487882

research-article2013
CSCXXX10.1177/1532708613487882Cultural Studies <span class="symbol" cstyle="symbol">↔</span> Critical MethodologiesDenzin

Article
Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies

“The Death of Data?”

13(4) 353­–356
© 2013 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/1532708613487882
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Norman K. Denzin1

Abstract
The reader is asked to imagine a world without data, a world without method, a world without a hegemonic politics of
evidence., a world where no one counts, a world without end.

“Your days are numbered, so are mine . . . Where Do Data Live?  Ostensibly data would have no place
We’re all boxed in, nowhere to escape” in these left pole epistemologies,1 after-all they offer harsh
(Bob Dylan) criticisms of conventional, traditional qualitative methodol-
ogy. Ironically, such has not been the case. The dreaded
Data are Dead.  Data died a long time ago, but few noticed. word keeps resurfacing, still hanging around, even in
Poststructuralism took away positivism’s claim to a God’s deconstructionist discourse. Here is a sampling of phrases
eye view of the world, that view which said objective observ- found in recent works:
ers could turn the world and its happenings into things
that could be turned into data (Richardson, 2000, ** think with data
p. 928; St. Pierre & Adams, 2011, p. 620). The argument was ** practice plugging theory and data into one another
straight forward, things, words, “become data only when ** use transgressive data
theory acknowledges them as data” (St. Pierre & Adams, ** stay close to the data
2011, p. 621). In a single gesture, doubt replaces certainty, ** code data, decode data, deconstruct data.
no theory, method, discourse, genre, or tradition has “a uni-
So is the word still alive, or alive but with a different set of
versal and general claim as the “right” or privileged form of
meanings?
authoritative knowledge” (2000, p. 928). Indeed all claims
A rupture: More is at play. There is a rupture that goes
to universal truth “mask particular interests in local, cultural,
beyond data and its meanings. The traditional concepts of nar-
and political struggles” (Richardson, 2000, p. 928).
rative, meaning, voice, presence, and representation are also
put under erasure, regarded as pernicious “left-overs” from
Data Died a Long Time Ago.  Who noticed? Science (and evi-
the twin ruins of postpositivism and humanistic qualitative
dence) based research initiatives (SBR; EBR) keep the word
inquiry (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, p. vii; St Pierre, Adams, &
in the limelight. Mixed methods is the new watchword, an
Pillow, 2000). Materialist feminist ontologies, inspire new
old strategy which says data can be both qualitative and
analytics of data analysis, including defractive readings of
quantitative. By keeping a focus on data, and its manage-
data (Jackson & Mazzie, 2012). Postmethodologists, posthu-
ment, traditional qualitative inquiry texts are also complicit
manist, postempirical, and postqualitative frameworks call for
in this conversation. Complicit too are those who call for the
new models of science, second empiricisms, reimagined
use of computer assisted qualitative data analysis software
social sciences, capacious sciences, sciences of difference, a
(CAQDAS; see Davidson & di Gregorio, 2011, p. 627).
science defined by becoming, a double(d) science (Lather,
2007; MacLure, 2011; St. Pierre & Adams, 2011, p. 613).
Data Are Alive and Well. The skeptics will not be quieted.
Where do data fit in these new spaces? Is there any longer
The practices that produce data remain under assault. Criti-
even a need for the word? Why keep the word after you have
cism comes from all sides, from the new materialisms to
deconstructed it?
decolonizing, feminist, critical, sacred, queer, Asian, pos-
tempirical, postqualitative, and posthumanist pedagogies
(see Denzin, 2010, 2012; Jackson and Mazzei, 2009, 2012; 1
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
Koro-Ljungberg, 2010; Lather, 2007; Lincoln, Lynham, &
Corresponding Author:
Guba, 2011; MacLure, 2003, 2011, 2012; Richardson, Norman K. Denzin, Institute of Communications Research, University of
2000; Smith, 2012; St. Pierre & Adams, 2011; St. Pierre, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 810 S. Wright Street, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
Adams, & Pillow, 2000). Email: n-denzin@illinois.edu

