To Think or Not to Think with Theory in Qualitative Research

Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research: Viewing Data across Multiple Perspectives is a book that challenges the traditional way of analyzing qualitative data. The book invites researchers who use qualitative methods to think with theory when it comes to analyzing their data since analyzing the data with no theory in mind can make injustice to the data. Thinking with theory, however, can enrich one 's study and direct the process of the data analysis. The authors offer us six theories, as examples, to think with when analyzing qualitative data. These theories are: Derrida's Deconstruction, Spivak's Marginality, Foucault's Power/Knowledge, Butler's Performativity, Deleuze's Desire, and Barad's Intra-action. To clarify their approach, the authors interviewed two first-generation-scholar participants: Cassandra and Sera and analyzed their data in the chapters of the book; each chapter analyzes the data from the perspective of one of the six aforementioned theories, and each chapter is proceeded by an interlude in which the authors explicate why they have chosen this particular theory. Keywords: Qualitative, Theory, Transcript, Analysis, Coding, Themes, Interviewing Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research: Viewing Data Across Multiple Perspectives is a felicitous attempt that aims at challenging the qualitative methods of research and calls for changing the way we code and thematize qualitative data (such as interview transcripts) into thinking and analyzing this data with theory. Thinking with theory when dealing with qualitative data is critical since many graduate students and junior researchers may take for granted that the qualitative data should undergo a process of analyzing the data for the sake of finding emerging themes. This is good but may not do justice to the rich data researchers get from the interviews. In this sense, Jackson and Mazzei argue that interpretation and analysis of qualitative data "does not happen via mechanistic coding, reducing data to themes, and writing up transparent narratives that do little to critique the complexities of social life;" such method the authors continue "reduces complicated and conflicting voices and data to thematic "chunks" that can be interpreted free of context and circumstance" (pp. vii-viii). In an attempt to sophisticate this simplistic approach, the authors offer us six theories to think with when dealing with qualitative data that, the authors claim, are important for researchers to get acquainted with when approaching such data. To put theory into practice, the authors collected qualitative data to be analyzed through the lens of the six theories. The authors interviewed two first-generation-scholar participants: Cassandra and Sera. Cassandra, born in the 1940s, is the first in her African-American family to go to college. Cassandra was raised on a three-acre family-owned farm. Her father left school when he was a fifth grader and her mother continued school till grade eight. Her family used to also work for other people to gain some more money to help raise children and make ends meet. Against all odds, Cassandra managed to attend college, graduate, and be a university professor. Sera on the other had was the only child in her family; her parents were white middle-class alcohol-addicted. Sera grew up in poverty and struggle. She did not plan to attend college; it was a series of incidents that drove here there. These incidents include having financial aid, scoring high in high school, and gaining saved money from her grandmother. Sera is now a professor, too. The authors analyzed this data through the six theories: Derrida's Deconstruction, Spivak's Marginality, Foucault's Power/Knowledge, Butler's Performativity, Deleuze's Desire, and Barad's Intra-action. Depending on the theory that a researcher chooses to think with, different questions get generated; these questions drive the process of analyzing the data. Derrida's deconstruction is not about deconstructing and reconstructing the text but rather about looking for tensions, inconsistencies, omissions, and odds that happen in the text/speech and that the researcher should be attentive to. …