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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, dataparticles, 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 487861 CSC13410.1177/1532708613487861Cultural Studies <span class="symbol" cstyle="symbol">↔</span> Critical MethodologiesKoro-Ljungberg and MacLure research-article2013