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354 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 13(4)
At the same time, in some other wilderness a radical
middle based on social justice and transformational politics
engages these competing voices.2 Hoping to make some
sense out of everything after having already gotten lost once
before (Lather, 2007).
***
It is clear that a great deal is happening. We are beyond the
arguments of even 10 years ago. Critics are united by commit-
ments to social justice. The arguments for and against data
(new or old versions) are debated, new places are sought.
Whether Data.  For some, this is a place where there are no
data, where the search is for justice, moral arguments, a
politics of representation which seeks utopias of possibility,
a politics of hope not a politics based on data (Madison,
2010). For others data are reconfigured, reread through new
ontologies and new interpretive analytics (St. Pierre &
Adams, 2011). For others data are used for practical pur-
poses, in framing claims for changes in social policy
(Gomez, Puigvert, & Flecha, 2011).
These reconfigurations move in three directions at the
same time. They interrogate the practices and politics of
evidence that produce data. They support the call for new
ways of making the mundane, taken-for-granted everyday
world visible, whether through performance, or through
disruptive postempirical methodologies. These unruly
methodologies read and interrupt traces of presence,
whether from film, recordings, or transcriptions. They do
not privilege presence, voice, meaning, or intentionality.
Rather they seek performative interventions and representa-
tions that heighten critical reflective awareness leading to
concrete forms of praxis.
Underneath it all it is assumed that we make the world
visible through our interpretive practices. All texts have a
material presence in the world. Nothing stands outside the
text, even as it makes the material present. Neither the
material nor the discursive are privileged. They fold into
one another, get tangled up in one another. How a thing
gets inside the text is shaped by a politics of representa-
tion. Language and speech do not mirror experience. They
create experience and in the process transform and defer
that which is being described. Meanings are always in
motion, incomplete, partial contradictory. There can never
be a final, accurate, complete representation of a thing, an
utterance or an action. There are only different representa-
tions of different representations. There is no longer any
pure presence, description becomes inscription becomes
performance.
Who Died?  Qualitative inquiry under a postpositivist para-
digm is dead, or should at least be placed in brackets. We
seek a new paradigm, one which doubles back on its self
and wanders in spaces that have not yet been named (Lather,
2007; St. Pierre & Adams, 2011).
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The Politics of Evidence3
In this new terrain it is understood that data and evidence are
never morally or ethically neutral. Paraphrasing Morse
(2006, pp. 415-416), who quotes Larner (2004, p. 20), the
politics and political economy of evidence, also known as
data, is not a question of evidence or no evidence. It is rather
a question of who has the power to control the definition of
evidence, who defines the kinds of materials that count as
evidence, who determines what methods best produce the
best forms of evidence, whose criteria and standards are
used to evaluate quality evidence? The politics of data, the
politics of evidence cannot be separated from the ethics of
evidence.
Data as Evidence.  How is evidence turned into data? This is
not a simple process, and not accomplished by waving a
wand over a body of observations, or plugging observations
into a theory. Nor is there a detailed discussion of how data
are to be used to produce generalizations, test and refine
theory, and permit causal reasoning. And here, the fog of
postpositivism lingers. It is clear, though, that as data
become a commodity it carries the weight of the scientific
process (see Charmaz, 2005; Maxwell, 2004).
Data’s Voice.  Data are never silent, they speak up, get rowdy,
act up, resist being turned into commodities, produced by
researchers, perhaps owned by the government, or by fund-
ing agencies, or by researchers. Data resist being shared.
Data want agency. Data want to determine their own mean-
ings, Data do not want to be owned, nor shared.
The injunction to engage in data sharing requires ampli-
fication. Data sharing involves complex moral consider-
ations that go beyond sending a body of coded data to
another colleague. Money, and concerns for auditing from
the audit culture seem to drive the process. This is evi-
denced in the emphasis placed on quality peer reviews. If
quality data can be produced and shared then granting agen-
cies get more science for less money. Quality projects need
to be funded. For this to happen granting agencies need
quality reviewers who are using stable rating systems.
But the peer-review system is not immune to political
influence. Kaplan (2004) has demonstrated that in the
United States, the Bush Administration systematically
