Identifying Analytic Moves

When we are working through existing literature, the data/materials we collect or produce, and our own writing within the interpretive social sciences or humanities, there is a tendency to privilege two things: overall argument and what we might call information or empirics. However, there is something else we can identify as well, which we have come to understand as analytic moves . Analytic moves are tactical decisions about how to make the intrinsic relation between the conceptual and the empiric spark. As moves, they may be needed at a particular conjuncture but are not overall principles that apply everywhere and all the time. We can think of analytic moves as the building blocks of an argument, the smallest gestures we make when making sense of the world. Importantly, it is in these smallest units that the politics of one’s work seep in, revealing those areas that we have taken for granted and maybe not paid so much attention to. Watch an associated video of the authors discussing analytic moves at https://www.emergematrix.org/projects under "Cabinet of Curious Practices."

When we are working through existing literature, the data/materials we collect or produce, and our own writing within the interpretive social sciences or humanities, there is a tendency to privilege two things: overall argument and something we might call information or empirics.

First, an overall argument is the thrust of an idea, that which can travel as the distinct contribution that an author is making. An argument is built on the combination and fusion of concepts, experiences, illustrations, evidence, and suggestions. At the time an argument is read, it also rests on the assumptions that both the reader and the writer bring to the table.

The second thing that we turn to when conducting research is information or empirics : the material that makes the argument have traction. We can think of that material as the textured worlds and histories that allow us to make sense of the argument itself. This includes information gleaned from a particular time and space. The empirical material connects ideas to a world that is usually distributed, so connections are made both to a particular location and also to different places and times.

When we encounter a text or another kind of material that offers an argument about a world and shows us how that world unfolds, there is something else that we can identify too, beyond the argument and empirics.

That something else is what we have come to understand as analytic moves.

An analytic move is a tactical decision about how to make the intrinsic relation between the conceptual and the empiric spark. It is the moment when you can spot that an author is trying to conjure into existence a distinct sense of something that is happening in the world.

These moves can be small or they can be large. Take the question of what private property is. An author may examine private property by deciding to go into historical records to show how throughout the passage of time property changes in some ways and stays the same in others. Alternatively they might decide to focus on physical markers of boundaries and give an example of property by way of its material expression. Each of these is an analytic move.

Put another way, an analytic move is that juncture when an author decides to take their exploration in a particular direction. For example, an author decides to examine assumptions of liberal subjectivity by analyzing the words in the prayers people say when hoping for a better future, hence undoing the secular assumptions that we tend to accept in relation to liberalism. Or, an author decides to invoke two different forms of exchanging gifts between co-workers (that is, to enact a comparison) to learn something about subjectivity and debt. Or, an analytic move could also be the decision to draw on philosophy to clarify a definition, that is, the decision to draw on abstract ideas to make a clarification or offer a new avenue for thinking.

Just as making a right turn on your bike is in principle the same thing as making a right when driving, which is also in principle the same thing as taking a soft curve towards the right on a boat, analytic moves have a shared character but differ in their specificities. They are all similar to the extent that they are the connective tissue that links argument and empirics, but like turning right on a bike, in a car, or on a boat, they are also all distinct to the situation.

For heuristic purposes, we can think of analytic moves as the building blocks of an argument, the smallest gestures we make when making sense of the world. Importantly, it is in these smallest units that the politics of one’s work seep in, revealing those areas that we have taken for granted and perhaps not paid so much attention to. It is in those analytic moves that assumptions about race, class, ethnocentrism, ableism, bourgeois life, and much more become visible.

And finally, analytic moves are moves. That is, they are needed at a particular conjuncture; they are not overall principles that apply everywhere and all the time. They don’t determine an argument once and for all. Rather, they are the stepping stones that allow an author to make a point or demonstrate something about the worlds that matter to them.