Progress report

Progress in Human Geography

2014, Vol. 38(2) 294–307
Crossing the qualitative- ª The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permission:

quantitative chasm III: Enduring sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0309132513479291
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methods, open geography,
participatory research,
and the fourth paradigm

Dydia DeLyser
Louisiana State University, USA

Daniel Sui
The Ohio State University, USA

Abstract
In our third and final report, we again prioritize the open embrace of methodological differences, seeking to
span the qualitative-quantitative chasm in different ways. Amid broad focus on methodological newness, we
review the importance of enduring methods such as interviewing and mapping. Amid efforts to make data and
publications openly available, we review efforts to include communities in participatory research. Amid the
emergence of data-extensive studies, which some call the fourth paradigm, we highlight the continuing
importance of ‘small’ data and methodological pluralism.

Keywords
Big Data, enduring methods, fourth paradigm, interviewing, mapping, methodological pluralism, open geogra-
phy, participatory research, qualitative, quantitative, small data

I Introduction Writing as two geographers from different

methodological camps, we see acrimonious
Our first two reports reviewed methods in recent
divides between physical versus human, quali-
geographical scholarship – from hybrid geogra-
tative versus quantitative, paleo- versus neo-
phy, archival ethnography, and crowdsourcing/
geographic approaches1 as threats to research
volunteered geographic information (VGI) to
of all kinds. A commitment to outreach, and
inventive methods engaging Big Data in the
adjustment in ontology (toward holism),
emerging digital humanities, mobile methods,
and rhythmanalysis. We explicitly sought
approaches that can cross the qualitative-
Corresponding author:
quantitative chasm, and/or facilitate synthesis Dydia DeLyser, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge,
and holistic thinking in order to better under- LA 70803, USA.
stand the complex problems of our time. Email: dydia@lsu.edu
DeLyser and Sui
epistemology (towards pluralism), and metho-
dology (towards openness, and even synthesis/
synergy) can help us reach across these divides.
In this final report, we dovetail those themes: we
highlight enduring methods that connect paleo-
and neo-geographic approaches; efforts at ‘open
geography’ – which we counter with participa-
tory approaches – that may link and differenti-
ate human and physical geography; and a new
wave of data-extensive inquiry some call the
fourth paradigm that may threaten methodologi-
cal pluralism. In the concluding section, we
call for an engaged openness with a generosity
toward methods (emerging or enduring) that are
different from our own, for such methodological
pluralism will be vital for our intellectual
enterprise.
II Enduring methods amid
emerging approaches
Amid a flurry of attention to new data sources
and the new methods mustered to manage them,
what is it that makes certain methods endure?
Methods endure for their ongoing relevance and
purchase on the ever-changing problems of our
time. While some issues urge novel approaches,
others can best be addressed through research
grounded in methods already proven. Neverthe-
less, enduring methods – like all methods –
should be discussed and engaged critically by
authors so that readers may assess the work’s
(methodological) credibility. In this section,
we review just two enduring methods, one
typically qualitative (interviewing) and one
typically quantitative (mapping) to show, by
example, how methods tried-and-true, when
articulately engaged, may provide insight into
some of our age’s elusive questions.
1 Interviewing
In qualitative scholarship, some established
research methods have never (fully) fallen
from favor. The interview, for example, is not
295
broken: despite recent emphasis away from
words, discourses, and representations and in
favor of practices (perhaps most notably in so-
called non-representational work), current scho-
larship demonstrates that interviewing remains
a vital and vibrant research method: as Hitch-
ings (2012) points out, people can talk about
their practices – interview-based research can
reveal far more than words alone. The research
may be challenging, halting, and even irritating,
as Proudfoot (2010) elucidates in relation to
interviews about enjoyment – which can be
difficult to enjoy – but it is possible. Interviews
can access intense and intimate emotions and
experiences that go far beyond words: see, for
example, Bondi (2009) on counselors’ delicate
professional relationships with clients, Jacobs
(2009) on women’s sex tourism, Longhurst
et al. (2009) on the visceral experiences of food,
Holmes (2009) on violence in lesbian relation-
ships, and Myers (2010) on the emotionally
charged spaces of HIV-positive men-who-
have-sex-with-men (MSM).
