32 Thinking With Theory; A New Analytic for Qualitative Inquiry Alecia Y. Jackson and Lisa A. Mazzei Thought does not need a method…. Method in general is a means by which we avoid going to a particular place, or by which we maintain the option of escaping from it. —Deleuze (1983, p. 110) In our chapter, we situate our work, which we call thinking with theory, not as a method with a script but as a new analytic for qualitative inquiry. Every truth, Deleuze (1983) wrote, is of a time and a place; thus, we work within and against the truths of humanist, conventional, and interpretive forms of inquiry and analysis that have centered and dominated qualitative research texts and practices. We proceed with hesitation and a sense of instability, because as readers will see, there is no formula for thinking with theory: It is something that is to come; something that happens, paradoxically, in a moment that has already happened; something emergent, unpredictable, and always rethinkable and redoable. Discussing his power/knowledge analysis, Foucault (2000) explained, “What I’ve written is never prescriptive either for me or for others—at most it’s instrumental and tentative” (p. 240). Following Foucault, we want to caution readers that thinking with theory does not follow a particular method; rather, it relies on a willingness to borrow and reconfigure concepts, invent approaches, and create new assemblages that demonstrate a range of analytic practices of thought, creativity, and intervention. Describing “how” to think with theory—or what it “is”—is ruined from the start; thus, we add to the literature of previous critiques and deconstructions in the milieu of research after humanism that attempts to loosen a grip on stable structures and endeavors to shake off exhaustive and exhausting habits of method (see, e.g., Clarke, 2005; de Freitas & Palmer, 2015; Koro­Ljunberg & MacLure, 2013; Lather, 1993, 2007; Lenz Taguchi, 2012; MacLure, 2009; Scheurich, 1995; Snaza & Weaver, 2014; St. Pierre, 1997, 2011; Taylor & Hughes, 2016). We also recognize that there is a significant body of work that 1240 has attempted to do inquiry differently given such deconstructions. Some of this questioning has resulted in narrative research (e.g., see Barone, 2001; Clandinin, 2007; Clandinin & Connelly, 1999, 2000), life history (e.g., see Cary, 1999; Munro, 1998; Weiler & Middleton, 1999), experimental writing forms (e.g., see Lincoln, 1997; Richardson, 1997), and performance ethnography (Denzin, 2003; Gannon, 2005; McCall, 2000), to name a few, as researchers have sought to minimize the corruption and simplification of attempts to make meaning in postpositivist and constructionist paradigms. Such questioning has resulted in innovative inquiry; however, we argue, method still remains tethered to humanism. While we have tried to distance ourselves from conventional meanings and uses of many words from our vocabulary in the writing of this text, we are still burde ...

1. 32 Thinking With Theory; A New Analytic
for Qualitative Inquiry
Alecia Y. Jackson and Lisa A. Mazzei
Thought does not need a method…. Method in general is a mean
s by
which we avoid going to a particular place, or by which we mai
ntain the
option of escaping from it.
—Deleuze (1983, p. 110)
In our chapter, we situate our work, which we call thinking with
theory, not as
a method with a script but as a new analytic for qualitative inqu
iry. Every
truth, Deleuze (1983) wrote, is of a time and a place; thus, we w
ork within
and against the truths of humanist, conventional, and interpretiv
e forms of
inquiry and analysis that have centered and dominated qualitativ
e research
texts and practices. We proceed with hesitation and a sense of i
nstability,
because as readers will see, there is no formula for thinking wit
h theory: It is
something that is to come; something that happens, paradoxicall
y, in a
moment that has already happened; something emergent, unpred
ictable, and
always rethinkable and redoable. Discussing his power/knowled

2. ge analysis,
Foucault (2000) explained, “What I’ve written is never prescript
ive either for
me or for others—
at most it’s instrumental and tentative” (p. 240). Following
Foucault, we want to caution readers that thinking with theory d
oes not follow
a particular method; rather, it relies on a willingness to borrow
and
reconfigure concepts, invent approaches, and create new assemb
lages that
demonstrate a range of analytic practices of thought, creativity,
and
intervention.
Describing “how” to think with theory—or what it “is”—
is ruined from the
start; thus, we add to the literature of previous critiques and dec
onstructions in
the milieu of research after humanism that attempts to loosen a
grip on stable
structures and endeavors to shake off exhaustive and exhausting
habits of
method (see, e.g., Clarke, 2005; de Freitas & Palmer, 2015; Kor
o-Ljunberg &
MacLure, 2013; Lather, 1993, 2007; Lenz Taguchi, 2012; MacL
ure, 2009;
Scheurich, 1995; Snaza & Weaver, 2014; St. Pierre, 1997, 2011;
Taylor &
Hughes, 2016). We also recognize that there is a significant bod
y of work that
1240

3. has attempted to do inquiry differently given such deconstructio
ns. Some of
this questioning has resulted in narrative research (e.g., see Bar
one, 2001;
Clandinin, 2007; Clandinin & Connelly, 1999, 2000), life histor
y (e.g., see
Cary, 1999; Munro, 1998; Weiler & Middleton, 1999), experime
ntal writing
forms (e.g., see Lincoln, 1997; Richardson, 1997), and performa
nce
ethnography (Denzin, 2003; Gannon, 2005; McCall, 2000), to na
me a few, as
researchers have sought to minimize the corruption and simplifi
cation of
attempts to make meaning in postpositivist and constructionist p
aradigms.
Such questioning has resulted in innovative inquiry; however, w
e argue,
method still remains tethered to humanism.
While we have tried to distance ourselves from conventional me
anings and
uses of many words from our vocabulary in the writing of this t
ext, we are
still burdened with much of the language that comes from our h
umanist
history—
such as analysis. And surely, we cannot think “analysis” differe
ntly
without also disrupting notions of “data,” “voice,” “experience,
”
“representation,” and so on; as prompted by our readings of Del
euze, these
signifiers cannot hold the same places as they did in humanism.
As readers
will encounter further down in this chapter, each of those conce

4. pts and
practices, although they have been deconstructed, assumes its o
wn structure
and carries its own ontological and epistemological weight, give
n the
philosophical framework from which it flows (for previous deco
nstructions of
inherited humanist terms, see, e.g., Clough, 1992; Denzin, 2013;
Haraway,
1991; Harding, 1991; Jackson, 2003; Jackson & Mazzei, 2009, 2
012a; Lather,
2012; Pillow, 2003; Scott, 1988; St. Pierre, 2000; Stronach & M
acLure, 1997;
Weedon, 1987). We take the position that humanist concepts in
qualitative
inquiry (such as data, analysis, voice, etc.) can be put to “strang
e new uses”
(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 15) when animated in different ph
ilosophical
frameworks, much like the concept “power” shifts from a posses
sion to a
relation when moving from structural to poststructural framewor
ks. It
follows, then, that the signifier “data analysis” as it is conceive
d and practiced
in postpositivism and constructionism needs to be thought differ
ently to make
the “postqualitative turn” (St. Pierre, 2011). Thus, concepts and
practices (i.e.,
“data” and even “analysis”) are used cautiously and hesitantly,
with a specific
force in particular frameworks.
Chapters in qualitative textbooks—even entire books—
are devoted to
teaching data analysis as mechanistic coding, reducing data to t

5. hemes and/or
writing up transparent and “transferable” narratives; such appro
aches
preclude dense and multilayered treatment of data (see, e.g., Ba
zeley, 2013;
Bernard, Wutich, & Ryan, 2016; Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña 2
013). We are
not alone in our assertion that conventional qualitative data anal
ysis,
1241
involving technical coding and thematic extraction, has its foun
dation in
positivism—
with its emphasis on sorting, simplification, and generalizations
—
and is actually data organization rather than robust analysis (see
, e.g., the
special issue of Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6) on postcoding and the
special issue
of The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education,
26(6) on
postqualitative inquiry). Our point here is that signifiers “data”
and “analysis”
have taken hold and have become “so transparent, natural, and r
eal that we’ve
forgotten they’re fictions. We accept them as truth” (St. Pierre,
2011, p. 623).
Therefore, we respond to Lather’s (2007) urge “to grasp what is
on the
horizon in terms of new analytics and practices of inquiry” (p. 1
). We refer to
our process as a “new analytic” to make way for the invention o

6. f something
different that cannot be fully prescribed. Nevertheless, we have
been tasked to
write about what we might be doing when we think with theory
and engage in
this new analytic, so this chapter will offer a temporary and “arr
ested”
(Derrida, 1981) glimpse into the inside of such a practice. In thi
s present
moment of qualitative inquiry (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011), we pla
y at the edges
of what might be going on when thinking with theory happens,
when the
possibility of thought is “on the horizon.”
This new analytic that we offer is “always in the process of exc
eeding itself in
its own carrying forward” (Massumi, 2013, p. xii). Like Whiteh
ead’s process
philosophy (Whitehead, 1967, p. 72), the reality is the process.
An entity’s
being, in this case our process methodology, is “constituted by i
ts becoming.
This is the principle of process” (p. 23, emphasis added). In oth
er words, a
process methodology—thinking with theory—
is both its own generative
movement as well as its own effect. Bell (2014) wrote that “as
Whitehead
makes clear, the facts so dear to the positivists [and we would a
dd
conventional qualitative researchers] are simply abstractions tha
t come at the
end of processes” (p. 85). We posit, later on in this chapter, that
thinking with
theory does not come at the end of anything but is emergent and

7. immanent to
that which is becoming. The “actual world,” according to White
head (1978),
is a process. It is, as a process philosophy and in our case a proc
ess
methodology, about our worlding (Massumi, 2013, p. xvii). It is
about a
creativity that overcomes habitual repetitions and sedimented, o
r inherited,
ways of being.
In the remainder of this chapter, we follow the contours of what
happens
when the work of thinking with theory is done as a process meth
odology, one
that gives up static properties of linear method and even cyclica
l, iterative
stages and procedures of conventional qualitative data collectio
n and analysis,
in favor of dynamic becomings and generative differentiations.
That is, a
thinking with theory process methodology is entirely ontologica
l: “not a thing
1242
but a doing” (Barad, 2007). We recognize that in naming yet an
other practice
in qualitative inquiry, we are creating realities and making worl
dings.
However, we see the invention of new concepts—
such as our thinking with
theory—
as part of the “new” empirical practices in qualitative research

