To Think or Not to Think with Theory in Qualitative Research

Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research: Viewing Data across Multiple Perspectives is a book that challenges the traditional way of analyzing qualitative data. The book invites researchers who use qualitative methods to think with theory when it comes to analyzing their data since analyzing the data with no theory in mind can make injustice to the data. Thinking with theory, however, can enrich one’s study and direct the process of the data analysis. The authors offer us six theories, as examples, to think with when analyzing qualitative data. These theories are: Derrida’s Deconstruction, Spivak’s Marginality, Foucault’s Power/Knowledge, Butler’s Performativity, Deleuze’s Desire, and Barad’s Intra-action. To clarify their approach, the authors interviewed two first-generation-scholar participants: Cassandra and Sera and analyzed their data in the chapters of the book; each chapter analyzes the data from the perspective of one of the six aforementioned theories, and each chapter is proceeded by an interlude in which the authors explicate why they have chosen this particular theory