Amid what some see as drifts toward philoso-
phical esoterica, recent and diverse calls to keep
our scholarship politically engaged (for
example, Cresswell, 2012; Pain et al., 2011)
have been and can be well heeded by those
grounding their research in interviewing: Hey-
nen’s (2009) interviews revealed strategies for
combating racialized poverty and creating revo-
lutionary theory; Hudalah et al.’s (2010) inter-
views showed how dynamic moments of
opportunity arise in the urban-planning process
– and how they can empower even actors per-
ceived as ‘weak’; McLeish’s (2010: 60)
interviews unearthed the workings of Soviet
bio-weaponry secrecy, detailing how such
secrets can be ‘situated through sustained
practical activities’ by differently enlightened
individuals across different scales; Wright’s
(2010) interviews illuminated the ways that
Filipino villagers expressly cultivated spaces
beyond capitalism, transforming economic
practice and meaning; and Kanngieser’s
296
(2012) interviews demonstrated the affective
and performative politics embedded in geogra-
phies of the voice itself.
Interview-based research can have real polit-
ical import, but such rich interview-based
research is not for those interested in superficial
empirical engagements: done well, interview
research may require lengthy and/or repeat
interviews, potentially with large numbers of
people: Jackson et al.’s (2009) research illumi-
nated the moral and ethical economies of food
by drawing from some 40 life-history inter-
views of up to 14 hours in length; Davies’
(2012) research on the ethics of mouse welfare
in biomedical research drew from some 90
expert interviews.
2 Mapping
By a decade ago, it was well documented that
the use of maps and mapping as a method in
human-geography scholarship had declined
(Martin, 2000; Wheeler, 1998). Indeed, though
the general public has tended to treat ‘geogra-
phy’ and ‘map’ as synonyms, maps and map-
ping had assumed an ambivalent relationship
with academic geography (Dodge and Perkins,
2008). However, as an enduring method, maps
and mapping turn out to be more resilient than
many other methods – the first and last frontier
due to their mysterious nature in human com-
munication (Zelinsky, 1973). In recent years,
through a combination of technological and
cognitive factors (the suddenly pervasive avail-
ability of mapping tools and data, along with
humans’ visual thinking-and-learning abilities,
and cartophilia), mapping as a useful research
method has been reinvigorated not only in geo-
graphy (Environment and Planning A now has a
featured graphic or map in each issue – http://
www.envplan.com/graphics_a.html), but across
the broader spectrum of social sciences and
humanities, reflected particularly in the grow-
ing literature related to spatial humanities and
spatially integrated social sciences.
Progress in Human Geography 38(2)
Viewed as enduring method, at least three
recent trends in maps and mapping merit atten-
tion. First, today’s maps are not simply used as
illustrations. Instead, they are increasingly used
as the medium to tell stories, even in full narra-
tive atlases (Mennis et al., 2013; Mitchell and
Elwood, 2012; Wood, 2010). Such map-based
geospatial storytelling has empowered contem-
porary map makers to describe reality in a
way unattainable by traditional approaches
(Caquard, 2013; http://mapstory.org; http://
storymaps.esri.com/home). Of course, storytell-
ing as a methodological focus is not confined to
the context of maps and mapping; as Cameron
(2012) notes, it is consistent with a relational
and material turn within geography. ‘Research
storytelling’ (Christensen, 2012) is in fact a
much broader disciplinary trend that cuts
across human and physical geography as well
as GIScience and participatory research
(Cameron, 2012; Christensen, 2012; Elwood
and Mitchell, 2012; Phillips, 2012; Yuan,
2012), reflecting ‘renewed focus on the political
possibilities afforded by storytelling’ (Cameron,
2012: 573).
Second, maps and mapping have been
extended to domains traditionally not consid-
ered the province of mapping applications.
