212 ANALYZING DATA
None of the chapters here reflect recent developments in the use of computers to analyze word
data—Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS). We anticipate, as do
most others who have thought critically about this trend (see Atkinson, Coffey, and Delamont
2003 for a discussion and citations), that the use of such software will continue to increase and
expand as the software becomes more powerful and flexible and as the scholarly ranks begin to
be filled with those generations who have “grown up” online. The advantages of computer-aided
analysis—speed, comprehensive searching, the ability to construct complex searches using Bool-
ean logic, and so on—will be powerful attractants. And yet, some of the potential hazards of such
computer assistance in interpretive research are quite similar to those raised by other prepack-
aged, computer-based data-analysis programs: unreflective use of programs, failure to under-
stand the assumptions built into particular programs, naive equation of the use of a program with
substantive analysis, and so on. Other hazards are distinctive to interpretive research. As the
chapters in this section attest, analysis is rarely a separate and final “stage,” and to the extent that
software contributes to such thinking, it does damage to the holistic research processes character-
istic of interpretive studies. As important, the idea or image of interpretive data analysis should
not be restricted to the kinds of “coding processes” enabled by such software. “Interpretive data
analysis” includes much more than “coding,” as, again, the chapters in this section vividly dem-
onstrate. If software can aid particular projects or be useful for particular research questions, how
much the better for interpretive researchers. But interpretive researchers do not need software
programs for all the different kinds of questions they ask, nor do they need software programs to
legitimize what they do. We have not included data-analysis software here because, in our expe-
rience, it does not replace the analytic thinking required of interpretive researchers.
That analytic thinking is amply evident in these “tales of analysis.” We hope you find them as
fascinating as we have.NOTES- The particular epistemic communities in which authors operate may be inferred not only from chap-
ter topics but also from citations referenced. - Science studies, also known as the sociology of scientific knowledge or as cultural studies of scien-
tific knowledge, is a cross- or interdisciplinary approach comprising history, philosophy, and sociology-
anthropology (see, e.g., Knorr Cetina 1999; Latour 1990, 1999; Traweek 1988). These divisions are reflected
in several disciplinary associations, including SHOT (Society for the History of Technology), SPT (Society
for the Philosophy of Technology), and SSSS (the Society for the Social Studies of Science), among others.
Feminist theory also has a stream of work in this vein, including work exploring feminist methods. See, e.g.,
Harding 1986; Longino 1990; Schiebinger 1989; Tuana 1989. See also Pamela Brandwein (1999) and chap-
ter 12 (this volume). - Which is not to say that we did not encounter differences of reading and writing practices here. From
the perspective that sees writing itself as a method not only of world making but of argumentation, it was
interesting to read historical writings against social science. In the writing practices of the latter, parentheti-
cal (author-date) citations are wielded, rhetorically, as an integral part of the writing. Beyond proclaiming
“Look whom I’m reading,” they are invocations of authority used, often self-consciously and intentionally,
to bolster an argument, if not to make it outright. The more humanities-inclined chapter authors in this
collection, accustomed to placing citations in notes and notes at the foot of each page, where they become an
integral part of one’s reading but in a different way, found our editorial requirements strange, at the least. - Other policy-related analyses that see such conflicts as concerning broader national and/or group
identity definitions and attendant power and status issues include Gusfield 1981; Stein 2004; Stevens 1999;
and Yanow 1996, 2003a. - Mary Hawkesworth made many of these same points in her comments on the panel “Feminist Re-
search Methods: What We Do and How We Do It” at the 2003 Western Political Science Association confer-
ence (March 27–29, Denver, Colorado). “Disruption” is her term.