ANALYZING DATA 207The Jackson and Bevir chapters provide overlapping yet distinctive takes on the interpretive
analytic project. Both emphasize the interpretive, meaning making activities of individuals. Both
emphasize that researchers, too, are meaning makers and, thus, that the human sciences perforce
involve scholars’ “interpreting [historical actors’] interpretations” (Jackson, p. 266, this volume)
or, as Bevir expresses it, echoing Geertz (1973a) and others, “interpretations of interpretations”
(p. 283, this volume). And both offer specific methods that attempt to take into account the con-
tingent nature of social and political outcomes.
The analytic methods presented in these two chapters differ, however, in their discussion of
evidence. Bevir is agnostic with respect to evidence, arguing—in effect—that beliefs can be in-
ferred from any type of data, be it models, surveys, documents, statistical tests, and so on, just so
long as the scholar’s analytic method explicitly involves interpretations of interpretations. In
contrast, Jackson focuses on language usage, specifically the deployment of a public rhetoric of
legitimation, as especially suited to preserving a double hermeneutic that respects the agency of
those studied and, simultaneously, that of the researcher. In our view, interpretive (and other)
scholars have emphasized word-based language (written and spoken) on the grounds that it plays
a significant role in constituting meaning and, thereby, beliefs, often to the exclusion or diminish-
ment of other artifacts that embody and communicate meaning, such as acts, including nonverbal
communication, and objects, such as monuments (Lasswell 1979), city council meeting cham-
bers (Goodsell 1988), and other physical artifacts (see, e.g., Rafaeli and Pratt 2005).
Although she does not use the phrase “interpretations of interpretations,” like Jackson and
Bevir, Cecilia Lynch (chapter 16) focuses on the ways in which scholars’ interpretations about
the world play a role in making sense of that very world. Her analytic method emphasizes a
“critical interpretive” role for scholars who seek to use “re-interpretation” to open up new politi-
cal spaces both in academia and on the world stage. For example, when interwar peace move-
ments are re-understood as usefully questioning the legitimacy of state action rather than
dismissively characterized as “naive and dangerous,” contemporary activists are refigured as
significant social actors. Lynch’s analytic method, as befits the label “critical,” is highly reflex-
ive, inquiring not only about the power behind “dominant narratives” but also about what those
proposing “alternative narratives” hope to gain. This reflexive criticality is combined with an
attention to empirical sources consistent with the best sleuthing: finding logical contradictions
and evidentiary gaps in the dominant narrative; figuring out what to look for among the many
documentary possibilities, both primary and secondary; critically assessing the credibility of sources
as a function of the perspective and power positions of their producers; and understanding that
constructing a cumulative case will more likely convince readers than a single proverbial smok-
ing gun.
STUDYING ACTORS’ NARRATIVES
Stories about lived experience do not merely describe that experience; they also participate in the
creation of their subject. As John Law (2002, 6) noted, “telling stories about the world also helps
to perform that world.” Even when one considers it to be a subset of “just talk,” “conversational
interviewing,” discussed in part II, suggests a formality that “telling stories” escapes.
Ronald Schmidt, Sr.’s, chapter 17 explores the ways in which conflicting parties to a public
policy issue—the drive to force English as the official language in the United States—frame their
positions through various narrative devices. His analysis points to the iterative character of inter-
pretive inquiry. As he notes there, descriptions of core policy issues and lists of protagonists may
be refined as one learns more about the issue context and the positions actors take. Initial—and