Introduction

Qualitative educational research seems to run on a razor’s edge: If, on one hand, the modes of investigation involved as a whole cover a wide range of theoretical, technical, and methodological possibilities, on the other, there is a clear dispersion of arguments from epistemological traditions that are not always related or congruent. Thus, the paradox of such disparate ways of carrying out qualitative research in education suggests that the fecundity afforded by heterogeneous research projects in the educational field may contain epistemological ambiguities.

Considering that it is impossible to predetermine any constancy or stability in the argumentative choices of the various studies, the key distinction seems to be in how researchers analytically handle the materials with which they are working.

It thus follows that, when it comes to qualitative research regarding education, one must be rigorous about following proper procedure lest the analytical balance of the research be reduced to a mere compilation of information obtained from empirical sources or, ultimately, an automatic juxtaposition of certain uneven conceptual frameworks over those sources.

It is important to clarify that the previous considerations do not serve as an overall view of qualitative research in education, nor are they the result of any detailed study developed for the purpose of, for example, a possible essay on the cutting edge of this field. Our modest intention is limited to the thematization of a type of approach that, in our view, offers a promising empirical basis for investigative work, based on the premise that the objects of research we study are not inherently deductible from selected sources but effectively constructed from them. It is, therefore, an exploratory look centered on the concept of the archive, taken as an object and, at the same time, an investigative procedure.

In order to do so, the present text assesses two arguments regarding the construction of archives in qualitative studies. Based on the assumption that, in this context, different paths are available to the researcher, we must ask: How does one select relevant sources that allow for unique approaches to the topic at hand? More specifically, how can qualitative research in education be conducted considering the construction of the archives under investigation?

First, we consider the idea of sociological imagination proposed by Charles Wright Mills, in dialogue with Pierre Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology, and especially his proposal to construct the research object from a system of objective relationships. Next, we turn our attention to the archaeogenealogical perspective of Michel Foucault; for him the archive is the law that governs the emergence of new discourses. When considered together, both theoretical approaches—keeping in mind what sets them apart—allow for a fruitful approach to investigative work in the educational field.

The Sociological Perspective: Mills and Bourdieu

The classic debate over archives in qualitative research assumes careful attention to the material in question. More specifically: What are the goals for constructing an object and its problematization at the investigative stage in which myriad possibilities might be available?

We first turn to some ideas by Charles Wright Mills (1982) and Pierre Bourdieu (2004, 2007). Both seem to share the premise that the archive is not simply a given beforehand, but constructed pari passu to the researcher’s own work.

Mills, in his book The Sociological Imagination, and specifically in the chapter entitled “On Intellectual Crafts,” presents research in the social sciences as a formal undertaking, formulating guidelines on dealing with the collection and handling of investigative materials.

The first guideline that Mills proposes is to not dissociate work from life itself. He argues that it is necessary to learn from the experiences of life at work, since “having experience means that the past influences and affects one’s present, and defines one’s capacity for future experience” (Mills, 1982, p. 212). What initially animates the researcher is that which makes sense to him, which worries him, and moves him. The sociologist considers that the research begins when a concern about a problem arises. At that moment, the subject will be in full investigative operation as long as he is attentive to what surrounds him, compiling scattered news stories, books, and texts on the subject.

The second step Mills proposes is to develop the habit of writing. Researchers should record everything gleaned during the investigative process. This is a matter of “keeping one’s hand free” (Mills, 1982, p. 213) in order to reach a degree of confidence and circumspection toward the collected material. The notes taken during this process will later be key in composing the research output.

The third guideline is to keep asking so as to establish which materials the researcher should prioritize among those available to him, in the archive “weaving game.” This is one of the most recurring problems in the researcher’s work: What exactly does s/he have at his disposal? What is the necessary archival selection given that the collection is always growing? How can s/he make the archive viable in relation to the central question driving the research? How can s/he make the archive work as a guide, keeping him/herself from becoming confused? It is at this moment that it becomes crucial to survey the field’s cutting-edge research on the subject at hand, verifying who has written from distinct theoretical standpoints, what similar empirical research has been done and their specific scopes and so on, so that, from there, the researcher is able to select where to insert themselves among other authors. However, Mills (1982, p. 231) warns:

One of the meanings of the expression “being up to date with the literature” is to be able to locate opponents and allies from any existing point of view. Incidentally, it is not very advisable to dive too deeply into the literature—we can drown ourselves in it, like Mortimer Adler. Perhaps the important thing is to know when we should and when we should not.

