “empty place” and the “perpetual displacement of a piece” (p. 49) are paradoxically necessary to the production of meaning and significance since without them things and words would collapse back into silence and stasis. Is it fanciful to think that data, despite (or because) of its impossible status within “postqualitative” research, is perversely necessary to the continuation of the field?

Looking across the contributions in this issue, it is interesting to see the sheer range of what is being conceptualized as “data”—a range that goes well beyond the familiar materials of interview transcript or field notes. We have different manifestations of data in the relation to poetry, dialogue, drama, visuals, and sounds. Several authors are particularly attached to images, with some articles comprised almost exclusively of images, while others blend text and images, having the visual and textual interfering with each other. In these pieces, images do not have traditional complementary roles, as mere illustrations or supplements to a written text. Instead they disrupt or interrupt the smooth progress or logical representation of data, an argument, or point of view. Images are not used to represent, but instead to energize and mobilize; maybe to hail data.

It is also noteworthy that many authors in this issue used dialogue to process and represent their notions of data. We were interested in why dialogue seems to hold a continuing appeal as a creative or transgressive form or articulation of data, even after the poststructural turn, which problematized the status and authority of the speaking subject. Perhaps dialogue with colleagues, imaginary authors, and dead relatives was necessary to break through normative notions of data. Potentially, dialogue enabled multivoiced discussions about the status of data, supporting authors in their attempts to break through the singular voice and colonial presence in their reconceptualizations.

Instead of providing simple definitional answers or unified representational signifiers of what is data, what counts as data, or how data operates, we hope to leave the readers with unsettlement, discomfort, and uncertainty; with a creative confusion related to what do you with the ideas shared in the pages of this special issue. How do you translate presented examples into your teaching practice? How to teach students creativity, or impossible data or data analysis, or about fluid notions of data? How do these notions impact funded research activities and policy? Are these articles offering wacky alternatives that have no place in a real world that still seeks the assurance of data bent to fit overarching research designs and capable of delivering up evidence, findings, solutions, and recommendations in familiar ways? Is it enough that these experimental and unruly notions of data fuel the creativity, energy, and productivity of researcher and scholars and make us happy and more content with research enterprise? We don’t want to say that. So is it possible to provocatively use data and still engage with policy and funded research? We know from long experience that it is notoriously difficult to change the ground rules of research funding or to influence the demands of policy makers and funders (Daza, 2013; Scheurich, 2000). If anything, this makes the challenge more urgent. There are a few encouraging signs that it is possible, through collaboration with policy makers and communities, to introduce new and challenging forms of data to raise provocative questions. ¹ It should be possible for us to offer and deliver more to policy makers and the wider public, since banal uses of data do not make an impact. Data as evidence almost always fails to satisfy those who have demanded it.

Or do we want something else? Should we recognize and preserve these discussions as minority interests? There might be a particular productive energy in being marginalized, and the risk of wider acceptance of provocative notions of data is that they might lose their creative potential and power to shake up existing ideas. There is an ever-present threat of losing otherness to become the same.

We also want to thank the contributors to this special issue. They have risen to the challenge of thinking and doing data differently, and have responded to our persistent (and no doubt at times irritating) questions in ways that we could not possibly have anticipated. Readers will notice that the volume contains a considerably higher number of contributions than is usual, of a somewhat reduced length. It was clear from the responses to our call that the question of data is a lively issue for qualitative researchers and scholars, including many who are at earlier stages of their careers. We wanted to include as much of the rich diversity and challenge of these voices as possible, so that their thoughtful provocations will keep the question of data open and resistant to reincorporation into the grand narratives of qualitative research. The outcome is a rather unique collection. In association with this special issue, we will be assembling an online collection of data items in the form of a kind of “cabinet of curiosities,” to which readers (and contributors) will be invited to add, to continue the development of new adventures with data in qualitative research. Visit the Museum of Qualitative Data: http://www.museumofqualitativedata.info

Even though we resist closure and the creation of another grand narrative describing or capturing “data,” this introduction has come to its illusionary and imaginary end. Data in this issue is wondered, eaten, walked, loved, listen to, written, enacted, versed, produced, pictured, charted, drawn, and lived. As the following articles show, data is everywhere, nowhere, vanishing, and taking on a strange and unexpected life on its own. Data is going into many directions at once and data is no longer in one place.

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