Google Earth mashups, for example, have been
used to map DNA-sequencing data to track
down the global diffusion of flu viruses
(www.supramap.org). A growing number of
interdisciplinary scholars are also using maps
and mapping to convey their knowledge to the
public (Börner, 2010): Zook and Graham
(2010) used primarily online keyword searches
to produce a map of the virtual ‘bible belt’;
Nakaya (2010) used cartogram mapping to
produce a 3D rendition of population health in
Japan; Vinciguerra et al. (2010) used corporate
business linkage information to examine
American exceptionalism and produced a
contemporary Mappa Mundi of the world-city
network; and Skupin and Esperbé (2011),
synthesizing multiple-attribute data, produced
DeLyser and Sui
an N-dimensional map of the USA to reveal
the hidden world of scientific-collaboration
networks.
Third, there has been ongoing scrutiny of the
deeper ontological, epistemological, and social/
political meanings of maps and mapping.
Instead of treating maps as static entities,
Kitchin et al. (2012) propose a processual,
relational, and dynamic embrace of mappings.
Goodchild et al. (2012), using the three versions
of the boundaries of the Himalayas provided by
Google Maps in response to queries from the
USA, China, and India, demonstrated the deeply
political and contentious nature of maps and
mapping in the internet age, driving home the
message that there is no such a thing as a ‘true’
map. Indeed, as social theorists have long
argued, all maps are socially and politically
constructed (Pickles and Stallmann, 2011).
3 When methods endure
One overarching strength in enduring-methods
work is a rich discussion of methods, lending
credibility to each author’s account, revealing
challenges involved in the research, and
enabling others to learn from methodological
successes and failures (DeLyser and Karolczyk,
2010). Emphasis on methodological novelty
may actually obscure important questions and
answers – Travers (2009) admonishes us to
resist the dazzle of new technologies when it
distracts us from engagement with issues.
Instead, as Barnes (2010: 669) observed in a
report on another topic, ‘Ideas, concepts, words,
and phrases’ once ‘judged dead . . . still [have]
a pulse’. For enduring methods it is not a return
to methods once thought deceased, but a recog-
nition of the continued relevance of these
approaches to critical questions of our changing
world. The ongoing reinvigoration of methods
such as interviewing and mapping serves as a
potent reminder that such enduring methods,
when turned to the substantive and conceptual
issues of our era, can and do help us better
297
understand the dynamics and complexities of
our time.
III Open science and participatory
research
The growing interdisciplinary effort towards
‘open science’ represents a broad and poten-
tially transformative trend. Although the precise
meaning of open science may differ according
to disciplinary context and practices, chemist
and open-science blogger Gezelter (2009) has
identified four principles that may become
influential for geographical practices as well,
especially when seen from a methodological
perspective:
! transparency in methods of data collec-
tion, processing, analysis, and, we would
add, in mapping and data visualization;
! public availability and reusability of data;
! public accessibility of scientific/scho-
larly communication and publications;
! increased scholarly collaboration facili-
tated by web-based tools.
The open-science paradigm has been touted
as one of the defining characteristics of contem-
porary scientific enterprise (Cribb and Sari,
2010). It has gained momentum across multiple
disciplines, especially in the physical sciences,
and in geography particularly among those
interested in mapping and GIS. Crampton
(2012) has written extensively on multiple
dimensions of ‘open geography’ – treating
‘open’ both as an adjective and a verb. Cisler
(2007) also raised the banner of open geography
and reviewed some of the latest tools for its
practice. Drawing from the emerging literature
loosely connected to open geography as cur-
rently practiced and/or proposed, open science
(and open geography) includes:
! Open data: make data used in publica-
tions available for both replication and
continuing research. The World Bank has
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pioneered such open-data practices,
making their data publicly available on
their website, aspiring to make it useful,
usable, and used (http://data.worldbank.
org). In geography, Jiang’s (2011) special
issue on data-intensive geo-spatial com-
puting made all its data available online.
Wyly has posted data used in his publica-
tions for anybody who is interested in
replicating the results of his research
(http://www.geog.ubc.ca/*ewyly).
