Analytic Induction

This mutability of the case/pattern/description is not a problem but rather something you strive for. One approach to this is sometimes called “analytic induction.” In Jack Katz’s (2001) definition

Initial cases are inspected to locate common factors and provisional explanations. As new cases are examined and initial hypotheses are contradicted, the explanation is reworked in one or both of two ways. The definition of the [thing you’re trying to explain] may be redefined so that troublesome cases either become consistent with [your hypothesis or explanation] or are placed outside the scope of the inquiry; or the [thing you’re trying to explain] may be revised so that all cases of the target phenomenon display the explanatory conditions. There is no methodological value in piling up confirming cases; the strategy is exclusively qualitative, seeking encounters with new varieties of data in order to force revisions that will make the analysis valid when applied to an increasingly diverse range of cases. The investigation continues until the researcher can no longer practically pursue negative cases.

At its most productive, analytic induction needs to be on-going as you’re doing fieldwork or interviews – it guides what you’re asking and looking at. Thus Lindesmith (1952) argues that:

The principle which governs the selection of cases to test a theory is that the chances of discovering a decisive negative case should be maximized . . . This involves going out of one’s way to look for negating cases. (p. 492)

[This is the core idea that Glaser and Strauss (1967) later formalized into “theoretical sampling”] A negating case – or an anomalous case – requires you to revise: you keep doing this until you can’t find any more negative, inconsistent, discrepant, anomalous evidence, until then you constantly revise your explanation to encompass all your evidence. If you have “disconfirming” evidence left over you haven’t finished your analysis or done it well, or you have more work to do in the field.

Writing the Case Study [because this is so salient to me currently]

A good explanation, then, which for a qualitative researcher usually means a good case analysis, ties events, situations, and people together without making them lose their distinctiveness, their narrative richness, or reducing them to theoretical constructs, vague catchphrases, or statistical generalizations. As Stinchcombe (1978) argues, without the description we can never work out the deep consequential analogies that connect cases:

Far from it being the case that the most powerful general theorists ignore the details, the precise opposite is true. Social theory without attention to details is wind; the classes [categories] it invents are vacuous, and nothing interesting follows from the fact that A and B belong to the class. . . .

If conceptual profundity depends on the deep building of analogies from one case to
another, we are likely to find good theory in exactly the opposite place from where we have been taught to expect it. For it is likely to be those scholars who attempt to give a causal interpretation of a particular case who will be led to penetrate the deeper analogies between cases. (pp. 21-22)


[Nespor, 2011, Case-oriented analysis writings, pg 2-3]
*Italics added by me for emphasis

Making light of Case Studies - more ramblings from Nespor

Because apparently I have a HUGE academic crush on my qual methods professor and could listen to or read him for hours.  A snippet from one of his weekly elaborations on what we're talking about - this week, the case study:

In the actor-network take on pattern explanation, Latour (2005) contrasts this relational view of
explanation-as-description (which Latour just calls “description”) to the more familiar use of the term to refer to accounts meant to supercede and replace descriptions with statements consisting of abstract nouns, variables, psychological construct, or conceptual categories (a kind of explanation which Latour just calls ‘explanation’):

The opposition between description and explanation is another of these false dichotomies that
should be put to rest. Either the networks that make possible a state of affairs are fully [described] . .. and then adding an explanation is superfluous – or we ‘add an explanation’ stating that some other actor or factor should be taken into account, so that it is the description that should be extended one step further. If a description remains in need of an explanation, it means that is a bad description. (p. 137)

Latour is not rejecting the idea that we need general terms and phrases to describe theoretical
mechanisms – he certainly introduces many of them in his own writing. We need them in part because everyday vocabularies are often inadequate for characterizing connections and relations – indeed sometimes hide relations. As the anthropologist George Marcus (1998) argues, many key “relationships, connections, and indeed cultures of connection, association, and circulation . . . are completely missed through the use and naming of the object of study in terms of categories ‘natural’ to subjects’ preexisting discourses about them”
(Marcus, 1998, p. 17).

More of Nespor's Used Cabbage

I'm currently trying to get over the debilitating hurdle of writing up a rough draft of analysis of my interview data from last term.  This qual methods course is really challenging me to think outside of the box of normal analytic convention.  So - needless to say - I'm struggling. Immensely.  I have no idea where to begin.  So, here I am, sharing with you all, the intellectual ponderings and offerings of my favorite teacher so far, Jan Kent Nespor.

Analysis as a Dialogue

There's a nice interlude in EP Thompson's funny and instructive critique of Althusser in which Thompson basically lays out a synopsis of the logic of historical inquiry.  His metaphor of analysis as dialogue or argument is useful, I think.  For Thompson, inquiry is a  A dialogue between concept and evidence, a dialogue conducted by successive hypotheses, on the one hand, and empirical research on the other. . . . It is this logic which constitutes the discipline’s ultimate court of appeal: not, please note, ‘the evidence,’ by itself, but the evidence interrogated thus. (52-3) an argument between received, inadequate, or ideologically-informed concepts or hypotheses on the one hand, and fresh or inconvenient evidence on the other; with the elaboration of new hypotheses; with the testing of these hypotheses against the evidence, which may involve interrogating existing evidence in new ways, or renewed research to confirm or disprove the new notions, with discarding those hypotheses which fail new tests, or refining or revising those which do, in the light of this engagement.     What we are saying is that the notion (concept, hypothesis as to causation) has been brought into a disciplined dialogue with the evidence, and it has been shown to ‘work’; that is, it has not been disproved by contrary evidence, and that it successfully organises or ‘explains’ hitherto inexplicable evidence; hence it is an adequate (although approximate) representation of the causative sequence, or rationality, or these events, and it conforms (within the logic of the historical discipline) with a process which did in fact eventuate in the past. (Thompson, 1978, pp. 58-9)

