Promiscuous Analysis in Qualitative Research
Published online on April 07, 2014
Abstract
This article troubles the seductive nature of coding based on its potential to fulfill the desires for systematicity, procedure, and clarity. I attempt to explicitly narrate what it is I think I do when I "analyze" data in my empirical work. Building on the notion of promiscuous feminist research, I delineate more explicitly how promiscuity became the hallmark of my inquiry while conducting research at a high-achieving, high-poverty urban school. I also discuss how materiality is entwined with theoretical thinking and explore how a promiscuous deployment of Foucaultian discourse analysis and Critical Race Theory (CRT) helped me to see how race works in schools in a more complicated way than if I had used one or the other framework loyally or prescriptively.