! Open methods: disclose methodological
details. In addition to textual descriptions,
many release the source code of any spe-
cialized software tools developed for a
particular project. Indeed, open-source
software is one of the methodological
driving forces behind the paradigm of open
science. According to Steiniger and Hunter
(2012), free and open software tools can
now perform the spatial data functions of
proprietary commercial software tools.
! Open review: simultaneous multiple
reviews by both specialists and non-
specialists who have vested interests in
the research reported (instead of the tradi-
tional pre-publication peer reviews by a
small number of experts) (Kriegeskorte,
2009). Such peer-review is not confined
to the pre-publication stage, but contin-
ues post-publication. Indeed, publication,
like knowledge itself, may become much
more iterative.
! Open-access publication: make scholarly
publications available free of charge. The
public and the academy have grown
impatient that most publicly funded
research published by commercial pub-
lishers is accessible only via (library)
subscription. In what is known as the
‘gold model’ of open access, commercial
publishers ask that authors (and their
funding bodies or institutions) pay
article-processing charges to make their
content freely available to readers. In the
Progress in Human Geography 38(2)
social sciences and humanities a lengthy
transition period is envisioned where two
publication models (open access and sub-
scription access) exist side by side in the
same journal, with the subscription-based
content held under embargo for non-
subscribers for a specified period (Finch,
2012). At the same time, truly free and
open-access online journals where no fee
is charged of either author or reader (such
as ACME: An International E-Journal for
Critical Geographies) are gaining recog-
nition and respect as valued outlets for
scholarship in geography.
! Open collaboration: participation and col-
laboration among and between both geo-
graphers and non-geographers in all tasks
related to research – data collection, analy-
sis, and writing/publication, in line with
the spirit of crowdsourcing. An even more
ambitious proposal is to eventually make
research articles ‘live’ so that data, analy-
sis, results, and conclusions can be dyna-
mically updated (Ahlqvist et al., 2013),
thus sustaining a real-time dialogue among
the interested parties. Websites like Wiki-
versity, Citizendium, and Scholarpedia
further propel openness, sharing, and col-
laboration among researchers and scholars
following the open-science model.
! Open scholar: foster a new academic
culture that values the core practices of
open science and create new cyber-
infrastructure that facilitates and seam-
lessly integrates all the above in open
scholarly practices. Harvard’s ‘Open
Scholar’ initiative (http://openscholar.
harvard.edu) is an important step towards
this goal. However, it remains to be seen
whether public intellectuals can be trans-
formed into open scholars via real-time
scholarship (Burton, 2009).
Although exciting, issues remain to be
resolved along multiple fronts for the open-
DeLyser and Sui
science paradigm (Sui, 2012). While the poten-
tial to advance geographical scholarship via
openness cannot be underestimated, it has clear
limits depending on the kind of geography (and
scholarship more broadly) practiced. Also,
because the academic reward system was
designed for the scientific and scholarly prac-
tices of a previous era, the academy has yet to
develop new procedures for evaluating and
rewarding open scholarship. Meanwhile, in the
wake of Wikileaks, the Obama administration
is re-evaluating its open-government initiatives,
redefining the boundary between openness and
secrecy (Greenwald, 2012). Indeed, if any
useful lesson can be learned from the open-
science movement so far, it perhaps is this: open
science, like other well-intended human endea-
vors throughout history, will not be immune
from unintended consequences (Sui, 2012).