8. (Jackson, 2016; St. Pierre, 2015). And, unlike other methods, w
e hope that
our process methodology stays on the move and that it is not red
uced to
simply another way of doing something after data collection (as
suming that
theory is not some form of data or that data are not produced by
theory).
Rather, thinking with theory has already happened and is happe
ning in each
“now” of philosophically informed inquiry (St. Pierre, 2011): T
hinking with
theory is entangled in a space-time assemblage and impossible t
o extract and
individuate. According to Whitehead (1967), “Space­time is not
hing else than
a system of pulling together of assemblages into unities” (p. 72)
. It does not
adhere to a privileging of instants that can be stacked alongside
one another,
nor does it align with a container model of research in which all
elements
(e.g., time, the subject, locales) are separable and distinct.
In the next section, we present our view of the necessity of theo
ry in
qualitative inquiry, with particular attention to the sort of thinki
ng that it
produces and is produced by; we position thinking not only as
epistemological but also as an ontological creation of realities.
We extend our
process methodology to illuminate the generative aspects of bot
h theory and
thinking, both of which we position as process oriented. Then,
we make an
argument for the use of postfoundational frameworks that offer

9. what we view
as the vital epistemological and ontological positionings that inf
orm inquiry
in this type of scholarship. Following that, we illustrate in a del
iberate and
transparent fashion what analytic questions are made possible b
y a specific
theoretical concept and how the questions that we use to think w
ith emerge in
the middle of our practice of “plugging in.” We end the chapter
with
questions that we wish to leave with readers and implications fo
r doing that
our discussion raises.
The Necessity of Theory
The meaning of an event can be rigourously analyzed, but never
exhaustively, because it is the effect of an infinitely long proces
s of
selection determining that these two things, of all things, meet i
n this
way at this place and time, in this world out of all possible worl
ds.
—Massumi (1992, p. 11, emphasis added)
1243
In a paper presented at the American Educational Research Asso
ciation in
April 2004, Patti Lather stated, “The turn that matters in this m
oment of the
‘post’ is away from abstract philosophizing and toward concrete

10. efforts to put
the theory to work.” Thinking with theory is our attempt to put t
o work
philosophical ideas and various theories toward a rigorous appr
oach to
developing a new analytic practice for qualitative inquiry. We u
se theory not
to exhaust possible explanations but to open up previously unth
ought
approaches to thinking about what is happening in our research
sites and
encounters.
We would like to clarify how we are approaching the concept of
“theory”
because that word takes on many different meanings in the acad
emy. For our
purposes, we are not referring to the development of theoretical
models of
specific phenomena, which is the way the term theory is often u
sed in fields
such as educational psychology, policy, or leadership studies. N
either are we
referring to “traditional grounded theory” that forgoes “contradi
ctions and
inconsistencies” or that differentiates between theory or, more s
pecifically,
“data that are ‘constructed’” versus “data that are ‘pure’” (Clark
e, 2005, pp.
11–
18). Instead, we are using this term as it is often used in contem
porary,
humanities-based disciplines to refer to more philosophical ques
tions about
what counts as knowledge, what counts as “real” in educational
settings, and

11. who has the authority to determine this.
Why in our own work do we view theory as a necessity? For res
earchers
engaged in methodological discussions, questions of what count
s as
knowledge and reality, and how researchers produce (and are pr
oduced) by
research practices, are of continuing importance (see, e.g., discu
ssions in this
and previous editions of The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Re
search). As
we approach research in contexts described by Deleuze (1989) a
s “situations
which we no longer know how to react to, in spaces which we n
o longer
know how to describe” (p. xi), we embrace the practice of puttin
g theory to
work in a move that begins to create a language and way of thin
king
methodologically and philosophically together that is up to the t
ask.
It is our view that reading and using theory is necessary to shak
e us out of the
complacency of seeing/hearing/thinking/feeling as we always ha
ve, or might
have, or will have. Without taking seriously the epistemological
and
ontological orientations that both ground and limit us, research
can become
little more than a focus on method, rather than a troubling of bo
th what counts
as knowledge and reality and how such knowledge and reality ar
e produced.
MacLure (2009) wrote about her interest in the capacity of theor

12. y to offend:
“I suggest that theory’s capacity to offend is also its power to u
nsettle—to
1244
open up static fields of habit and practice” (p. 277). Like MacL
ure, we agree
that the value of theory in our work “lies in its power to get in t
he way: to
offend and interrupt … to block the reproduction of the … obvi
ous, [and to]
open new possibilities for thinking and doing” (MacLure, 2009,
p. 277).
How does theory move us beyond an imperative to “know” towa
rd the
interrogation of unproblematized practices in social research? A
s Deleuze, in
dialogue with Foucault (1977), put it, “A theory does not totalis
e; it is an
instrument for multiplication and it also multiplies itself…. As s
oon as a
theory is enmeshed in a particular point, we realise that it will n
ever possess
the slightest practical importance unless it can erupt in a totally
different area”
(p. 208). In our book, Thinking With Theory in Qualitative Rese
arch, we
wrote about borrowing theoretical concepts (e.g., power, desire,
marginality,
intra-action) from philosophers in disciplines other than our ow
n, to enable an
“eruption” of new questions and previously unthought knowledg

13. e (rather than
a reproduction of what was known based on our own experience
as women in
the academy and that of our participants). These “eruptions” we
re analytic
questions that emerged in the middle of things and moved thoug
ht beyond an
easy sense—
something we will discuss in more detail below. Such a practice
for us resulted in using theory to produce questions about, for e
xample, how
Foucauldian power was functioning in our research with first-ge
neration
academic women or the ways in which these women resisted att
empts to be
defined and located by others. Thus, we use theory not only to t
rouble
received practices and ways of knowing but also as Deleuze’s “i
nstrument for
multiplication.” We do so to “open up the possibility of differen
t modes of
living … not to celebrate difference as such, but to establish mo
re inclusive
conditions for sheltering and maintaining life that resist models
of
assimilation” (Butler, 2004, p. 4).
We want to emphasize that we are not “enhancing the street cre
d of theory by
sticking some examples ‘into’ it, which would amount to mere ‘
application’”
(MacLure, 2009, p. 281). Our analytic practice enacts specific c
oncepts as we
work theory and data together to illustrate how everything shifts
and
multiplies on this uneven terrain. To think with Deleuze is not

14. merely to
“use” select concepts presented by Deleuze and Guattari (e.g., n
omadism,
rhizome, lines of flight, smooth and striated spaces) and to illus
trate these
figurations with examples from data. Rather, to think with Dele
uzian concepts
engages with “new processes more than new products … to ener
gize new
modes of activity that seem to offer a potential to escape or ove
rspill ready-
made channelings into the dominant value system” (Manning &
Massumi,
2014, p. 87). That is, we put theory to work to see how it functi
ons within
problems and opens them up to the new: Theory is responsive, n
ot merely an
1245
application or a reflection.
For example, we consider not how a particular theorist defines “
assemblage,”
be it Deleuze and Guattari (1987), Massumi (1992), Bennett (20
10),
Buchanan (2015), or Whitehead (1978). Nor do we look for exa
mples from
our field notes or transcripts that are illustrative examples of wh
at “counts” as
an assemblage. To extend this point, we have, for instance, reco
nsidered how
we treat voice in qualitative inquiry both as an assemblage and i
ts function in

15. an assemblage, to see how it works—
not as something to be mined in the
textual artifacts of our research or as something to which we asc
ribe meaning
by a focus on what our participants say (Mazzei & Jackson, 201
6). By putting
a concept to work, we begin to think voice as that which is enta
ngled in the
intra-action of things and doings in an assemblage—
bodies, words, histories,
materialities, affects, and so on. Theory, according to MacLure
(2009), “stops
us from forgetting … that the world is not laid out in plain view
before our
eyes, or coyly disposed to yield its secrets to our penetrating an
alyses” (p.
278).
Foucault (1977) said, “Theory does not express, translate, or ser
ve to apply
practice: it is practice” (p. 208, emphasis added). It is this pract
ice of theory
that we turn to next, as we describe the work of thinking in our
new analytic
for qualitative inquiry.
Thinking: In the Threshold of Things
[A]s soon as people begin to no longer be able to think things th
e way
they have been thinking them, transformation becomes at the sa
me time
very urgent, very difficult, and entirely possible.
—Foucault (1981/2000, p. 161)

16. In our book, Thinking With Theory in Qualitative Research, we
use the
figuration of “the threshold” to situate both our relationship wit
h and the work
of theory in qualitative inquiry; here, we extend that figuration t
o describe
how we position the practice of thinking in our research encount
ers. We
explained that in a threshold, things enter and meet, flow (or pa
ss) into one
another, and break open (or exit) into something else. Above, w
e argued that
theory is necessary in our work because it keeps knowing and b
eing in the
middle of things, in a state of in-between-ness, as always becom
ing. The
threshold incites change, movement, and transformation of thou
ght in
1246
qualitative inquiry (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012b; Manning, 2013).
For a
moment, in a threshold where thinking happens, everything and
everyone
become something else. The in-between-ness of the threshold of
fers up a
temporary but forceful site for problematizing and thinking the
new. Deleuze
and Guattari (1994) wrote that “philosophy is the art of forming
, inventing,
and fabricating concepts” (p. 2), and it is this that our practice o
f thinking in
research encounters promotes; that is, we avoid traps of reinscri

17. bing analytic
practices that can lead to generalities, themes, and patterns that
are bound to
representational, dogmatic logic and instead pursue practices th
at open up
thought.
In their book, Thought in the Act, Manning and Massumi (2014)
attempt to
give words to the encounter that they describe as practices of m
odes of
thought. Their project, much like ours, is to activate, create, and
set things in
motion. They wrote, “Techniques are not descriptive devices—
they are
springboards. They are not framing devices—
they activate a practice from
within. They set in motion” (p. ix). Thinking in the threshold ne
ver stands
with-out, isolated and elevated; rather, thinking keeps things on
the move,
keeps things becoming; thus, thinking is not only epistemologic
al but also
ontological in its ability to create new worldings. The threshold
of thinking
reminds us that there is radical possibility in the unfinalized bec
ause of the
constitutive and generative aspects of all texts. Thinking, then,
happens in the
middle of things. It moves things: “Thought strikes like lightnin
g, with sheer
ontogenetic force. It is felt…. Thinking is of potential” (Massu
mi, 2002, p.
xxxi-i).
In a threshold, thinking flows, seeking connectives to interrupt (

18. and to be
interrupted); thinking is a productive force in its potential for di
fference.
Manning and Massumi (2014), citing Deleuze, write, “The midd
le is not an
average, but an excess. It is through the middle that things grow
” (p. 33). We
engage thinking as a site of transformation and recognize that fo
r anything to
become—be it data, theory, the subject, knowledge—
there needs to be
movement: another break, another connectivity, more contamina
tion. An
excess that procreates. However, we heed Massumi’s (1992) war
ning that
becoming “cannot be adequately described. If it could, it would
already be
what it is becoming, in which case it wouldn’t be becoming at al
l” (p. 103). In
other words, work in the threshold cannot be described using re
presentational
logic—
thinking is not reflection, or reception, or contained in the mind
.
Thinking is not “outside” a project but sprouts as a line of flight
from within.
Thinking takes on prehensive qualities: “a noncognitive ‘feeling
’ guiding how
the occasion shapes itself from the data of the past and the pote
ntialities of the
future. Prehension is an ‘intermediary,’ a purely immanent pote
ntial power”
1247

