Identifying Analytic Moves v1

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."