While there is obvious appeal for such a
model of scholarship for quantitative research-
ers, clear challenges exist for qualitative scho-
lars in adopting such an approach to research,
research materials, and the communities with
which we undertake our research. If the goal
of open data is to make data available to other
scholars who can then aggregate that data with
other data or use that data in their own research
(potentially replicating and/or validating the
original results), those goals may not be appro-
priate in much qualitative research. First, quali-
tative research materials are typically not able to
be aggregated across different qualitative
studies by (the same or) different researchers:
because qualitative research relies not on the
premise of objectivity but rather upon an
engaged understanding of mutually subjective
research, the empirical materials generated by
different researchers grounded, for example, in
participant observation or interviewing, are
understood not to be replicable. Second, neither
is it appropriate to share materials such as field
notes or interview transcripts without approval
and/or without carefully anonymizing them –
those materials often include confidential
299
information and observations. Third, open shar-
ing of data may not be the best way to reach
either the people with whom we undertake our
research, or the general public. While we may
wish (and even feel obligated) to share our
research results beyond the academy, we should
not universally assume that the raw data of
interpretative and analytical interest to scholars
will be of immediate interest or relevance to
those in other communities, even though the
results of our scholarly interpretation and anal-
ysis (perhaps in different forms) might be
(Cahill and Torre, 2010; Christensen, 2012;
DeLyser and Pawson, 2010; Fuller and Kitchin,
2004; Whittle et al., 2011).
But avoiding open ‘science’ does not leave
qualitative researchers unable to share their
research or without an engaged and interactive
community of researchers and research partici-
pants. Qualitative (and quantitative) researchers
have long engaged participatory strategies
based upon an understanding of working ‘with’
rather than ‘on’; such reciprocity in research
(rather than simply posting data and/or ‘results’
online) can make research more rather than
less accessible to a broad public (Whittle
et al., 2011).
1 Participatory research
While the technology that facilitates open scho-
larship is new, the idea of participatory research
is old – such research has served communities
and scholars both quantitative and qualitative
for decades, striving to challenge hierarchies
between researcher and researched and equita-
bly engage community research partners, to
shatter monopolies of knowledge creation and
possession and validate all forms of knowledge
and experience, and to unite research with
action and community participation in work
where research processes are as important as
research outcomes (Askins and Pain, 2011;
Castleden et al., 2012a, 2012b; Kindon et al.,
2010a). A recent rise in participatory research
300
prompted Fuller and Kitchin (2004) to herald a
‘participatory turn’ in human geography.
Kindon (2010: 518), defining participation in
research as ‘effectively and ethically engaging
people in processes, structures, spaces, and
decisions that affect their lives, and working
with them to achieve equitable and sustainable
outcomes on their own terms’, includes partici-
patory action research (PAR) as a radical branch
of participatory research that expressly targets
research toward politically committed, positive,
and progressive change for the community or
individuals engaged (see also Kindon et al.,
2010b). To Jensen and Glasmeier (2010: 82),
‘action-oriented academics’ can be distin-
guished not by their research methods (for such
research can be undertaken through qualitative
and/or quantitative research methods) but by
their situatedness, which they mobilize in their
community engagements, leaving pretenses to
objectivity and impartiality behind. Signifi-
cantly, because community goals and interests
are prioritized in participatory research,
research ‘success’ emerges not only from
knowledge gained by/for the researchers, but
also from the development of participants’
knowledge, understandings, skills, and capaci-
ties – valuing and validating both knowledge
and change that the community (not the
researcher) desires (Askins and Pain, 2011;
Kindon, 2010).
As with other approaches, participatory
research is not without critics. In particular,
despite liberatory goals, common participatory
practices can sustain exclusionary systems of
power and value (Kindon, 2010); indeed no
method can guarantee liberatory or ethical
research (de Leeuw et al., 2012). At the same
time, researched communities and organiza-
tions retain their own structures of power that
also shape the research and research relation-
ships as well as dissent within the community
(Askins and Pain, 2011; de Leeuw et al., 2012;
Fisher, 2011), and, despite local positive
impacts, it remains challenging for participatory
Progress in Human Geography 38(2)
research(ers) to link those local challenges to
broader, structural change (Kindon, 2010). Just
the same, when participatory approaches are
viewed as ‘part of an ongoing process of nego-
tiation and politics’ rather than as endpoints of
such processes, valuable contributions to com-
munities (including scholarly ones) can emerge
(Kindon, 2010: 530).
2 Opening research
What we find of lasting importance methodolo-
gically is not that all data always be made pub-
licly available, or that all research has expressly
participatory goals, but rather that researchers
qualitative and quantitative understand the
community (in all senses of that term) benefits
and risks for doing either, and then develop and
express appropriate methodological articulacy
about that research as we proceed. Because our
methods help to shape not only the research we
elect to undertake but also the realities we seek
to study (Law, 2004), regardless of the aim of
the research or the accessibility of the data, the
means of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting
data should be made explicit, and discussed
(both during the research process and in
publications) in critical context.