Nespor's Used Cabbage 967

I'm stealing this from my qual professor - because I absolutely adore him and his biting and crass ways of teaching qualitative methods.  But this isn't so biting or crass.  Just a wonderful lens.  A different lens.  A lens we never are exposed to in The School of Communication at OSU.

Analysis considered as a Canoe Trip in the Open Sea without a Compass

Gladwin (1964), as summarized by Berreman (1966) (in an interesting essay in which he's using the contrast to characterize different forms of research -- I'm borrowing not just the quote but  the analogy), describes the practices of Micronesian navigators who can sail out of sight of land without a compass: [Gladwin] points out that the European navigator begins with a plan – a course – which he has charted according to certain universal principles, and he carries out his voyage by relating his every move to that plan. His effort throughout his voyage is directed to remaining “on course.” If unexpected events occur, he must first alter the plan, then respond accordingly. The Trukese navigator begins with an objective rather than a plan. He sets off toward the objective and responds to conditions as they arise in an ad hoc fashion. He utilizes information provided by the wind, the waves, the tide and current, the fauna, the stars, the clouds, the sound of the water on the side of the boat, and he steers accordingly. His effort is directed to doing whatever is necessary to reach the objective. If asked, he can point to his objective at any moment, but he cannot describe his course. (Berreman, 1966, p. 347; Gladwin’s account is now known to be wrong in some ways, but not in ways that reduce the value of the analogy; see Lewis’s We, the Navigators) Berreman gave yet another example of the European navigator's (1) ... Once the European navigator has developed his operating plan and has available the appropriate technical resources, the implementation and monitoring of his navigation can be accomplished with a minimum of thought. He has simply to perform almost mechanically the steps dictated by his training and by his initial planning synthesis (Gladwin 1964:175). The analogy, if not clear, is this:  the researcher using an experimental or population-analytic type of research design works from an operating plan, like the European navigator.  The qualitative researcher, by contrast, operates more like the Chuuk navigator

 

INRI

I am watching The Passion of the Christ to help me experience one of my favorite days of the Christian calendar.  I feel like you can really only watch this movie when it is dark out, and a special treat for me this year, it is storming out currently- to top it all off.

It probably seems odd that Good Friday is my favorite.  But if you think about it, we focus so much on the happy things.  The bible lacks imagery.  It lacks what this day and age needs to fully grasp what it means to suffer and die.  The Passion does a good job of reminding us what our Lord had to actually endure for our salvation.  "Suffered, died, and was buried" is easy to say without having any concept of what it really means. And so to be a Christian is easy.  To have a relationship with Christ is easy and superficial - because we have no conception of what he did for us. 
But I think even more so than that - it is so easy to focus on the happy things.  Yay, Jesus is born!  Yay, Jesus is Risen!  It is so easy to skim over the hard stuff.  But Jesus got the absolute shit beaten out of Him.  His suffering really did end all other suffering.  We have no right to complain about our "problems" in comparison.  And then He died on the cross.  And then he descended to hell to beat Satan.  And I can't imagine that was an easy battle.  I can't see the devil being like, alright Jesus - you got me this time, here is my handle on the souls of human kind.  But we don't focus on any of that really.  We don't have sermons that paint a picture of what happened.  But we sure do focus a lot on The Resurrection of Christ.  And understandably so. 
Good Friday strengthens my relationship with the Lord.  It reminds me of what love really means.  And it reminds me that this life, no matter how painful, is only temporary.  Good Friday also reminds me that I am weak and that I am consumed by sinfulness.  It gives me initiative to strengthen myself against my weaknesses, and though every year I fail horribly at not giving in to temptation, I still try. 

What have I done to you, O my People, and wherein have I offended you?  Answer Me. For I have raised you up out of the prison house of sin and death, and you have delivered up your Redeemer to be scourged.  For I have redeemed you from the house of bondage, and you have nailed your Savior to a cross.
-Good Friday Service Meditation

Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Words of Wisdom from Qual

In keeping with Kaplan's warning (1964) about "premature closure" and his stress on the importance of "openness of meaning", we continue to treat them as hypotheses to be further elaborated in future research.  While greater specificity is one hoped-for goal (in terms of both clarification of theoretical notions and the limits of their applicability), greater ambiguity is another.  Each case analysis will consist of intricate, interconnected detail, much of it perhaps unexpected.  It is the "loose ends", the stuff we neither expect nor can explain, that pushes us toward theoretical breakthroughs.  If the guiding theoretical notion truly is used heuristically, case analyses should raise additional questions relevant to understanding the concept, model, and/or theory being considered.

Vaugh, Chapter 8- Theory elaboration: the heuristics of case anslysis, pg 176


The bolded emphasis added by me to highlight the point of this post.