19. (Robinson, 2014, p. 219). Thinking is, in our process methodolo
gy, an onto-
epistemological creation of the new from within.
Thus, thinking is a rhythmic opening onto and into newness; thi
nking, in a
process methodology, emerges into and continues through poten
tialities of
creativity. Just as we theorize thinking within particular ontolog
ical and
epistemological frameworks, we argue that all problems erupt fr
om and carry
with them philosophical attachments. In the next section, we ex
plain how we
use concepts and theories in the “posts” to challenge the outline
s of traditional
inquiry.
Epistemological and Ontological Assumptions in
Thinking With Theory
While the projects that inform both our individual and collabora
tive work
have relied on orthodox research practices in many ways, all of
the
poststructural and posthumanist theorists whom we have used an
d continue to
seek out demand that we attempt to decenter some of the traps i
n humanistic
qualitative inquiry: for example, the subject, data, voice, narrati
ve, and
meaning making (see Jackson & Mazzei, 2009, for a developed
critique). Our
methodological aims are against postpositivist and interpretive i
mperatives

20. that inhibit the inclusion of previously unthought “data” (Mazze
i, 2007; St.
Pierre, 1997) and thus limit interpretation, analysis, and meanin
g making. It is
such a rethinking of methodology that gets us out of the interpre
tive trap of
trying to figure out what the participants in our study “mean” vi
a an analysis
that privileges humanist data as the primary source of knowledg
e. In other
words, it moves us away from analysis in the sense described ab
ove and
toward thinking with theory as what we do. Thus, in this section
, we make a
case for using philosophical frameworks in the “posts” for a ne
w analytic in
qualitative inquiry.
Before proceeding further, and to map our analytic practices in t
he “posts,” it
is important that we do more than gesture to the traps of humani
stic inquiry
referenced above. This move of decentering requires that we for
eground
assumptions that precede thinking with theory and how what we
propose is
different in every way. In other words, we are not just using a n
ew language
or substituting thinking with theory where before we might have
said “data
analysis.” We are actually enacting a different practice—
no more coding,
sorting, sifting, collapsing, reducing, merging, or patterning. In
the same way
that we presented, above, a discussion of the necessity of theory
and the work

21. of thinking, we must also present a discussion that lays bare the
1248
epistemological and ontological assumptions that produce a way
of doing that
is not data analysis in a particular stage in inquiry. Thinking wit
h theory
produces new analytic practices that go beyond an adherence to
these
epistemological and ontological assumptions, resulting in practi
ces that are
produced by such assumptions.
For readers new to this discussion, we provide a brief illustratio
n of how the
assumptions regarding the subject and agency are conceived diff
erently in
poststructuralism and posthumanism and the implications for th
e analytic
practice we propose. These distinctions are offered not for the p
urposes of
definition but for the purposes of further clarifying how the fra
ming of
problem posing in thinking with theory emerges in the theoretic
al
frameworks, producing a thinking not possible otherwise.
Humanism (and by extension humanist inquiry) draws from Rati
onalist
philosophers of the 17th century who claimed that knowledge of
the world is
mediated by innate structures, and these innate structures lead u
s to the

22. universal, unchanging structure of reality. The word humanism r
efers to
something essential and universal with a defining quality that is
shared by
everyone, regardless of race, class, gender, history, or culture; “
it is a
condition, timeless and localized” (Davies, 1997). A humanist v
iew of
research is predicated on a language that searches for stable, co
herent
meanings and origins of things—
the essence of the “thing itself” that is out
there, objective, waiting to be perceived. Thus, the word identit
y is a humanist
signifier in that it evinces an essential nature that stabilizes mea
ning about
people who belong to a particular identity category, such as wo
man, that we
can therefore research and “know.” Reality, then, is produced b
y the language
we have at our command (and that commands us, in the structur
alist view). In
this way, rules that organize, regulate, and normalize language
do the same
with identity, with research, and with analysis. These “order­wo
rds” contain
implicit presuppositions or commands “current in a language at
a given
moment” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, pp. 84–87).
In humanist inquiry, with its emphasis on epistemology and esse
ntialist
understandings, we can understand the individual subject who k
nows and who
can act. It is also the essentialist humanist subject as researcher
who can know

23. and understand a single, external reality, one that grounds our cl
aims about
the world. This researcher and her subjects also possess agency,
something
that (in humanism) can only be had by humans and is seen as th
eir ability to
act on or act in the world by virtue of free will; that is, to ascrib
e agency to
someone is to imply that one is a voluntary actor making choice
s that are
intentional rather than determined. If researchers adhere to this
notion of
1249
agency, then they can rely on participants to give an account of
their
experience that can then be reproduced and verified as authentic
. What
emanates from humanist centering is a supposedly coherent narr
ative (flowing
from a conscious, reflective, stable subject) that represents truth
—something
to be served up, prior to analysis and for analysis. However, our
methodology, our thinking with theory, makes very different ass
umptions
about not only the subject and agency but also the implications
of those
signifiers. Thinking with theory disrupts the centering compulsi
on of
traditional qualitative inquiry: Our project is about cutting into
the center,
opening it up to see what newness might be incited. Like Massu
mi (1992), we

24. too are bored with endless repetition and seek such newness.
Positing the ends of conventional analysis or the failures of inte
rpretivist
inquiry does not mean that we give up on the practice of researc
h or the
production of knowledge.
We do make very specific assumptions about data, voice, the su
bject, agency,
and truth as produced by an ontological and epistemological co
mmitment to
the poststructuralism and posthumanism. A recognition of the li
mits of our
received practices does not mean that we reject such practices; i
nstead, we
work the limits (and limitations) of them. As Spivak (1990) expl
ained,
The critique of humanism in France was related to the perceived
failure
of the European ethical subject after the War. The second wave
in the
mid sixties, coming in the wake of the Algerian revolution, shar
pened
this in terms of disciplinary practice in the humanities and socia
l
sciences because, as historians, philosophers, sociologists, and
psychologists, the participants felt that their practice was not m
erely a
disinterested pursuit of knowledge, but productive in the makin
g of
human beings. It was because of this that they did not accept
unexamined human experience as the source of meaning and the
making
of meaning as an unproblematic thing. And each one of them off

25. ered a
method that would challenge the outlines of a discipline. (pp. 78
8–789)
Challenging “the outlines of a discipline” is how we use philoso
phical
frameworks in the “posts” in a thinking with theory methodolog
y.
The humanist subject is one that we give up when we move fro
m
postpositivist, constructionist, and other foundational framewor
ks that
privilege consciousness, experience, and meaning. How we posi
tion the
subject’s perceptions and experiences (both our own and that of
participants)
1250
and stories as a source of meaning or truth is against humanism:
We confront
the limits of a reliance on the subject’s perceptions of her exper
ience and a
narrative voice to “make meaning.” We may use a subject’s
perceptions/stories, but not in the sense that we assume fullness
and truth, nor
do our research encounters need to happen via procedural metho
ds that
produce “data” (see Jackson & Mazzei, 2016). We may refer to
research
materials and encounters as data, but we reject the positivist and
postpositivist
implications of the term and put to work the unruly and perform

26. ative
materialities of our inquiry (Denzin, 2013). We make no humani
st
distinctions among theory/data/concepts and instead view each a
s agential,
rather than something to be captured. Our project, thinking with
theory, is
only possible in postfoundational frameworks that produce new
concepts, or
with theories or theorists that MacLure (2009) describes as shari
ng a certain
slant:
They are all disenchanted with (though not necessarily wholly d
ismissive
of) the legacy of Enlightenment rationality, its faith in progress
through
the application of science, and its privileging of mind over bodi
es and
matter. They do not subscribe to the self-perfectibility of the hu
manist
subject, and are interested in the realities and subjectivities that
are
occulted by Western culture’s triumphant stories of progress, re
ason and
order. (p. 279)
We use the theories, concepts, and research encounters and mate
rials that we
have at our disposal to open up that which we think we cannot t
hink without,
to map what emerges in a the threshold with theory to open up
meaning and
new connectives. This new analytic can only be produced in an
ontology and
epistemology that offers an “undoing” (Butler, 2004) of humani

27. sm, displacing
many of the normalizing features of humanist inquiry.
Given this state of affairs, it is difficult, and perhaps unnecessar
y, to draw
clear distinctions between how data, data collection, and analysi
s function or
work. Approaching analysis as something that happens after all
the records of
research have been collected burdens the researcher with makin
g such
distinctions. Distinctions between what counts and doesn’t coun
t as data (see
the special issue of Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies
, 13(4), on
data). Distinctions between when is an interview, who “speaks”
in an
interview, or what is happening in an interview (see, e.g., Jacks
on, 2009;
Kvale & Brinkman, 2008; Mazzei, 2013b). Distinctions about w
hen and
where data analysis occurs (St. Pierre & Jackson, 2014). Distinc
tions between
1251
what or who acts with an agential force (see, e.g., Jackson, 2013
a; Lenz
Taguchi, 2009; Lenz Taguchi & Palmer, 2013; Mazzei, 2013a; R
osiek &
Kinslow, 2015; Taylor, 2013). In returning to the concept of age
ncy discussed
above, if there is no essentialist humanist subject that is the sole
purveyor of

28. agency, then there is no separate, individual person, no particip
ant in an
interview study to which a single voice can be linked—
all are entangled. In
fact, given the posthuman and new material turn, other agents in
research
encounters can be plugged into a thinking with theory methodol
ogy.
People ask us at conferences and in workshops, “Will any theor
y or concept
do?” or “How do you choose your theory or concept?” As we ha
ve discussed
above and will further elaborate via an extended example in the
next section,
what we have learned is that the questions ought to be different:
What is the
doing of/with the concept or theory, and where is the doing hap
pening? Is the
theory relegated to a certain “place” in the project (e.g., Chapte
r 2 of a
dissertation), or is it entangled in the production of thought and
practice: Is it
thresholding? What distinctions are being made in the research,
and how do
those distinctions hinder the unthought (which, according to Fo
ucault, is
always already part of our projects)? Why, we ask, is a research
text that
foregrounds the experience of the “subject” that wishes to answ
er the
question, “What does it mean?” considered more clear, authenti
c, and more
full of potential to incite change than an analytic text that produ
ces questions
about “How does it work?” or “What is it doing?” For example,