IV The fourth paradigm and
sustaining methodological
pluralism
Scholars have long marveled at the ‘unreason-
able effectiveness of mathematics’ (Wigner,
1960: 1); today, they show admiration for what
may be the ‘unreasonable effectiveness of data’
(Halevy et al., 2009: 8). Janowicz (2012), echo-
ing Laney’s (2001) formulation, characterizes
the current deluge of (spatial) data by ‘three
Vs’: volume (large, multidimensional, and
interlinked), variety (of sources, types, and for-
mat), and velocity (high speed of creation and
updating). Some believe that the rapid diffusion
of spatial media and concomitant growth of Big
DeLyser and Sui
Data will bring about a methodological revolu-
tion (Gupta et al., 2012) characterized by data-
extensive inquiries across the sciences, both
physical and social/behavioral (National Sci-
ence Foundation (US) Directorate for Social,
Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, 2011) and
the arts/humanities (Bartscherer and Coover,
2011; Berry, 2012). Others so expect a revolution
they have gone so far as to label Big Data the
‘fourth paradigm’, or occasionally eScience
(Hey et al., 2009). According to Gray and
Szalay (2007), previous (quantitative-based)
innovations in science were driven by three
sequential paradigms: empirical (describing nat-
ural phenomena), theoretical (generalizations,
using and testing models), and computational
(simulating complex phenomena); the fourth
paradigm is based on statistical exploration and
data mining, with data in peta- or even exa-
bytes of different varieties (numbers, text, image,
and video) updated rapidly – in some cases even
in real time (Janowicz, 2012). The fourth para-
digm is the age of computer-driven analysis of
Big Data.
As more and more data are cataloged with
spatial (and temporal) tags, Big Data has
become a major resource for human geogra-
phers, moving human geography perhaps
toward an embrace of Gray and Szalay’s
(2007) fourth paradigm. Apparently, this new
round of data-extensive inquiries led by the
fourth paradigm is not simply a return to Peter
Gould’s (1981: 166) earlier dream of ‘let(ting)
data speak for themselves’. On the contrary, the
fourth paradigm raises a series of theoretical
questions, which may potentially open new
doors for geographic inquiries along multiple
fronts. Wyly (forthcoming) branded these
trends ‘automated (post)positivism’ (p. 1), argu-
ing that rather than wish positivism were dead it
is time to rethink its possibilities: ‘The positivist
era is right now . . . The question is what kind of
politics it will have’ (p. 7).
But the fourth paradigm, Big Data, and the
renewed empiricism they foster are not without
301
their critics. Wainwright (2012: 5), with the
Bowman expeditions (efforts by western scho-
lars to map indigenous spaces in Mexico, later
subject to protest by those communities) as an
example, reveals the researcher-centric goals
of empiricist work – goals that silence the prio-
rities and wishes of the (indigenous) commu-
nities studied. Meanwhile, Elwood and
Leszczynski (2012: 12, 14), drawing from case
studies linking new spatial media with activism
and civic engagement, reported optimistic
scenarios for leveraging web-based geographic
information technologies to launch positive
social change and inclusive methods, leading
to a knowledge politics not dominated by the
researchers. The future of knowledge produc-
tion and use in the digital age remains to be
shaped. Will Big Data be deployed for freedom
or control, for privacy or its invasion? Will it
‘transform how we study human communica-
tion and culture, or narrow the palette of
research options and alter what ‘research’
means?’ (boyd and Crawford, 2012: 663).
As boyd and Crawford (2012: 667) make
clear, mythologies surrounding Big Data – that
it seems to offer new insights with accuracy and
objectivity; that it appears to offer humanities
scholars a novel grasp at the status of objective
methods and quantitative science – make it even
more important to critically examine Big Data’s
assumptions and biases, for such studies are only
as good as the data gathered and the analysis and
interpretation rendered. Large data sets (particu-
larly those from Internet sources) can be unreli-
able, and subject to gaps, outages, and losses –
errors magnified when data sets are aggregated.
