“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.