29. as we have
discussed above, in interpretive and perhaps even critical metho
dologies,
importance is given to “rich, thick description,” “making subjug
ated voices
heard,” or “women’s experiences”; we do not doubt that project
s that aim to
“theorize gender” use particular theories and concepts to center
their
frameworks. Yet we have already shown how the practices of in
terpretive and
even critical work are centering and potentially stabilizing tradi
tions and
categories, grounded in humanism. Our point is that thinking wi
th theory uses
concepts in the making of new assemblages, renders meaning un
stable, and
allows for multiple entryways and exits in thought; theories and
concepts in
“the posts” are those that are uniquely situated because of their
ontological
and epistemological force.
So to think with theory is to “enter a text wherever you are” (Sp
ivak, 1976, p.
lxxv); that is, as we have worked with “plugging in,” we have c
ome to
understand the significance of reading and co-reading. When we
are asked by
others, “How do you choose your theory?” our response is alwa
ys something
about how, in our analytic practices, we think with whatever we
are reading at
the moment. To co-read is to read theory alongside other texts;
we read
interview transcripts, field notes, news and social media, and ot

30. her materials
1252
with theory as “part of our mental furniture” (Spivak, 2014, p. 7
7). Spivak
(2014) explains reading and thinking with theory this way:
It is a very difficult thing, reading theory well. When we are rea
ding this
way, we are internalizing. Theorizing is a practice. Our own wa
y of
thinking changes, so that when we are reading, all of the theoret
ical
reading begins to organize our reading, not because we are appl
ying it.
Reading theory is like athletics. First-class athletes do not think
about
moves they make. They do not “apply” what they have been tau
ght. It
comes in as a reflex, and if you look at the “instant replay,” you
watch
muscle memory perform. That is how one “uses” other people’s
theory
—
with respect, preparing oneself to be able to read it, following t
hrough.
In order to prepare yourself that way, you enter the protocol of t
he other
person’s theory, enter its private grammar, so that the theory tra
nsforms
you. (p. 77)
We have co-read texts produced from/about/with cheerleaders,

31. working-class
girls, first-generation academic women, and White teachers with
(i.e.,
alongside) Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and Barad—
following the conceptual
grammar and allowing transformations to emerge (Jackson, 201
0, 2013b;
Mazzei, 2008, 2011). In this way, we can never “inductively ana
lyze” as
conventional qualitative research or grounded theory methodolo
gies would
have us do. We need a thinking with theory process methodolog
y with-in
postfoundational frameworks to give us the concepts, languages,
and practices
that enable a knotting of texts together, a doing that proceeds fr
om the middle
of things—
a new analytic practice that enters and exits sideways in an
immanent (un)folding where distinctions fall apart. It is made p
ossible only
by plugging in not merely concepts but an entire ontological an
d
epistemological orientation. As Spivak (2014) asserts, deep eng
agement with
the theoretical terrain is necessary; for example, to produce a ne
w analytic
about Foucaultian power, insight into his theory of the subject,
knowledge,
and agency is essential. To continue this example, a thinking wi
th theory
methodology would not seek to understand how a research parti
cipant
describes or makes meaning of power—
such a proposition (attached to
interpretivism) misses a Foucaultian point entirely. Foucault’s c

32. oncept of
power is infused with ontological and epistemological commitm
ents that
disrupt humanist and interpretive assumptions of the subject, kn
owledge, and
agency.
We don’t claim to have a lock on what a thinking with theory m
ethodology
1253
looks like, nor do we claim to have exhausted the theoretical co
ncepts that
can do the work of eruption and provide the terrain for threshol
ding to occur.
We do, however, see great potential in postfoundational paradig
ms, borrowed
from the humanities, sciences, and other social sciences, that ar
e enveloped in
what is referred to as the ontological turn, the new empiricisms,
and the new
materialisms within a posthuman framework (e.g., Alaimo & He
kman, 2008;
Bennett, 2010; Colebrook, 2014; Dolphijn & van der Tuin, 2012
). These
paradigms demand a shift from method to a reconsideration of w
hat demands
are placed on objects (things) used in inquiry: a shift from what
we can know
about an object (method and epistemology) to what a particular
object does
when we enact inquiry—
thus, objects of knowledge become doings with

33. ontological force, not inert things waiting to be interpreted. As
previously
discussed regarding the subject and agency, the ontological turn
and the new
empiricisms bring different perspectives on how things, as doin
gs (including
the physical and the material), become “agentially real” (Barad,
2007) in this
mise en scène. All objects are “more than one” (Manning, 2013)
: not multiple
objects, but the object multiple (Mol, 2003), always becoming a
nd acting with
its own agency, independent of human use or interpretation. Thu
s, the
emphasis moves from using method to “research” how humans p
erceive or
experience the world to an interrogation of how every-thing is i
n the world
(Barad, 2007) or how worldings are in-formed (Manning, 2013).
Mol (1999)
explains that the new ontologies are not a politics of who (can k
now or speak)
but a politics of what realities take shape and how those realitie
s are
entangled.
Qualitative researchers have taken up theories and concepts in t
he new
ontologies and new empiricism to produce philosophically infor
med inquiry
that are enactments, rather than conventional, methods-based re
search. This
work is occurring by scholars from a range of disciplinary tradit
ions, all
situated within what we described above as the ontological turn
and new

34. empiricisms. What this portends for qualitative inquiry is a turn
from a focus
on the epistemic problematics of research methodology to a con
ception of
social science inquiry as ontologically generative of new relatio
ns and modes
of being in the world. Examples of this work are inspired by Del
euze and
Guattari’s philosophy of immanence (Coleman & Ringrose, 201
3; de Freitas,
2012; Mazzei & McCoy, 2010), feminist materialism (see the sp
ecial issue of
Gender & Education, 25(6)), neopragmatism (Rosiek, 2013; Ver
ran, 2012),
and indigenous studies and research methodology (Garroutte &
Westcott,
2013; Higgins, 2016; Tuhiwai Smith, 2005).
Thinking with theory is a product of the ontology and epistemol
ogy presented
thus far. Furthermore, we assert that thinking with theory is not
to be
1254
confused with data analysis in conventional humanist inquiry in
which data
produced by interviews and field notes, for example, are given p
rimacy in
meaning making. Everything is entangled and nothing remains t
he same. The
structures and methods on which we have relied can no longer b
e counted on
to serve us: Data analysis in conventional humanist inquiry relie

35. s on the
construction of coherent and interesting narratives that center th
e conscious,
meaning-making subject. Thinking with theory highlights the ne
tworked
functioning of thought and thus opens up the possibility of previ
ously
unthought approaches: not about what things mean but about ho
w things
work. We elaborate this further in the next section as we illustra
te what we
think we’re doing when we think with theory.
“Plugging In”: What We Think We’re Doing When
We Think With Theory
In this section, we describe what we think we are doing when w
e think with
theory. Above, we made epistemological and ontological claims
about how
recognizable terms and practices in traditional qualitative inquir
y have
become so common sense that it is time to abandon them to inve
nt a new
science that stays on the move—
what we have named above a process
methodology or new analytic for qualitative inquiry. In particul
ar, we are
working against divisions between data and theory, between dat
a collection
and data analysis, between research participants and philosophe
rs, and so on.
We wonder: How do these divisions hinder us? What protection
do they
offer? How do they entrap us and close down thought? Who dec
ided on these

36. distinctions anyway? Why must data and theory be positioned as
oppositional
to each other? As Spivak (2014) wrote, “Definitions are halfway
houses” (p.
78), and we see these divisions similarly—
as temporary, transitional, and
poised for reintegration into difference.
We explained earlier in the chapter that we use the figuration of
the threshold
as that space where things enter and meet, flow (or pass) into on
e another, and
break open (or exit) into something else. Our process methodolo
gy, then, is
about a between-the-two (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012b) that incites
change,
movement, and transformation of thought in qualitative inquiry.
Extending
this idea further, we go to Manning (2013), who, when writing a
bout affect,
stated that it “activates the threshold that disperses it, always an
ew. To
‘threshold’ is to create a new field” (p. 28).
Creating a new field, by thresholding, we release ourselves from
the ensnares
of oppositional thought and allow things to disperse. Thinking
with theory as
1255
a process methodology becomes a production of knowledge that
might
emerge as a creation out of chaos (Grosz, 2008). Thinking and k

37. nowledge are
not conceived as a final arrival but as the result of working the
betweenness,
as we plug all texts into one another: “Life is always between. T
oo often, life
is conceived as that which frames the already-constituted—
life as human, life
as organic” (Manning, 2013, p. 22). For us, this is how we have
always
worked in this space of flows, intensities, and change. In thinki
ng about how
to describe our new analytic, we encountered a little phrase by
Deleuze and
Guattari (1987) that captures these doings: “plugging in.” They
wrote, “When
one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary
machine can
be plugged into, must be plugged into in order to work” (p. 4). I
n our thinking
with theory, we urge an activation of multiple texts, or machine
s: data that are
always already from everywhere (not limited to one or even the
most current
project—
or even as something “collected”), wrestlings and enchantments
(Bennett, 2010) with theory, working against conventional quali
tative
research methods that we have discussed above, previous writin
gs, traces of
data, reviewer comments, words of participants, and so on ad in
finitum.
As a practice of activating, or thresholding, always in-between (
Gale &
Wyatt, 2009), we advocate a “plugging in” of ideas, fragments,
theory, selves,

38. affects, and other lifeworlds as a nonlinear movement, always in
a state of
becoming. As we wrote in our book Thinking With Theory,
Plugging in to produce something new is a constant, continuous
process
of making and unmaking. An assemblage isn’t a thing—
it is the process
of making and unmaking the thing. It is the process of arranging
,
organizing, fitting together. So to see it at work, we have to ask
not only
how things are connected but also what territory is claimed in th
at
connection. (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012a, p. 1)
“Plugging in” captures the activity of thinking with theory as a
production of
the new, the assemblage in formation. Because making and unm
aking
produces ceaseless variations possible, “an assemblage establish
es
connections between certain multiplicities drawn from each of t
hese orders,
so that a book has no sequel nor the world its object nor one or
several
authors as its subject” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 23).
We situate “plugging in” as analytic practices of doings (and, pe
rhaps,
undoings) that are not meant to be hallmarks of the approach bu
t as the
makings and unmakings of an assemblage (Deleuze & Guattari,
1987). We
want to emphasize that we noticed these (un)doings as they wer
e happening—