And size itself, while thought impressive, makes
data sets neither representative nor random; size
says nothing about origin or limitations in the
source, the data context, or bias in data analysis
and interpretation. Nor does size itself reveal
information about access to data – with media
companies and university budgets controlling
access in different ways, and with computational
skills valorized in Big Data research, new social
302
classes of insiders and outsiders, data rich and
data poor are already emerging (boyd and Craw-
ford, 2012; Manovich, 2011).
Big Data research faces looming ethical
issues: large data sets (like Facebook posts) may
appear anonymous but have retained identity
information subsequently made public by
researchers (Zimmer, 2008). Despite the earnest
challenges researchers working with living
human participants face with standard
informed-consent protocols and university
Institutional Review Boards (Butz, 2008), all
agree that appropriate protections for research
‘subjects’ must be in place. But Big Data studies
raise new questions when participants are not
even aware of their participation in research
(or, as continual changes in online privacy set-
tings attest, even of their own online exposure;
Tsukayama, 2012). The fact that data are acces-
sible does not make their use for means other
than their original creation ethical (boyd and
Crawford, 2012).
These challenges and critical questions will
remain important for both quantitative and qua-
litative researchers as the fourth paradigm, Big
Data, and digital humanities continue to influ-
ence scholarship. Research insights can emerge
from studies at any scale; amid the ascendance
of Big Data it becomes even more important
to acknowledge the contributions of ‘small’ data
(boyd and Crawford, 2012). In geography, for
example, Aitken (2010), drawing from interac-
tions over a 10-year period, focuses intensively
on the story of exactly one migrant child laborer
to understand the complex constructions of
masculinities and manhood in a diasporic and
transnational context. The size and type of data
should fit the research question and analysis/
interpretation rendered – sometimes less is more.
Yet the realm of Big Data has so far not been
welcoming for other expressions of intellectual
craft (boyd and Crawford, 2012), and herein lies
a quandary. If the quantitative revolution once
overtook our discipline, the fourth paradigm
and Big Data may be an ambush far greater:
Progress in Human Geography 38(2)
Berry (2012: 12) foresees the current rise in
computationality ‘creating a new ontological
‘‘epoch’’ as a new historical constellation of
intelligibility’, while Agnew (2012) warns of a
‘new type of instrumentalism’. It will be wise
for scholars both quantitative and qualitative,
those who elect to work with Big Data and those
who do not, to remember that scholarship never
knows only one ‘true’ way. Methodological
pluralism and an open embrace of methods and
data sources not one’s own will become even
more important.
V Conclusion
Divisions over how to do research lie at the core
of some of the most fractious debates in our dis-
cipline, and, as a result, some of its humor. In
the late 1960s, at the height of the quantitative
revolution, humanistic geographer David
Lowenthal (1969: 6) penned a tribute essay to
fictional quantifier Ephraim Ketchall (1788–
1877). Ketchall was so devoted in his quantifi-
cation that he proposed to ‘ascertain the relative
advancement and significance of the world’s
nations by calculating the aggregate weights
and volumes of their edifices’. Such uninforma-
tive and uninformed thinking has endured out-
side of parody, and Big Data has done nothing
to slow it: a Ukrainian web analytics company
recently mapped the frequency of ‘f bombs’ in
US tweets to reveal that ‘f*%k you’ is tweeted
most frequently in America’s population
centers (Garber, 2012). Digital ‘content’, what
Crogan and Kinsley (2012: 4) call ‘that enig-
matic abstraction of message from medium’,
proves vacuous absent analytical, interpretive,
and methodological acuity. In this report, we
have advocated enduring methods in part
because the onrush of digital approaches is
captivating scholars across disciplines with the
shiny promise of the new, but new may not be
better or best – technological newness will not
salvage an analytically, interpretatively, or
methodologically impoverished approach.
