166 ACCESSING AND GENERATING DATA
underlying rationale of its patterning. With such an interpretive approach it is harder to make
assumptions about higher and lower or more and less proper cultural modes that are different
from one’s own. In fact, the researcher might start wondering about the primacy of some of his
own ways of seeing (J. Berger 1972) when thrown headlong into once-seemingly unpatterned,
random experiences.MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLEFinding relations and patterns is central to interpretation, but it is not a straightforward endeavor.
Conceptually, this is because the commonplaces of our ways of thinking, seeing, and acting seem,
to us, normal and natural; and “normal” things typically do not attract analytic attention. Things
we do not “see” and do not think to question because of their normalcy are, in effect, invisible.
We’re less likely to comment on or even notice a house that looks like the other houses around it.
It might even seem so mundane and commonplace in its taken-for-grantedness that we implicitly
treat it as non-diagnostic (that is, as irrelevant to the research). Alternatively, imagine a 1950s
working-class housing tract, such as Levittown, with its limited palette of house styles making all
the homes resemble one another. Now imagine an owner in that subdivision renovating that fa-
cade by adding two-story-high columns and a large front door with a leaded glass window flanked
by long thin windows the height of the door. This house is no longer invisible, due to its strong
contrast with its surroundings. It stands out. You notice it. It becomes conceptually visible.
You now have a new way of thinking about what previously were conceptually invisible,
look-alike houses. Suddenly, you might notice the simple yet well-proportioned entryway of the
original design and determine that its scale makes the old house feel and look welcoming. The
renovated front entrance, on the other hand, might make the house feel distant, cold, and
unwelcoming. At some level the owners of the redesigned house understood the symbolic signifi-
cance of the front door as a sign of welcome and status. Yet, unless they were intending to dis-
tance themselves from their neighbors, they missed the significance of context and its role in
meaning formation—that is, the ways in which not only the specific materials used, but also the
placement of other elements—their context—lead to meaning and to particular interpretations.
Along similar lines, you might think about a newly constructed building that you thought was
an eyesore. How long was it before it faded into the background and you barely noticed it? At
some point the building moved in your consciousness from visible to invisible, as the sight of it
became more familiar. The visibility of the redesigned house or the “eyesore” building provides
observers with a new set of questions to ask about what features make a house or a building feel in
scale or not and how that affects their reading of “home,” of neighborhood, or of the people who
designed and/or occupy those structures. Some of these elements that carry symbolic meaning might
have been outside the observer’s realm of knowledge previously, or only tacitly recognized. It is the
transition from invisible to visible that enables the glimpse into underlying social patterns.
There is nothing inherent in leaded windows, columns, or large front doors that makes them
symbolic of high status and “good” taste. Their meanings are cultural, historical, and contextual.
Yet, many often treat these meanings as if they were neutral and natural. In much the same way,
we tend to treat our own perspectives on how the world should work as neutral and natural. For
example, the social—and policy—concepts “crowding” and “overcrowding” are value judgments
based on an unspoken and presumptive norm that is itself derived from experience; the common
sense of one interpretive community is, in this example, the discomfort of another. In policy this
presumptiveness leads to the creation of occupancy standards, the maximum number of people
permitted to live in a unit based on its square footage and/or number of bedrooms (Pader 2002).