39. 1256
and had happened before in previous projects—
during the making of an
assemblage that became our book. “Make a map, not a trace,” w
rote Deleuze
and Guattari (1987), so our map of thinking with theory cannot
be traced:
“Plugging in” as a reinvention and reintegration becomes differ
ent from itself
with each new reconfiguration. As we referred to earlier, this is
a machinic
working of multiplicities that are not predetermined but only fu
nctions in
relation to everything else that is plugged in. That is, we did not
make a list of
things that we thought we ought to do before we set out to analy
ze.
Thus, we present these (un)doings as becomings (Deleuze & Gu
attari, 1987)
in our new analytic of thinking with theory (Jackson & Mazzei,
2012a, p. 5):
1.
Putting philosophical concepts to work by disrupting the theory/
data
binary by decentering each and instead showing how they consti
tute or
make one another
2.
Being deliberate and transparent in what analytical questions ar

40. e made
possible by a specific theoretical concept and how the questions
that we
used to think with did not precede our analytic practice (as rese
arch
questions might) but emerged in the middle of “plugging in”
3.
Working the texts repeatedly to “deform [them], to make [them]
groan
and protest” (Foucault, 1980, pp. 53–
54) with an overabundance of
meaning, which in turn not only creates new knowledge but also
shows
the suppleness of each when plugged in
4. Disrupting “when” and “how” this work occurs—
refusing it as a stage in
a procedure and using it as the process itself
We want to use our invention of the four (un)doings above for t
wo purposes
in this section: (1) to position thinking with theory in poststruct
ural and
posthuman research frameworks and (2) to try to explain what w
e do when
we think with theory. We do not take each practice in turn, ther
efore
recognizing both the difficulty and problematics in creating suc
h divisions in
that which is knotted.
We go to a specific example in our work to emphasize this “post
” turn in
analytic practices that characterizes our work. As we have writt
en, the

41. practice of coding (as is often equated with analysis) requires th
at researchers
pull back from the data in a move that concerns itself with the
macro,
producing broad categories and themes that are plucked from th
e data to
disassemble and reassemble the narrative to adhere to these cate
gories. In our
study with first-generation academic women, we found that a fo
cus on the
macro was at some levels predictable and certainly did not prod
uce different
knowledge. That is, we could present major themes and patterns
in a writing
1257
up of the findings: imposter syndrome, continuing male privileg
e, double
standards, and the importance of mentoring. Each of these them
es would have
been “grounded in data,” and we could have created “rich, thick
description”
by staying “close to the data”; that is, as good qualitative resear
chers, we
would have theorized from the bottom up, inductive style. Howe
ver, these
inductive practices would not have resulted in different knowled
ge because
our formulation of the categories would have been simply drive
n by our
experience and that of our participants, devoid of any philosoph
ically
informed concepts that would jolt us out of received ways of kn

42. owing. We
argued that
coding takes us back to what is known, not only to the experien
ce of our
participants but also to our own experience as well; it also disal
lows a
repetition that results in the production of the new, a production
of
different knowledge. A focus on the macro produced by the cod
es might
cause us to miss the texture, the contradictions, the tensions….
A focus
on the macro … locks us into more of a territorialized place of f
ixed,
recognizable meaning. (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012a, p. 12)
A recognition of the limits of our received practices did not mea
n that we
rejected such practices; instead, we worked the limits (and limit
ations) of
such practices. To stop at coding, in other words to produce an
“easy sense”
(Mazzei, 2007), would have allowed us to affirm our own experi
ences as
women in the academy and to fall short in our attempts to work
the
limitations of such practices. Not working the limits would have
resulted in a
failure to produce previously unthought questions and knowledg
e.
Thinking with theory acknowledges that we alone are not the au
thors of the
research assemblages that we create; all other texts and agents (
both human

43. and more than human) insert themselves in the process—
they emerge, bubble
up, capture us, and take us onto lines of flight. The texts themse
lves become
“agentially real” (Barad, 2007). To transform both theory and d
ata and to
keep meaning on the move, we return to the threshold and to a d
iscussion of
the crafting of analytic questions that emerge with the help of e
ach theorist
and theoretical concept that we think with—
an image that we have
experienced as having Manning, Massumi, or Colebrook reading
over our
shoulder and asking a series of questions, using theory as practi
ce. Again,
these are not the questions or concepts (any more than first-gen
eration
academic women are the data), but they are concepts as previou
sly discussed
that emerge from broad, philosophical abstractions and that acti
vate thought
1258
as they are “plugged in” and entangled with how lives are lived
so that each
produces a “shared deterritorialization” (Deleuze & Guattari, 19
87, p. 293).
Prompted by analytic questions that flow from concepts, all text
s (i.e., theory
and data and selves) become something else, something new.
Unlike a typical qualitative research question that precedes a pr

44. oject and is
used to pave the way for a so-called appropriate “method” to co
nstruct
meaning, analytic questions emerge in the middle of things as li
nes of flight
(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). This work does not occur as a stage
in a process
but is rather the process methodology itself. In the middle of co
-reading
multiple texts, the doing is not to create meaning but to show ho
w an
assemblage is made or how thinking occurs as prehensive. We v
iew our book,
Thinking With Theory, as taking readers from one assemblage t
o another;
different analytic questions, flowing from concepts that are enta
ngled with
theory and philosophy, produce interminable potentials for plug
ging in. The
analytic, rhizomatic thresholding of co-reading and allowing qu
estions to
emerge in the middle of things can take on many variations, but
we will
illustrate how we work our methodology with the following exa
mple. We first
present a research artifact, followed by a discussion of the emer
gence of two
analytic questions.
In what follows, we read and plug into multiple texts: feminist
poststructuralist and posthumanist theories; the transcript of our
interview
with Brenda, a participant in our study with first-generation aca
demic women;
Barad’s concept of intra­action; Deleuze and Guattari’s concept
of desire; our

45. aim of providing an example of our new analytic, as well as the
potential for
the new; our own received histories that we want to trouble; the
unthought
that is unnamable; and so on. Rather than a “zeroing” in, a “plu
gging in”
presents a complicated reading that is much richer than an easy
sense
produced by the reductive procedure of starting with coding and
returning to
experience.
The excerpt that follows is from a qualitative study in which we
interviewed
10 women professors and administrators in the academy who are
first-
generation college graduates. We want to make the point that w
e did not
“begin” our project with these interviews; in fact, we already he
ld theory and
concepts as “mental furniture” (Spivak, 2014), and we asked our
selves,
“What might add to the arrangement of our thinking?” So while
we illustrate
with one research artifact from one participant in our study and
present only
two analytic questions, a similar process of thresholding could b
e used if we
worked with multiple research artifacts at the same time. In resp
onse to an
earlier question that the interviewer asked Brenda about what re
lationships in
1259

46. her life had changed as a result of becoming an academic, she pr
ovided the
following response:
Brenda: I did end up divorced because he [my husband] wanted
me to
quit school. He was fine with me moving around the country wh
en he
needed to go to school, but he had a very hard time doing that w
hen I
wanted to go to school. I mean in theory, it’s the old thing abou
t it’s
easier believing in feminism than it is living with someone who’
s a
feminist. Right?
Like most people intellectually understand that women are huma
n beings
too, but it’s hard to live with it sometimes, and so I—
looking back on it,
it was like I was having an affair because I got to school, and I
got so
much positive feedback from people, and I absolutely loved eve
rything I
was doing. And of course, I spent a lot of time studying and wri
ting and
all of that stuff, and he just simply got jealous and would say th
ings like,
“I don’t think you’re smart enough to do this. You have to choo
se
between school and me.” And that kept up for a while, and I fin
ally said,
“I choose school because I’m a lot happier there.”
Now I have a [new] partner, and while I was finishing the disser

47. tation, it
was like, oh, my God. He was like jealous too because I had to s
pend so
much time in the final editing…. But he finally has kinda come
around.
If we were to take a conventional approach to analysis, we coul
d present a
discussion supported with isolated excerpts from all the women
who
participated in our study of how relationships had changed after
they became
academics. But in thresholding texts, we posit a series of questi
ons or, rather,
the questions emerged through our thinking with various theoret
ical concepts
that disperse thought to open up different questions and knowle
dge from a
reading of Brenda’s account and that of the other women from o
ur study.
Instead of focusing on the obvious nature of gender relations an
d sexist
practices evident in the excerpt above made evident by a focus o
n experience
(a positivist and empiricist practice of replication), we illustrate
by thinking
with the following theorists and concepts to pose a set of analyt
ic questions
that sprout from diffractively reading the theory and data throug
h one another
(for a more lengthy illustration of a diffractive reading, see Len
z Taguchi &
Palmer, 2013; Mazzei, 2014). While many theorists and/or conc
epts could be
mobilized, we focus on two for purposes of illustration, Deleuze
and

48. Guattari’s (1987) concept of desire and Karen Barad’s (2007) co
ncept of
intra-action. Let us emphasize once again that these are not the
only analytic
1260
questions made possible, but these questions emerge in the midd
le of
“plugging in” as the process itself.
Deleuze and Guattari: Desire. For Deleuze and Guattari, desire i
s about
production. Desire’s production is active, becoming, transforma
tive. It
produces out of a multiplicity of forces. We desire, not because
we lack
something that we do not have, but we desire because of the pro
ductive force
of intensities and connections of desires. Thinking Brenda’s acc
ount together
with Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of desire prompts the follo
wing analytic
question: How does desire function to produce a “partner” for B
renda in the
form of her intellectual peers or what does the presence of intell
ectual peers
produce? In other words, how does desire work, and who does it
work for?
What does desire produce, and what are the intensities and conn
ectives at
work?
Barad: Intra-activity. It is the work of Karen Barad and others n

49. amed “new
materialists” or “material feminists” (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008)
to ask how
our intra-action with other bodies (both human and nonhuman)
produce
subjectivities and performative enactments not previously thoug
ht. Barad’s
work can be seen as an enactment of the ontological shift made
by Deleuze in
a philosophy of immanence. Such a shift produces an ontoepiste
mological
stance (Barad, 2007) in which practices of knowing and being c
annot be
isolated from one another but rather are mutually implicated and
constitutive.
To think of knowing in being that is neither merely a reinsertion
of the
material nor a privileging of the material is to “fashion an appro
ach that
brings the material back in without rejecting the legitimate insig
hts of the
linguistic turn” (Hekman, 2010, p. 7). Such fashioning prompts
the following
question: How does Brenda intra-act with her world, both huma
n and
nonhuman, in ways that produce different becomings?
To engage our new analytic by reading Brenda’s account throug
h the insights
of desire and intra-action is to engage questions about how Bren
da is
simultaneously producing material effects (leaving her husband
for her
intellectual lover as a production of desire) and how she is simu
ltaneously
materially and discursively produced (as becoming woman and a

50. s no longer
wife). Hekman (2010) wrote that “theories, discourses, have mat
erial
consequences” (p. 90), and it is these intra-actions and transfor
mative forces
of desire that have much to say. A diffractive reading (Barad, 2
007), that is,
reading Brenda’s account through the insights of both desire an
d intra-action,
produces a consideration of how Brenda is both constituting and
constitutive
of the discourses perpetuated in a traditional patriarchal marriag
e:
1261
He was fine with me moving around the country when he needed
to go to
school, but he had a very hard time doing that when I wanted to
go to
school. I mean in theory, it’s the old thing about it’s easier belie
ving in
feminism than it is living with someone who’s a feminist. Right
?
A diffractive reading also points to the material effects produce
d by her
embrace of the intellectual life that is not just a life of the mind
but, indeed,
becomes a life of the body as well, for example, when Brenda re
counted, “It
was like I was having an affair because I got to school, and I go
t so much
positive feedback from people.”

