Thursday, 10 March 2016

“Data”, the (im)possible and (un)decided



“Data”, the (im)possible and (un)decided

Mirka Koro-Ljungberg

 
This presentation aims to problematize conventional conceptualizations of ‘data’ as known, familiar and inert objects, in order to imagine more complex, creative, and critical engagements with data and their ‘doings’ in the conduct of qualitative research. Furthermore, the presentation will encourage qualitative scholars to rethink our habitual, common sense, mechanistic, and given assumptions about data to push normative boundaries that might currently limit the infinite possibilities of data. Maybe it is through plugging in theory, playing with concepts and materia, and various different and continuously changing creative encounters that scholars might release ‘normative data’ and extend data into seemingly impossible and undecidable dimensions. Data’s ‘pull’ and gravitational forces might stem and initially originate from research traditions and normative scholarly discourse. However, these gravitations forces also have potential to guide scholars beyond the expected toward more open-ended experimentations with, alongside, and in conjunction with data. Data have multiple presences some of which can be absent-present or becoming. I argue that data is not only a noun but also a verb, adjective, proposition, pause, hole, and it can even function as a question mark or maybe as a gendered pronoun among other things. In some ways data have potential everywhere but without scholars and participants’ interactions, directionality, and intentionality data might stay momentarily mute, invisible, and inaccessible. Furthermore, scholars’ desire to pin down data and their potential can considerable limit data’s capability to surprise and provoke. In many ways data’s double move (for and against) can generate continuously changing and unforeseen possibilities to inform our thinking as scholars and qualitative researchers.