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DATA
John Schostak
2005
Data is what obsesses researchers. For some it only exists if it can be measured, quantified and manipulated. Yet, before any of that can happen, data has to be made visible - at least to the mind's eye, that internal 'way of seeing' that can neither be seen, nor measured nor quantified by external observers! To be seen in this way is to be in some way meaningful to the individual who 'sees' it. This meaningfulness suggests that data is already bound up with language systems:
Too often there is a naïve acceptance of the ‘data’ as something like a found object on the beach, a piece of driftwood, or an apple that falls, or points of light viewed through a telescope.
Data has to be understood as data. Lacan (1977: 194) gave the example of wandering in the desert and happening upon a stone inscribed with hieroglyphics that have never been seen before. Even though not a single meaning can be deciphered, there is the sense of a language. Indeed, it is precisely that it cannot be straightforwardly decoded that it seems like a language. As a contrast, Lacan (1977: 84) referred to the example of the so-called language of bees where through a kind of dance a bee indicates to others in the hive the source and distance of nectar. However, “(w)e can say that it is distinguished from language precisely by the fixed correlation of its signs to the reality that they signify.” In a language the value of a given sign is produced through the relations it has to the others in the given form that the concrete text or talk takes, as well as the way in which sounds may be accented or the way in which a word or phrase is employed varying the conventional forms of grammar or exploiting the sounds of words to produce puns, irony, satire and so on. The bees exhibit no such flexibility in the codes they employ.
The discoverer of the unknown hieroglyphics in supposing it to be a language ‘like mine’ has the sense of an encounter with an Other, a radical alterity that survives as a chain of signifiers (Lacan 1977: 194). As data it may be explained in terms of being structured in some way. Each way of forming patterns may be offered as a way of describing its underlying structure, a structure that may be interpreted as a language. Yes, it may have the meaning of being a language to the discoverers, it may enhance their careers and have a number of other significations. However, there is no necessary access to the meaningful content of the given text. For that to be the case, there would need to be some further happy accident where a given number of key hieroglyphs could be related to things and processes. Until that moment, the signifiers remain empty. Some, it may be argued, due to their relative position and regularity of occurrence seem to have the role of describing subject positions or object positions or other functions. However, until it is shown how the signifiers related to the realities of the people whose language it was no message or meaning can be construed from the text.(Schostak 2006: chapter 4)
Data is only meaningful if it can be seen to fit within some signifying system(s).
Thus, as the above example illustrates, data is relative to the worlds within
which those signifying systems are lived and practiced. As researchers, we engage
with the worlds of those we meet and learn what counts as data within their
worlds. Does this mean that as researchers we have some inside track as to how
to 'see' the data of others as data for research purposes? That is, that there
is a single 'true' way of seeing data? Positivists
and those who still adhere to the grand narratives of Modernism and the Enlightenment
(see Lyotard 1984) and might argue that this is indeed so - or at least, would
wish it were so and act as if it is. However, the research does not progress
according to one 'right way of seeing' (Kuhn 1970; Feyerabend 1975) and there
has been considerable criticism of any unified, totality through which the world
can be viewed, mapped, understood and thus mastered (see the ELU articles on
postmodernism). My book (Schostak
2006) explores these approaches in detail and suggests an approach to the
exploration of data and its implications for action in the world. The methodology
I adopt I call the inter-view - an early version can be seen in Interviewing
– Creating the Space for Views
References
Feyerabend, P. (1975) Against Method, London: NLB
Kuhn, T. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (2nd edition), Vols. I and II. Foundations of the Unity of Science, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Lacan, J. (1977) Écrits. A selection. London: Tavistock/Routlege
Lyotard, J. F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Translation from the French by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, foreward by Frederic Jameson, Theory and History of Literature, volume 10, Manchester University Press