It is necessary, therefore, to categorize the archives, taking notes on the authors one will follow and also on those with whom one wishes to enter into conversation, as well as on the relevant propositions of different authors. There is a basic precaution to consider here: Which authors and works should be taken into account? There is a certain oversight in the bibliographic listings that tends to reify only established authors, neglecting new approaches. Or, in other projects, the opposite is true: Classic works that might have played a decisive role in shaping the debate around the subject at hand are completely abandoned. It is therefore necessary to turn to other sources, looking closely at what was produced recently, and to resume with rigor and depth the use of certain authors so as to avoid the risk of using them simply as adornment or mere corroboration for one’s own analysis.

Mills is categorical in stating that one should not became enmeshed only in academic reading. Sociological imagination is what opens the door to original and unusual thinking: “Imagination is often brought together in previously isolated items, discovering surprising connections” (Mills, 1982, p. 217). Without neglecting secondary materials at first glance, establishing new connections means bringing together what was previously separate or seemingly unrelated. Only in this way does Mills believe it possible to produce good work in social science, a proposition that goes beyond well-delineated theoretical or empirical research: “It is rather composed of many good studies, about the form and the tendency of the subject” (Mills, 1982, p. 218). It is thus the constituted and reconstituted archive that makes possible the formation of general hypotheses. These combine theoretical and empirical findings, allowing for a new approach to emerge.

In effect, this operates according to the following procedure: Selecting elements and timely concepts to develop a specific research question; establishing logical relations among these concepts and elements, which help to construct small models (initial hypotheses on the matter at hand); eliminating false conceptions that arise from the research problem; and formulating and reformulating persistent issues.¹

From the arrangements and disarrangements of the archive, that is, its transformation into living matter that allows us to make surprising connections, Mills highlights some simple techniques that can stimulate the sociological imagination with the aim of achieving more general connections with the social context. “There is a certain cheerful state of mind behind this combination” (Mills, 1982, p. 228), which allows the researcher, in the recombination exercises of the archive, to forge logical links between previously disparate elements. Thus, imagination requires the constant reconstruction of the archive; a lucid attitude toward the ways that previous ideas are defined; a new classification of the techniques used for creating classifications, tables, and diagrams; the activation of various points of view, from one extreme to another; and, finally, a comparative perception of material in spatial and temporal terms, since “a certain knowledge of history is indispensable to the sociologist” (Mills, 1982, p. 232).

In addition to these steps, one last element stands out concerning the use of archives: The language employed in the investigative argumentation. Mills proposes to answer three fundamental questions: What is the complexity of the subject at hand? When writing, what status does the author grant himself? And for whom is the scholar writing? The language must be clear so as to avoid the risk of becoming “an anonymous sound in a large empty hall” (Mills, 1982, p. 238).

The main idea here is to steer clear of jargon and obscure concepts arising from transhistorical and sub-historical constructions. It is, on one hand, to not stop thinking too soon nor, on the other hand, to extend the readings interminably. There is an opportune moment to risk hypotheses, that is, to establish relations between the micro- and macro-social dimensions, without ending up mired in excessive specializations.

A key point here is to never surrender moral and political autonomy in relation to public issues or to the concerns of individual lives:

The problems of social science, when properly formulated, should include both concerns and questions, biography and history, and the scope of their complex relationships . . . And within that framework the sociological imagination has the potential to influence in the quality of human life in our time.

(Mills, 1982, p. 243)

Confluent with Mills’s point of view, Pierre Bourdieu (2004) takes up the methodological and epistemological challenges regarding archival research in the social sciences, developing a series of reflections, including the idea of research as a craft. The height of such production is the research seminars he offered, in which he elaborated on a new way of understanding social research with a view to establishing a scientific habitus in verifying how research is carried out in loco. In short, how the researcher’s craft takes shape:

The sociologist who seeks to convey a scientific habitus comes off more like a high-level sports coach than a professor at the Sorbonne . . . He proceeds by practical suggestions, resembling in this way the trainer who sketches out a movement (“if I were you, I would do it this way . . .”).

