HIGH POLITICS AND LOW DATA 185and should be read as if they were texts, can fruitfully be explored as well. Here examples
might include architecture or built spaces (e.g., Yacobi 2004; Yanow 1996); music (e.g., M.
Shapiro 2001; Sheeran 2001); war memorials (e.g., Moriarty 1997; Pease 1993); museums
(e.g., Noakes 1997) and exhibitions (e.g., Bird and Lifschultz 1998); sport (e.g., Arnaud and
Riordan 1998; Silk 2002); Disney World (e.g., Giroux 1995; Project on Disney 1995); or even
ufology (e.g., J. Dean 1998; Vaughn 2002). Varieties of low data are virtually infinite.CONCLUSION: LOW DATA AND HIGH POLITICS REVISITED
I want to conclude by emphasizing a single, vital point: “High politics” cannot be comprehended
through an exclusive focus on “high data.” What I have been calling “low data” are essential to
our understanding of globalization, of politics, and of the social world more broadly. And this, in
turn, means that the spatial metaphor of “high” and “low” is as flawed in relation to data as it is in
relation to politics or culture: The choice between “high” and “low” data as constructed through
this metaphor is ultimately unsustainable because high data and low data do not form discrete,
mutually exclusive categories. Each is rendered intelligible, intertextually, in relation to the other.
Designating some forms of data (or politics or culture) “low” is thus fundamentally an exercise of
power, albeit one that tends to obscure its own functioning, to appear to be sensible, because of
the pervasiveness of the binary oppositions—high/good/serious, low/bad/frivolous—structuring
most social scientific discourse. As Cynthia Enloe has forcefully argued, we must look for power
in unconventional and unexpected places, in the bedroom as well as the boardroom (1996, 193),
and in popular culture, if we really want to account for the power it takes to create and maintain
the contemporary order. This means taking popular culture, and thus “low data,” as seriously as
we are typically enjoined to take “high politics.”
NOTES
Huge thanks are due to Mark Laffey for his help, and patience, in the writing of this chapter. I am grateful
also to Penny Griffin and Laura Shepherd for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions. Many
thanks to Dvora Yanow and Peri Schwartz-Shea for their careful editing.
- The caveat “mainstream” is necessary here. From nonmainstream, non-positivist perspectives, and in
numerous other disciplines, using diverse evidentiary bases is old hat. For just the tip of an iceberg, see
Rogin’s (1987) and C. Weber’s (2001) uses of film, Lutz and Collins’s (1993) analysis of National Geo-
graphic, Sharp’s (2000) investigation of Reader’s Digest, Dorfman and Mattelart’s (1991 [1971]) critique of
Disney comics, Hooper’s (2001) exploration of advertising, and my own (1999b) examination of Star Trek. - See for example, Robert Keohane’s various attempts to legislate the boundaries of IR (e.g., 1988,
- and, indeed, of all social science (e.g., King, Keohane, and Verba 1994).
- A similar distinction, in part mediating this pair of distinctions, is the common, if problematic, one
between high and low culture (e.g., Storey 2001, 6–7). - In common usage, the terms “popular” culture and “mass” culture are used interchangeably, which I
do here, although they should perhaps be distinguished. Popular culture is sometimes reserved for those
texts and practices actually produced by “the people,” and specifically by subordinated classes. In contrast,
mass culture designates those texts and practices that, although consumed by the people, are not produced
by them (Bennett 1986). - One could, of course, examine how anything else has come to take on a particular meaning—be it
assimilation policy (Yanow 1996), national interests (Weldes 1999a), counterinsurgency (Doty 1993), “the
West” (Milliken 2001), “welfare” (Schram 1995b), or “development” (Escobar 1995). - On alternative globalization discourses, from right and left, with correspondingly different connota-
tions, see Rupert (2000).