Researchers as Curators

This is Part of the Data Stories Series

A special thank you to Kenneth D. Bailey’s work on typologies and taxonomies, for having inspired this Data Story.

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What really mattered, in that data? Was it their demographic profile? Was it their job? The fact they were on good terms with their family, had a dog, or had just moved to a rural area? What was truly meaningful amongst those many details?

We researchers often are asked to typify the customer, the patient, the citizen — whatever our dataset seeks to follow.

Sometimes, what ties together a thread is a common mindset. Sometimes, it’s an observable characteristic. It is not the characteristic per se that one should examine — but its meaning in that particular research, and context. Think of the significance of being a woman, for instance. In a study about maternal mortality or domestic violence, that characteristic would be salient. It might not be quite so in a study about take-out food during the pandemic. Or might it?

Personae — so often now the object of vehement attacks — are the proxies for concepts. The researcher lives in this odd space of abstraction and concretization. Abstraction for seeing — through the granularity of data- miniature renditions of “the vast world”. Concretization for that embodiment in the flesh. For what is observable. Real.

Researchers walk the thin line every day, between reality and reification.