A brief typology of analytic ideas

Analytic ideas (AIs) can take the form of concepts, propositions, and rules. As the name implies, they are ideas that are used in the process of analyzing data and, therefore, in the process of generating facts.

– Utility of AIs: focusing-concentrating and sensitizing observation (to past [déjà vu/re-cognition], to present [cognition]), description, epistemology testing (i.e., quality control on fact-producing process)

Types of analytic ideas

– error & bias: ideas of bias and error allow the learner, reasoner, or thinker more generally to analyze the process of generating thought and thought-oriented experience (i.e., research) for epistemological missteps; in other words, these ideas provide ways of checking the validity, accuracy, and reliability of fact-producing processes; e.g., internal validity, face validity, external validity, interrater reliability, test-retest reliability, etc. – these ideas are methodological

– ingredients of/shorthand for landscape: these ideas allow the learner, reasoner, or thinker more generally to direct their attention and analysis toward specific, familiar, already identified, and (hopefully) relevant details; they sensitize the researcher’s attention to certain patterns of a researched environment-experience – i.e., they prime them; e.g., culture, upward mobility, totalitarianism, socialization, lower middle class, political context, social capital, downsizing, social construction, individual agent, unconscious drives, peer pressure, IBM, France, use-value, exchange-value, language, subculture, status-power, command-power, class-power, etc.; in other words, these ideas provide ways of identifying familiar and conceptualized aspects of a social situation; metaphorically speaking, these ideas designate parts of the social landscape that social cartographers have already mapped

– abstract mapscape: these ideas allow the learner, reasoner, or thinker more generally to direct their attention and analysis toward specific, unfamiliar, unidentified, unexpected, and (hopefully) relevant details because these abstract ideas are nonspecific, minimally defined, and designed based on previous research experiences, which allows them to locate aspects of the social without prefiguring them, as do the ingredients/shorthand ideas – perhaps they could be said to “post-figure” them; e.g., actor-network, “The social is dislocal.”, Anti-groups, oligoptica, panoramas, “Focus on the positive effects, in addition to the negative effects, of punitive methods”, etc.; in other words, these ideas provide ways of identifying unfamiliar, undiscovered, and unconceptualized aspects of a social situation; whereas ingredients/shorthand ideas could be said to be “concrete”, these ideas could be said to be “abstract”; metaphorically speaking, these ideas designate parts of a social cartographer’s social mapscape, or rather some tools that sociologists use to map unknown territories for which no shorthand ideas exist – these ideas are more like microscopes or drawing compasses, whereas ingredients/shorthand ideas are like snapshots of a previous landscape or datascape – these ideas are methodological

Type of AI	Navigations	Documentations	Utility
Ingredients of/shorthand for landscape	navigating a known territory in order to map it	recording a known territory	Concrete pattern re-cognition
Abstract mapscape	... navigating an unknown territory in order to map it	... recording an unknown territory	... Abstract pattern cognition
Error & bias	... navigating the observation & mapping process itself	... recording the observation & mapping process itself	... Epistemological quality control

Note#1 on AIs: The gist of ingredient/shorthand analytic ideas is this: seeing what’s going on in the data (or seeing the evidence) as an instance of a pattern that has been identified by prior theorists with theoretical ideas. It’s sort of like using a map design for one territory to navigate a different territory: it can lead you to strange unwanted places, so it’s risky, but it seems to me that if you are careful, then you should get to your destination: understanding. I guess the pitfalls here are Type I Error, in which you see a pattern where there isn’t one (i.e., you think the map works well with the different territory, but it doesn’t), and Type II Error, in which you don’t see a pattern where there is one (i.e., the map works well with the territory, but you don’t think it does). See: Why people believe weird things and The pattern behind self-deception

Note#2 on AIs:  If this appearance/data/thing can be seen as an instance-of-(X) (e.g., an account, a norm, some status-power, an actor-network, an error, or gender), then perhaps ideas regarding (X), which have been stated by others, can be used to think and talk about this instance. Perhaps also ideas regarding (X) (e.g., gender) could be used to think about an instance-of-(Y) (e.g., race).
--The question to ask:  "Is this thing (or appearance, phenomenon, or data) an instance of something to which this idea applies?" or, coming from the other direction, "Which ideas apply to this thing? What is this thing, and what has been said about this sort of thing?  Who (or which social theorist) has said it?"