DeLyser and Sui
Divisions between scholars based on subdis-
ciplinary orientation are no less vexing: as Rap-
ley (2012) points out, climate scientists seem to
be losing the policy battle against climate-
change deniers in part because they do not read
(and do not perceive they have the time to read)
the social-science research about how argu-
ments such as those denying climate change
unfold and become compelling. He suggests it
is ‘time to raft up’ – to pull together across sub-
disciplinary and methodological divides to get
the message (about climate change) across. Such
undertakings are challenging: Barnes and Shep-
pard (2010) draw attention to the ‘fragmenting
pluralism’ Balkanizing economic geography,
and argue instead for an ‘engaged pluralism’
where other views are engaged, divergences
openly tolerated, and differences dialogically
embraced. Differences may not be resolved, but
genuine engagement can lead to enhanced inno-
vativeness and creativity on all sides, stimulat-
ing new thought.
Engaged pluralism, we suggest, is precisely
what is needed across our discipline methodolo-
gically: one need not switch to new methods,
but all will benefit from open embrace and
validation of the methods of others, and all can
avoid dismissing out of hand works grounded in
traditions not our own, endeavoring to reach
across methodological and theoretical divides,
and laboring to dispel the power asymmetries
vested in different methods and knowledge
communities (Barnes and Sheppard, 2010).
There are incentives: overcoming geography’s
oft-reported ‘image problem’, Castree advises:
cannot be addressed effectively if practitioners
have no strong narrative about their shared goals
and achievements. It helps if one can exemplify
narrative claims by pointing to powerful exam-
ples of research (and real-world influence) that
cross-cut topical, methodological and other divi-
sions. (Castree, 2012: 300)
Also, as Barnes (2011: 334) points out, ‘the
very strength of geography is precisely in its
303
methodological pluralism, which in the end will
best contribute to understanding the changing
planet’.
It has been possible to create ‘overlapping
cultures of respect’ within geography (Barnes
and Sheppard, 2010: 206). Such engagements
need not emerge from interdisciplinary or colla-
borative work, which, Cutler (2013: 113)
argues, can force a focus on similarities across
different ways of knowing that may hold ready
appeal but lead only to superficial and short-
term engagement. Instead, she offers ‘twinned
studies’ where geographers of different orienta-
tions offer ‘two simultaneous articulations of
one image’, enabling them, absent animosity,
to reflect rather than sublimate their philosophi-
cal and methodological divergences. We need
not all seek out pluralistic research agendas, but
we can all avoid dismissing out of hand works
grounded in traditions not our own, and endea-
vor to reach across methodological and theore-
tical divides (as we have tried to do in these
three reports).
But openness to other research methods can
be challenging – if that has not been revealed
in these three reports, that is because the strug-
gles of research and writing are typically
masked by the finished product (DeLyser,
2010). Challenging though it may be, engaged
pluralism and genuine openness to methods not
one’s own represent, we believe, how our disci-
pline ought to be. We know from geography’s
past that there has been no one true way: the
‘discipline from the get-go coped with a plura-
listic universe, requiring many methods, not a
single one’ (Barnes, 2011: 335). Likely, as
Barnes (2011) predicts, the same will hold true
in the future. The complex problems of our
times will demand both the greatest creativity
and the greatest diversity of approaches – not
a new paradigm or a new methodological
‘revolution’, but instead an embrace of engaged
methodological pluralism, where different and
divergent methods flourish to tackle issues from
different angles. What that suggests to us is not a
304
reticence towards the new per se, but rather an
open resistance to any methods that claim to
offer the One True Solution, combined with a
generosity toward methods – emerging or
enduring – that are different from our own.
Acknowledgements
We thank Samuel Kay, Amy Potter, Dusty Waltner,
and Bo Zhao for research assistance, and Rob
Kitchin for editorial insights.
Note
1. Some have termed those with little or no formal geo-
graphic training who contribute volunteered geographic
information (VGI) via web 2.0 technologies ‘neogeo-
graphers’, implying that professional geographers are
‘paleogeographers’ (see Sui and DeLyser, 2012).
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