stacked federal advisory and peer-review committees with
researcher whose views matched the President’s on issues
ranging from stem-cell research to ergonomics, faith-based
science, AIDS, sex education, family values, global warm-
ing, and environmental issues in public parks.
Data Will Not Die
Like those 19th century vampires that would not die, posi-
tivism’s data cannot be killed. The movements that keep
Denzin 355
data alive will not wither away under postempirical, post-
materialist, nonrepresentational poststructural attacks.
Rather, like Stoker’s Dracula, attacks seem to make the
forces for data grow stronger. This is especially so for those
who valorize such terms as method, epistemology, evi-
dence, reliability, and validity.
Data as Vampire.  It appears, as with Bram Stoker’s Dracula,
(1897), data, the very word, invokes the anxieties of an age.
Of course data’s fears are not the fears of Stoker’s late Vic-
torian patriarchy. Data’s fears, rather, are those of a 21st
century neoliberal audit culture anchored in a postpositiv-
ism that will not go away. Of course there is nowhere to go
if the world cannot be turned into data.
Fifteen Reasons for Not Using the
Word Data, or, All the Things Data
Can’t Do
   1. The word data invokes a positivist epistemology and
a politics of evidence based on terms like reliability
and validity;
   2. The word data invokes a positivist ontology which
turns the world into nouns and other things;
   3. The word data turns things into commodities that can
be counted and sold;
  4. The word data perpetuates the myth that objective
observers can make the world visible through their
methodological practices;
   5. Data are not things that can be collected, coded are
analyzed; data are processes constructed by the
researcher’s interpretive practices;
   6. Data has agency; it is not passive;
   7. Data has had its day;
   8. Data are ideological productions;
   9. Data are the handmaidens of an audit culture;
  10. Data cannot speak;
  11. Data cannot be plugged in;
  12. Data are too messy for positivists;
  13. Real data cannot be quantified;
 14. The word data should be outlawed; replaced by
William James term empirical materials;
  15. Data are dead.
15a. If you speak the word data you have to sit on a corner
and wear the black D Hat, also known as the Data
Dunce-Hat.
4 ship, and/or publication of this article.
New Rules to Live By
If we are to move forward positively, to get out of these data
minefields, we must create a new narrative, a narrative of
passion, and commitment, a narrative which teaches others
that ways of knowing are always already partial, moral, and
political. This narrative will allow us to put our practices in
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proper perspective. Here are some of the certain things we
can build our new practices around:
1. We have an ample supply of methodological rules
and interpretive guidelines.
2. They are open to change and to differing interpreta-
tion, and this is how it should be.
3. There is no longer a single gold standard for qualita-
tive work.
4. We value open-peer reviews in our journals.
5. Our empirical materials are performative. They are
not commodities to be bought, sold, and consumed.
6. Our feminist, communitarian ethics are not gov-
erned by IRBs.
7. Our science is open-ended, unruly, disruptive
(MacLure, 2006; Stronach, Garratt, Pearce, & Piper,
2007, p. 197).
8. Inquiry is always political and moral.
9. Objectivity and evidence are political and ethical
terms.
A World Without Data
We live in a depressing historical moment, violent spaces,
unending wars against persons of color, repression, the fal-
sification of evidence, the collapse of critical, democratic
discourse, repressive neoliberalism, disguised as dispas-
sionate objectivity prevails. Global efforts to impose a new
orthodoxy on critical social science inquiry must be resisted.
A hegemonic politics of evidence cannot be allowed. Too
much is at stake.
Imagine a world without data, a world without method, a
world not run by auditors and postpositivists. A world where
no one counts data and data no longer count. Imagine a
world where research is no longer a dirty word (Smith,
2012, p. 1), a world without coding schemes, a world with-
out computer software programs to analyze qualitative data,
a world where utopian dreams are paramount, and we all
work for new politics of possibility (Madison, 2010). Just
imagine.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, author-
Notes
1. See Eisenhart and Jurow (2011) on right pole (traditional)
and left pole (poststructural) epistemologies.
2. This is not the radical mixed methods middle outlined by
Onwuegbuzie (2012).
356 Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 13(4)
3. The following section draws on Denzin (2009, pp. 62, 66-67).
4. This section borrows from Denzin (2011, p. 654).
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Author Biography
Norman K. Denzin is Distinguished Professor, College of Media,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His most recent book is
Indians on Display: Gobal Commodification of Native America in
Performance, Art, and Museums.