51. Brenda’s description of the affair that she was having with her d
octoral work
evokes desire (in a sexual/sensual sense), pleasure (in an intelle
ctual and
sensual sense), and production (of satisfaction in the affirmatio
n she receives
at school and of change in her decision to leave her marriage).
Deleuzian
desire produces both an effect and affect—
the action to forfeit the
constrictions of her “material” relationship toward pursuit of th
e relationship
produced in her intra-action with her intellectual lover. We can
also go to
Barad here to consider the materiality of texts. As Brenda encou
nters the thrill
of the affair with her intellectual work, the “pages” and thought
s take on a
material force. They are no longer merely words, and school is
no longer
merely a place of affirmation but a space in which affect and int
ensities are
produced, both producing Brenda in a mutual becoming.
So, to reiterate, thinking with theory in qualitative inquiry esch
ews a use of
concepts for what they mean and instead puts to use concepts to
show how
they work, what they do, what they allow, and perhaps what the
y hide. To
leverage this doing, we have explained how analytic questions f
low from
concepts, and we use texts in a “repetition of difference” to reve
al the
suppleness and mutual constitution of texts (data, theory, conce

52. pts, selves,
affects, histories, lives, etc.). Earlier in in this chapter, we offer
ed the
figuration of the threshold as a way to situate our “plugging in,”
or how we
put the data and theory to work in the threshold to create new an
alytic
questions. As Deleuze and Guattari (1987) wrote, “Machines ma
ke thought
itself nomadic” (p. 24); therefore, all of these aforementioned te
xts/literary
machines, when plugged in while in the threshold, produced so
mething new,
something different. Thought (or analytic practice) emerges whi
le
diffractively reading all texts in an assemblage of “continuous,
self-vibrating
intensities” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 23).
Conclusion: Doing Inquiry Differently
1262
29 Ethnography in the Digital Internet Era:
From Fields to Flows, Descriptions to
Interventions
Annette N. Markham
This chapter only exists in this handbook because we assume th
ere is
something unique about the digital, something that distinguishes
it from other

53. approaches, tools, venues, or phenomena for qualitative researc
h. Twenty
years ago, when I started studying digital social contexts, this di
stinction was
easier to make, since online social presence was a technical outc
ome of
exchanging messages via ASCII text using desktop computers a
nd dialup
modems. Then, community, intimacy, and other meaningful exp
eriences
seemed amazing feats of virtuality, prompting such statements a
s, “We have
to decide fairly soon what it is we as humans ought to become,
because we
are on the brink of having the power of creating any experience
we desire”
(Rheingold, 1991, p. 386).
Now, the interfaces of the internet can seem quite banal, as they
’re
“embedded, embodied, and everyday” (Hine, 2015). This does n
ot diminish
their importance: More and more of our overall cultural experie
nces are
mediated by digital technologies, whether we’re “online” in the
classic sense
or not. We carry the internet with us in our pockets. It can be w
oven into our
clothing. Information from our voices, movements, and faces ca
n be lifted
into what we now call the “cloud” and combined with other data
. Once
analyzed through automated computational programs, the results
are fed back
to us, giving us useful information about our blood pressure, sle
ep patterns,

54. geolocation, or the nearest retail location to purchase that item
we were
looking at yesterday on the web. Other entities harvest this info
rmation to
design personalized advertisements, suggest new friends, or just
to keep tabs
on us. The internet is so ubiquitous we don’t think much about i
t at all; we
just think through it. It’s no wonder the questions have changed.
In 2015,
we’re more likely to hear things like “I don’t use the internet. I
only use
Facebook” or “Who should I accept as a friend? Everyone I kno
w or just
people I like?”1
How, then, do we academics define and encapsulate the ethnogr
aphic study of
“the digital”? It’s not just about what happens in social network
ing sites,
1129
websites, or immersive video games and virtual worlds. It’s also
not just the
study of digital technology or the way people use social media.
At the same
time, it’s not just about everyday life in the postinternet era.
I find a particular uniqueness emerging in the way digital ethno
graphers pose
questions and conceptualize the basic premises and processes of
how culture
occurs. For well more than two decades, we’ve witnessed massi

55. ve growth in
global networked social forms as well as major transformations
in economic,
political, and social infrastructures. Everyday lived experience i
n this decade
is affected by the convergence of media, the mediation and reme
diation of
identities, and the still-rising interest in quantification and big d
ata.
Social researchers who have acknowledged these transformation
s have made
adjustments to their epistemological and methodological stances
. This
complicates almost every aspect of research design: What are se
nsible
boundaries to construct around a cultural context? What constit
utes data?
What are appropriate ways to collect and analyze cultural materi
als? Who is
excluded and included?
In studies of special interest groups who emerge, grow, and fun
ction as stable
communities online, scholars like Orgad (2006), Hine (2009), or
Gammelby
(2014) must continually mark and revise field boundaries. This
activity never
ends, as the boundaries are built discursively, or through connec
tion, interest,
and flow, rather than geography, nationality, or proximity. Desp
ite 20+ years
and thousands of studies of such communities, this basic ethnog
raphic task
remains a challenge with no easy answers.

56. Likewise, multiple and simultaneous interaction modalities com
pel us to
reconsider what methods are appropriate for collecting viable in
formation
upon which to build an ethnographic study. How does interviewi
ng or
observation work in nonlinear contexts of flow, fragmented exc
hanges across
platforms and times, and tangles of connection, all basic charact
eristics of
contemporary mobile and social media use?
What standards or stances should one adhere to when considerin
g the
demographic identity or authenticity of participants? Typical cri
teria and
ethical regulations fail to adequately encompass the characterist
ics,
vulnerabilities, and rights of people in an epoch of anonymity,
microcelebrity,
photo filters, avatars, and self-branding.
Some of these questions apply to any contemporary ethnographi
c or
qualitative research project, but these and other questions offer
particular
challenges for digital researchers.
1130
The goal of this chapter is to raise awareness of the epistemolog
ical, ethical,
and political challenges for scholars seeking to study social life
in the 21st

57. century. Rather than reviewing extant empirical studies in digita
l or online
ethnography or offering extended examples of and suggestions f
or techniques
and tools,2 I focus on persistent as well as emerging premises o
f
contemporary ethnographic practices in light of the contemporar
y heightened
attention on human-nonhuman or social-technical relations. I ad
mit my aim is
broader than just explaining what happens in digital or internet
ethnography.
Through this chapter, I seek to amplify signals emanating from
many
disciplines, all indicating a sea change in how we understand an
d study the
social because of the impact of the digital.
Below, I trace certain shifts in how internet research has been
conceptualized3 through some basic terminology. I then offer a
working
heuristic that illustrates research stances toward internet pheno
mena, which in
turn illustrates some of the ways research stances may be shiftin
g. I move to a
more concrete discussion of how shifting one’s stance can affect
not only
one’s methods in the field but also the outcome and audience of
one’s inquiry.
I conclude by emphasizing the urgent need to recognize that our
scholarship
matters in the larger sense and to accept the opportunity and eth
ical
responsibility to use our research abilities to not simply describ
e or explain
what is or has been but to speculate about and shape what we ou

58. ght to
become. This is a methodological as well as political decision,
which authors
of the 2005 and 2010 versions of this handbook have often emp
hasized.
Terminology Matters
As of 2016, almost every word we might use for the title of this
chapter is
contested and problematic (even more applicable to the previous
version of
this chapter, which in 2005 was entitled “The Politics and Ethic
s of
Representation in Online Ethnography”).4 In a social world incr
easingly
mediated by internet-based digital communication, researchers s
truggle to
find or adapt terminology to label the technologies influencing s
ocial and
cultural life in the second decade of the 21st century, as well as
the cultural
processes and formations themselves. At the level of method, th
is same
struggle exists as researchers seek appropriate terms to describe
the focus of
analysis and the overall practice of inquiry in contexts where fl
ow is more
relevant than object, physical presence is not necessarily connec
ted to
sociality, and time, as a malleable variable, is salient but difficu
lt to isolate,
much less comprehend. These issues may have always been rele
vant, but the
1131

59. internet era has highlighted the extent to which traditional notio
ns don’t quite
fit anymore.
The terms below only scratch the surface of such debates. I offe
r these
because they are central to discussions of qualitative inquiry in
digitally
saturated social contexts. The list is selective, emerging from m
y own
background in internet studies, conversations with publishers w
ho struggle
with these terms, and trends among the most well-known interna
tional
research community talking and writing about such things: the
Association of
Internet Researchers (AoIR).
Internet
Although “The Internet” classically described the electronic net
work that
connects computers worldwide, the internet in lowercase5 is a s
hortcut for
various capacities, infrastructures, or cultural formations facilit
ated by digital
communication networks. It describes the outcomes of interactio
ns with
digital media software, platforms, or devices. Through its ambig
uity, the
internet remains a persistent umbrella term, covering many diffe
rent aspects
of sociotechnical relations in the era of global high-speed netwo

60. rks. It also
avoids persistent false binaries that alternative terms might carr
y, such as
online (offline), virtual (real, actual), or digital (analog).
The “internet” accurately focuses on the means by which digital
technologies
have become a central feature of 21st-century social life. It desc
ribes the
actual backbone of transmission, which facilitates the coordinati
on of
computers and information-processing devices and the growth a
nd
complexity of networks. The early internet provided new possib
ilities for
community. The contemporary internet is the foundation for mo
re diverse and
naturalized forms of mediatization, transmediation, and remedia
tion than we
would have seen prior to the mid-1990s, when the World Wide
Web made the
Internet more publicly available and commercialized. This back
bone supports
platforms that in less than a decade have combined almost all fo
rms of media
production, distribution, and use. Without the internet, digital f
orms would
not have such spread and impact. Whether or not the term intern
et remains a
common and central term in the future, it currently suffices for
authors and
publishers in the broad area of work that studies the intersection
s of internet-
based technologies and social life.
Digital

