Wk11- Archives/Textual Data Flashcards
Archives (Definition/Composition)
Collection of documents, images and artefacts
- Organisations AND individuals have access
- Can be of distant or recent past
- May or may not be catalogued
- Researchers and the pubic often have (restricted) access
- Usually not published or ‘complete’
Content Analysis (Definition/Practicalities)
Analysis of documents and texts via predetermined categories
Practicalities: 3 Elements
1) Sampling your materials (on what basis will text be selected)
2) Deciding what to count (particular words, actions, themes: all shaped by research qus or hypothesis)
3) Coding
- What ‘category’ will be a particular section of text be assigned to?
Content vs Thematic
Content:
- Quantitative Research tradition
- Statistical: dispersion, Frequencies/counts, means etc
Thematic:
- Not attempting to count freq of a particular type of expression or category
- But looking at meaning and qualitative themes evident within a text e.g. interview, focus group, diary etc
- Issues are constructed to gain insight to the situated understanding of particular individuals/group
Culture and Textual analysis
Aitken (2005)
- ‘Armchair with popcorn geog’ - contemporary method of study reflects the novel way in which academics view the world
- argued that textual analysis has gained increasing prominence with the recognition that representations and images dominate our culture
= Many scholars argue that contempt culture is an ‘imaginative collage constructed through mixed- media video/audio/texts’
Don Mitchell (1995) - concentrating on cultural texts = refocus intent upon theorising the workings of power - texts are political and an engagement with them is about effecting change- perhaps through elaborating new meanings of perhaps by representing resistance to dominant narratives
Clifford Geertz (1973) - “culture is a text” and can be ‘read as a book’ which a structure, author, syntax and elaborates certain kinds of meanings if you understand the basic rules
T.A. and Fieldwork
Heidi Nast (1994) - highlights that the ‘field’ need not need be constrained to a physical ‘place’ but can be READ as a ‘political artefact’
Methods less constrained to ‘field- orientated empiricism’ and the ‘rigour of science’s magical methods’ but these methods are more about how we situate ourselves politically
Text Definition
- Most traditional form, text is a written material that occupies anything from a newspaper online to a volume sitting on the shelf of a library i.e. books, manuscripts etc
- Barthes (1972) extended this notion to include CULTURAL forms e.g. paintings, map, landscapes etc
- assume that these texts exhibit ‘text- like qualities’ and are interpretable using textual methods
Disadvantage of ‘culture as text’
- Mitchell (1995) - focusing on culture as a text misses the workings of power in the way societies reproduce themselves
- Believes culture should be considered a ‘constraint and context’ as well as a textual metaphor as it orders the world and better understands how powerful groups operationalise the concept
Musical Texts and Performance
- Eco (1976) - highlights that music is an important cultural text and that these geographers analyse music in terms of regional differentiation, cultural diffusion and perception of places rather than anything specifically textual
e. g. Blues ‘work music’ and spread from S –> N America
Alternatively, Leyshon (1998) uses post- structural methods that explore issues of economy, society, polity and culture in ‘local’ and ‘global’ music
- Of late, geographers have turned to the study of ‘sound politics’ or the emergence of an understanding of music as texts, performances and products of material struggle
“Not just about reading lyrics, but about the physicality of music and its call to action”
Reading Maps
Brian Harley’s (1989) - ‘Deconstructing the Map’ - one of the first attempts to bring cartography into a wider theory of representation
- Notes that maps are cultural maps embodying a collecting of codes, few of which are UNIQUE to cartography
Wood (1993) highlights the importance of understanding the signs and myths which are embodied in cartographic codes
Texts as a Metaphor for Living Experience
- Early 1970s, Paul Ricoeur suggested that social and political institutions inscribe values, meanings and behaviours in much the same way as texts
- From this, many geog highlight that the ;LIFE IN TEXT’
Key References
Aitken (2005) - Textual Analysis
Heidi Nast (1994) - Nature of the ‘field’ in fieldwork
Barnes and Duncan (1992)
Extension of ‘reading images’ to paintings, maps, landscapes etc
Reference for archives
Rose (1992)
Sources of Archival Data (5 + ref)
Jones (2010)
1) PUBLIC DOCUMENTS AND OFFICIAL RECORDS (e.g. births, police stations, unis etc)
2) PRIVATE DOCUMENTS
- Letters/diaries (now blogs and tweets)
3) MASS MEDIA
- Magazines, shows, movies, political cartoons etc
4) PHYSICAL, NONVERBAL MATERIALS
- E.g. public art, anthropologists studied the carvings on tombstones
5) SOCIAL SCIENCE DATA ARCHIVES
- Other 4 created for purpose > research
- Although the data may be commandeered for others’ later research efforts, original purpose is ether totally unrelated or indirectly related
- This is for others research data too = Berkeley Growth Study, General Social Survey etc
Archival Advantages (8)
- Can be Quasi- or true experimental research designs (e.g. measuring automobile accident rates before and after implementation of new speed limits) as well as descriptive/non experimental (e.g. Births, deaths, daily temps)
- Contrary to popular belief, not all archival data are longitudinal but some are CROSS- SECTIONAL e.g. suicide notes
- Many institutions in place- rich datasets all over the world = scientific progress may be quickened by the transparency and collaboration involved in multiple- researcher open- access data studies
- Can gain rich data within things such as diaries which usually seem ‘mundane’
- Opp. to examine data from long- term longitudinal studies of individuals esp for observing change in slowly changing phenomena
- Samples- those interested in phenomena with a low base rate- those wishing to employ complex multivariate stats, along with anyone who may not necessarily have the resources to gather large amounts of data will appreciate the no. of archival data sets with large sample sizes
- Also is a rare pop to collect a sample that is GENUINELY representative of a pop of interest
- Don’t have to spend lots of time/effort compiling large and elaborate datasets
- Incomplete archives = participants can be recontacted (with permission ofc) to gain further info