61. Digital is almost equally problematic. While we might use analo
g as the
1132
counterpoint to digital, this distinction makes little practical sen
se in an era
when these two modalities are tightly interwoven. Even in regio
ns where
digital technologies are not used directly, the global fabric of di
gital
technologies and infrastructures influences all individuals, hous
eholds, and
communities.
At the most basic level, the digital is “everything that has been
developed by,
or can be reduced to, the binary—
that is bits consisting of 0s and 1s” (Horst
& Miller, 2012, p. 5). In the 1990s, digital emphasized how com
puters
mediated interaction and transactions. Horst and Miller’s (2012)
discussion
reminds us that mediation is not new but simply takes a differen
t form with
the digital: “creating new possibilities of convergence between
what were
previously disparate technologies or content” (p. 5). Replicabili
ty, scalability,
and persistence are primary characteristics of these new converg
ences (Baym,
2015; boyd, 2011). The digital, then, becomes a concept to indic
ate no more

62. or less than the situation of the contemporary. To understand th
e complexity
of what this might mean, we can draw on Negroponte’s (1995)
work, Being
Digital. Being digital is more than just living in a situation wher
e these
characteristics exist. Being, in a digital era, is a process of beco
ming through
and because of our ongoing “acquaintance over time” with mach
ine agents
who understand, remember, and respond to our individual uniqu
eness “with
the same degree of subtlety (or more than) we can expect from o
ther human
beings” (Negroponte, 1995, p. 164).
Online
This term was used in the title of the 2005 (Markham) and 2010
(Gatson)
versions of this chapter in the SAGE Handbook of Qualitative R
esearch. It
was a central term in research of digital media contexts through
out the 1990s
and early 2000s. For the past decade, we’ve witnessed more em
bedded
notions of technology, internet, and everything we might have o
nce called
“online,” so that the overall lens of ethnography is less and less
modified by
adjectives like online or virtual (Hine, 2005, 2015; Horst & Mill
er, 2012;
Postill & Pink, 2012). While the online is still relevant, of cours
e, it is not the
only site or concern of inquiry in this arena.

63. Ethnography
This term is complicated, to put it mildly. In this chapter, I tend
to use the
term to indicate an attitude or mindset that influences how resea
rchers act in
the practice of social inquiry. Whether or not scholars call (or a
re allowed to
call) their work ethnography or ethnographic depends on their d
iscipline,
1133
training, and attitude. I don’t rehearse the details of longstandin
g debates
about what counts as ethnography, what it focuses on, how it is
best
represented, and so forth. Other scholars represented in this han
dbook provide
excellent detail about the critical, performative, narrative, and r
eflexive
characteristics of what we might call an ethnographic engageme
nt with the
world.
Outside those fields where ethnography is a primary and trained
lens, it has
become a widely used generic label for any study that involves
people,
interview research, case study research, user interface testing, o
r qualitative
research in general. The subtlety of the practice of ethnography
is somewhat
butchered when rapid or quick and dirty are acceptable modifier

64. s. The term is
thus highly problematic, in that it carries both power and bagga
ge.
I’m currently situated in a European science and technologies fa
culty and
trained in interpretive ethnography. For me, ethnography is an a
pproach that
seeks to find meanings of cultural phenomena by getting close t
o the
experience of these phenomena. Like many other ethnographers,
I study the
details of localized cultural experience, through a range of tech
niques
intended to get close and detailed understandings. I then try to r
epresent what
I think I’ve found in ways that resonate with readers or member
s of that
cultural context. Most of us who practice this type of ethnograp
hy do it from a
standpoint that situates cultural knowledge in particular ways, a
s feminist
scholars have long argued (e.g., Haraway, 1988; Harding, 1986)
. It involves
close engagement and, as Clair (2011) reminds us, drawing on a
long lineage
of interpretive ethnographers, “the ability of the researcher to b
e reflexive and
sensitive to multiple and changing milieu” (p. 117).6
The ethnographic attitude doesn’t necessarily change when we s
tudy the
digital. But the digital is transforming what it means to be socia
l and human
in the world. As we enter the era of embedded sensors in everyd
ay material

65. objects around us, automated tracking of our every movement,
algorithmically determined decisions, and the so-called Internet
of Things, it
is important to situate ethnography as a worldview, stance, or at
titude, rather
than a set of techniques or methods. In this way, the sensibility
of
ethnography can remain while the techniques may adapt. Althou
gh many
researchers will continue to describe or explain situations throu
gh more or
less traditional ethnographic notions of emplacement, for examp
le, where the
field is a place within which people organize culturally, an anth
ropology of
the contemporary (Rabinow & Marcus, 2008) involves rethinkin
g the
elements of ethnographic method to better address the complexit
y of the
emergent, the residual, and the dominant, three categories that f
orm “the
1134
present as a dynamic phenomenon” (p. 94; see also Budka, 2011
). Part of this
rethinking, I would argue, requires an intentional effort to move
away from
thinking about the field as an object, place, or whole (Markham,
2013, p.
438).
An Ecological View

66. Given the enormous breadth and variety of scholarship that mig
ht call itself
online, digital, or internet ethnography, we can delineate “ethno
graphy in the
digital era” as the study of cultural patterns and formations brou
ght into view
as we ask particular questions about the intersection of technolo
gy and people
in the postinternet age. This ecological view is quite appropriate
, in that it
explores social and cultural dynamics and personhood in a way t
hat is
inextricably intertwined with communication technologies (Ant
on, 2006). An
information or media ecology view7 enables us to think about (e
co)systems
emerging from interactions and relations across multiple and/or
para sites
(Marcus, 1995). More broadly, we can use “ecology” as Gregory
Bateson did,
to be open to dynamics rather than essences of processes of wha
t we end up
labeling “self,” “other,” and “the social.”
By wondering how to enter a field that only exists as a shifting
flow, we start
to experience fields as temporary or momentary assemblages. Sc
holars in
science and technology studies or actor network theory can help
loosen the
grip on persistent premises that individuals or groups must com
prise the
object of analysis, that there is such thing as a whole to be descr
ibed or
explained, or that the boundaries of a situation can be identified
(e.g., Latour,

67. 2005; Law, 2002, 2004; Mol, 2003).
The internet is also embedded in our everyday materiality, most
recently
through the Internet of Things (IoT), whereby self-healing mesh
networks and
microscopic sensors enable everyday objects to be networked da
ta generators
and distributers. An ecological perspective can help us recogniz
e and study
structures, codes, and networks as part of this ecosystem (Beaul
ieu, 2004; van
Dijck, 2013). Ethnography in a digital ecology positions technol
ogy or
technologically and digitally saturated interfaces as centrally as
other
nonhuman elements and humans in shaping the vectors of nonte
chnological
social life.
Much of this influence is embedded and invisible. Drawing on
Gillespie’s
(2010) idea that platforms can be understood figuratively as per
formative
infrastructures, van Dijck (2013) notes, “A platform is a mediat
or rather than
an intermediary: it shapes the performance of social acts instead
of merely
1135
facilitating them” (p. 29). Particular system elements encode ou
r everyday
social activities into “a computational architecture” (van Dijck,

68. 2013, p. 29).
Often discussed broadly as “affordances,” these elements can be
separated, to
see how the architecture is constructed, how these might be tang
led in larger
ecologies, and thereby what possibilities are afforded to us as w
e use digital
and mobile devices in our everyday lives. We therefore might p
ay attention to
such ecological elements as:
Algorithms
At the most basic level, an algorithm is a sequence of programm
ing code that
instructs a piece of software to make a certain decision based on
certain
inputs. These snippets of code interact with other snippets of co
de, sometimes
adjusting themselves to work more efficiently, in which case the
y’re called
self-learning algorithms. Algorithms “select what is most releva
nt from a
corpus of data composed of traces of our activities, preferences,
and
expressions” (Gillespie, 2014, p. 168). To put this in more ever
yday terms,
algorithms are the mechanisms that yield personalized results fr
om search
engines like Google or Bing, provide specific recommendations
on music- or
video-streaming services like Netflix or Spotify, or result in tar
geted
advertisements.
Protocols

69. Formal rules script behavior at deep structure levels of any digit
al interface.
We can look at how these protocols are developed by corporate
interests, by,
for example, looking at Facebook’s policies and design choices.
Here, as van
Dijck (2013) articulates, the platform will guide users through p
referred
pathways. Users must “proceduralize their behavior in order to
enter into the
interactions” (Bolter, 2012, p. 45). Interface-level protocols co
mbine with
political and economic protocols to “impose a hegemonic logic
onto a
mediated social practice” (van Dijck, 2013, p. 31), particularly
as the
mechanization is buried under apparently seamless interfaces.
Defaults
We mostly don’t notice the default settings in interfaces becaus
e they are,
well, defaults. These entry-level setups offer user-friendly ways
to set up our
smartphones, read news on tablets, organize incoming and outgo
ing
communication, define our relationships, categorize information
, and so forth.
Seamlessly. User interface design in the late 1990s began to sta
ndardize
1136

70. templates for “good” website design. This includes a top to bott
om and left to
right orientation, a plain background, and a priority of blue and
white. These
choices, based on user testing, have become naturalized. Social
media
platforms likewise standardize the way we see and move throug
h their affinity
spaces. Long before this, of course, Apple standardized the way
our desktop
computers look, with trash cans, arrow-shaped pointers, and file
s that can be
dragged and dropped into folders. Standardizing is essential to
mechanizing,
which is crucial for building effective platforms for us to intera
ct with each
other via digital media, from phones to Facebook. Modularity a
nd
standardization can help us learn new interfaces rapidly. Default
settings also
train us to see and think in particular ways, another hegemonic
process.
Algorithms, protocols, and defaults are just three of many norm
ative elements
we could include as relevant actors in the study of postinternet s
ociotechnical
ecologies. I mention them specifically because they are recent c
oncerns. My
broader point is that as we naturalize and neutralize the media/t
echnologies of
everyday communication and interaction, different characteristi
cs and
features of everyday life become salient for researchers collecti
ng and
analyzing materials in situ. Just 10 years ago, the exchange of te

71. xt was a key
characteristic of internet life, and most interactions and transact
ions occurred
at our desktops. In 2016, the internet is everywhere. Mobility an
d
convergence present a visual scene where everybody seems to b
e looking
down at their phones, tablets, laptops, watches, and other smart
devices. In
such contexts, the crucial activities and layers of meaning are in
visible,
because they occur across platforms, in a multiplicity of globall
y distributed
and diffused networks, and in time/space configurations that ma
y be
impossible to capture (Baym, 2013).
An ecological view can help us get beyond human-centric resear
ch design to
consider both the social and technical as elements in a complex
dynamic. This
is very similar to Deuze’s (2011, p. 138) compelling ontological
argument
that these invisible networks of connection and meaning are ess
entially a new
human condition—
one in which reality is experienced through and potentially
submits itself to the affordances of media. This challenges ethn
ographers to
find frameworks and techniques that resonate with and work for
hybrid
contexts of atoms and bits, since these are often contexts that ap
pear either
separate or seamless.8
Frameworks of Focus for Internet Inquiry

72. Much in the same way internet users might think of the internet
as a tool,
1137
place, or way of being (Markham, 1998), social researchers vary
in how they
frame phenomena that are internet related, which influences ho
w they
describe the field, where or on what they focus attention, how th
ey
conceptualize ethnographic material as well as what counts as d
ata or nondata
(and whether or not they elect to choose the term data to describ
e what
they’re generating or collecting), and what becomes part of thei
r explanations.
The following heuristic helps categorize how qualitative interne
t researchers
think about internet-related contexts. This framework is built on
the premise
that research design emerges as one defines the boundaries of th
e project. The
boundaries do not preexist but are constructed, through one’s ph
ilosophical,
logistic, or experiential orientation toward the phenomenon, by
the way the
phenomenon seems to presents itself to the researcher, or how a
researcher’s
questions highlight certain elements. This heuristic includes (1)
internet as a
medium or tool for networked connectivity; (2) internet as a ven
ue, place, or

73. virtual world; and (3) internet as a way of being.
These frameworks do not represent a typology of internet-relate
d contexts or
even a continuum of conceptualization. To provide further cave
at, this
framework is not extensive and certainly not comprehensive. Sti
ll, it is a
starting point to identify how internet researchers distinguish th
eir research
perspectives, particularly as these intersect with ethnographic a
pproaches.9
1. Internet as tool, medium, or network of connectivity: Ethnogr
aphies of
networked sociality. Much of the research that falls into this fra
me focuses on
cultural practices in or of internet-saturated contexts. The resear
cher may be
interested in how certain aspects of the internet or the digital in
fluence
behaviors, such as how online anonymity might promote bullyin
g or how
videoconferencing may help people maintain relationships acros
s geographic
distance. Although the studies of “cultures of connectivity” (van
Dijck, 2013)
may differ wildly in shape and scope, a common thread seems to
run through
this type of inquiry, one that focuses on the centrality of individ
ual and group
practices, social relations, and cultural formations, as these are
facilitated by
some aspect(s) of the internet.
The field site is not necessarily online but is in some way media

74. ted by the
capacities of the internet. More or less stable sociocultural form
ations may
emerge through shared interest (online special interest groups),
common use
of certain platform (e.g., Twitter users), or certain discursive te
ndencies (e.g.,
Reddit). Networked sociality is a recent term used by many scho
lars to
describe such cultural formations, which emphasizes how techn
ocultural
microsystems of meaning coalesce through the convergence of
many
elements, including content, technological infrastructures, and u
se patterns
1138
Hibah Alharbi
Hibah Alharbi
(e.g., Castells, 2009; Papacharissi, 2011; van Dijck, 2013).
As conceptual frameworks for networked sociality have grown o
ver the past
two decades, we see both traditional and experimental methods
applied to the
study of these social formations. These might combine methods
conducted
online and offline. The online/offline is less important than inte
ractions

75. among people whose lives are connected to or touched by these
networks.10
Built discursively or through the act of following communicatio
n interactions
across multiple sites, “the field site transitions from a bounded
space that the
researcher dwells within to something that more closely tracks t
he social
phenomenon under study” (Burrell, 2009, p. 195). Postill and Pi
nk (2012) say
this might be discussed as internet-related ethnography, rather t
han internet
ethnography, since the “research environment is dispersed acros
s web
platforms, is constantly in progress and changing, and implicate
s physical as
well as digital localities” (p. 125). Researchers may focus attent
ion to that
which occurs offline, or online, or a mix of both. As Burrell (20
09) notes, the
idea of a “field” may be best reconceptualized as a network, wh
ereby
research interests are sited (p. 196).
Regardless of how the study is sited, the focal point in this fram
e centers on
how the internet is conceptualized as a tool or medium for com
munication
and connection, or how the social is mediated or impacted by on
e or more
capacities of the internet.
2. Internet as place or world: Ethnographies of immersive envir
onments.
Especially in the early 1990s, researchers focused on Cyberspac

76. e, a view that
emphasized the internet as cultural spaces in which meaningful
human
interactions occur. Despite the absence of physical architectures
, the internet
can be experienced viscerally as a place, wherein one has a sens
e of presence,
whether this is sponsored and facilitated by a platform such as a
game or
virtual world or through one’s discursive activities and moveme
nts.
Ethnography translates well to immersive environments facilitat
ed by the
digital internet. As Boellstorff, Nardi, Pearce, and Taylor (2012
) note,
ethnography has always been “a flexible, responsive methodolo
gy, sensitive
to emergent phenomena and emergent research questions” (p. 6)
. Fieldwork
and associated methods are carried out in similar ways to nonvir
tual
environments.
This frame of “internet as place or world” describes work by res
earchers who
consider the dimensionality or placeness to be an important feat
ure for the
community under study—
and for most if not all of researchers in this
1139
category, there is a fairly well-defined lifeworld to be studied.
To make this

77. statement, I draw on some of the most prominent researchers in
this area,
Boellstorff, Nardi, Pearce, and Taylor (2012), who note that cert
ain
“specificities of these spaces prompt their own set of considerat
ions” (p. 4).
They emphasize four key characteristics: First, virtual worlds ar
e “object rich
environments that participants can traverse and with which they
can interact”
(p. 7). Second, virtual worlds are multiuser in nature, whereby t
he nature of
the world thrives through co-inhabitation with others. Third, “th
ey are
persistent; they continue to exist in some form even as participa
nts log off”
(p. 7). Fourth, virtual worlds “allow participants to embody the
mselves as
avatars” (p. 7), represented textually, visually, or otherwise.
Importantly, within this framework of virtual worlds, “the ethno
graphic
research paradigm does not undergo fundamental transformation
or distortion
in its journey to virtual arenas because ethnographic approaches
are always
modified for each fieldsite, and in real time as the research prog
resses”
(Boellstorff et al., 2012, p. 4). If we take these distinctions to h
eart,
“networked environments” are not the same as “virtual worlds,”
since social
networking in itself does not carry the characteristics of “world
ness” or
“embodiment.” As they acknowledge, platforms may contain vir
tual worlds

78. within them, like Farmville inside Facebook. Also, first-person
shooter games
might seem like an immersive world to certain users. But unless
there is a
defined sense of place and persistence of the world when one is
offline, the
category of virtual worlds would not apply.
Although it might seem easy at first to mark the boundaries of t
he field along
the level of the platform, such as Second Life or World of Warc
raft, a
narrower demarcation is necessary to understand the specificitie
s of the
cultural formation under study. First, these immersive environm
ents are large
and complex, with membership in the millions. Second, these en
vironments
house innumerable cultures and subcultures.
Contexts that are less immersive, such as Facebook or blogs or
emailing lists,
pose different difficulties. A researcher may find strong cultural
formations,
or a sense of place may be strongly felt and understood by mem
bers, but the
construction and maintenance of this community may cut across
many
different platforms. The choice of where to focus attention can
only be
determined contextually, in concert with those participants who
se interactions
shape cultural boundaries over time. Importantly, the experience
of something
as a place, in the sense that Meyrowitz means (1985, 2005), doe
s not

79. necessarily correspond to any online/offline or real/virtual disti
nctions, which
are separate matters.
1140
As a consequence, while some researchers may envision the wor
ld to be
“standalone” and therefore carry out inquiry specifically within
the virtualized
parameters or regions of the environment, like an island on Seco
nd Life, other
researchers might find it necessary to study the people of a parti
cular game
space both online and offline. In her studies of guilds, for exam
ple, Taylor
(2006) defines the boundaries of the field within a game environ
ment but
talks to the cultural members in a range of locations, whether th
rough text-
based chat in the game space or in person at a gaming conventio
n.
3. Internet as a way of being: Ethnographies of the contemporar
y social
world in a digital age. Following early internet studies focused
on cyberspace
or virtuality as separate from “real life,” scholars began to stud
y how internet
media are “continuous with and embedded in other social spaces
, that they
happen within mundane social structures and relations” (Miller
& Slater,
2000, p. 5). I developed the heuristic of the internet as a “way o

80. f being” in
1998, to emphasize the way that the internet seems to disappear
when there is
a very close interweaving of technology and human, receding in
to the basic
frame for how we see the world. Horst and Miller (2012) articul
ate that digital
anthropology “finally explodes the illusions we retain of a nonm
ediated,
noncultural, predigital world” (p. 12). Or as Hine (2015) notes,
the internet
becomes an almost unremarkable way of carrying out our intera
ctions with
others because it is so “embedded, embodied, and everyday.” Bu
t its
influence on the possibilities for interactions and relations is m
ore profound
than ever.
If the presence of technological mediation is taken for granted, t
he only way
to distinguish “the digital” or “internet” as a category of inquiry
might be the
type of questions the researcher asks. For many researchers who
take this into
consideration, there are paramount questions about how people f
eel—and feel
about—
these mediations in their social relations. For other researchers,
there
may be questions to ask at a level of basic conceptualizations of
social life:
How should we integrate such a ubiquitous mediator as the inter
net
successfully into our ideas of friendship, authenticity, celebrity,
public sphere,

81. and other common categories of meaning and cultural experienc
e?
Embracing this framework allows one to study characteristics of
relations as
these are—and perhaps always have been—embedded within the
sociotechnical. Bakardjieva (2011), for example, emphasizes the
interconnectedness of internet with numerous other practices an
d relations.
She identifies this shift from a notion of a separate “cyberspace
” to the notion
of the “everyday” as a “marker of the second age of the medium
” (p. 59). This
becomes possible through an ontological shift, whereby we unde
rstand social
1141
reality as fully mediated: “Media benchmark our experiences of
the world and
how we make sense of our role in it. A media life reflects how
media are both
a necessary and unavoidable part of our existence and survival”
(Deuze, 2012,
p. xi).
As mentioned at the outset of this section, a framework of tool,
place, and
way of being may be a useful heuristic but should not be read as
a typology.
It’s also not all-inclusive. I do not include many types of intern
et inquiry. For
example, one can use the capacities of the internet to study topi
cs unrelated to