(Bourdieu, 2004, p. 23)

The aim to be achieved by research is described by Bourdieu: “the apex of art in the social sciences is undoubtedly to be able to put into play very important ‘theoretical things’ regarding precise so-called ‘empirical’ objects, often smaller in appearance, and even somewhat derisory” (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 20). This involves working with the presentation and criticism of the objects at hand as if they were “evidence.” Hence the archive as fundamental material for the criticism of pre-constructed objects. Therefore, Bourdieu’s proposal is based on two principles or methodological precautions.

First, he urges researchers to think relationally so as to avoid the separation of theory and methodology. In this respect, Bourdieu points out that technical options are inseparable from theoretical options of object construction. For that reason, such a method of sampling and collecting or analyzing data is necessary. In other words, “it is only in function of a body of hypotheses derived from a set of theoretical presuppositions that any empirical data can function as evidence” (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 24). This is a fundamental gesture: To interrogate the very definition of evidence that surrounds analytical objects. What counts is the construction of these, whether those overlooked by the social sciences and constructed as relevant scientific objects or the opposite, that is, common objects taken up from original angles.

Thus, the archive serves to problematize the social work of constructing certain pre-built objects, that is, how particular ideas present themselves in common sense and ordinary usage. This is because, from what he calls the “fetishism of evidence” (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 24), stems the idea that data is concrete, when, on the contrary, it is an abstraction that is not recognized as such. In the wake of constructing the objects of analysis of a research project, it is necessary to elaborate a varied and heterogeneous archival base which should be handled with the utmost care. In this sense, the sociologist warns researchers not to confuse rigidity with rigor so as to ensure the ability to conduct research freely but carefully. Constructing the research object, then, is a task of great breath, “accomplished little by little, through successive retouches, by a whole series of corrections and amendments, suggested by what is called the craft, that is, this set of practical principles guiding the options that are at the same time tiny and decisive” (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 27).

Through the researcher’s contact with existing theories, the construction of the objects involves fighting against the substantialist perceptions of the social world, thinking about it in relational terms. In this way, objects articulate the micro and macro level, following the larger forces shaping the field. That is, it is the researcher’s job to situate the research object in its concreteness and in its broader relations, identifying what makes it unique and what is generalizable. Exercising this type of thinking demands an archive that, although circumscribed to the present, is capable of interacting effectively with other historical moments and other societies.

Second, Bourdieu calls for radical doubt. What guides the work of problematization, of thinking relationally, and of stipulating objects with pre-constructed notions, is an attitude of radical doubt that allows researchers to break with the common sense surrounding their research objects. However, it is necessary to ask: How can one create separation if immersed in the problems/questions that one intends to study? Bourdieu’s proposal is thus related to the very process of thinking. One of the most powerful tools for suspending the deep-rooted habits of mind on a given subject is the social history of problems: “History thus conceived is not inspired by an interest in antiquary but rather concerned with grasping why one understands and how one understands” (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 37). This is a matter of situating the social history of the emergence of certain problems/questions, of their progressive constitution, of the existing collective work to become “legitimate, confessable, publishable, public, official” facts (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 37). The history of the emergence of an issue as a social fact was the aim of struggles, deliberations, organizations, and disputes that shifted what was private to the public arena, so that it could be constituted as a common problem. This emergence was then accompanied by a particular formative discursiveness often dominated by experts. Hence the axiom according to which the field of language is a battlefield for pre-constructed notions.

A survey of how each research question that interests us is expressed is a decisive occasion to reflect on one’s own thinking. It is a field of reflexivity that, to paraphrase Mills, requires skeptical trust in the archive. But there is a danger here as well, that of replacing the naive precepts of common sense with the precepts of learned common sense. Bourdieu suggests that in order to avoid this risk one must combine a learned culture with a certain rejection of said culture, leading to a form of resistance to the representations legitimized by hegemonic discourse. The goal is to create new, precisely sociological perspectives. Such a move would lead to a reflexive sociology, that is, a sociology of sociology.

In summarizing how Mills and Bourdieu view the archive, it may be pertinent to point out that its construction bears a radical critique of the ways social objects are presented (Lenoir, 1998). It follows that, in the context of qualitative research, it is necessary to perceive that objects are relational and do not present themselves autonomously; to deal critically with pre-constructed notions; to embrace such notions as collective representations, which involve conflicts and disputes; to trace the contours of the historical emergence of a given problem or social issue; and to contextualize the type of discourse that accompanies its formulation, allowing the researcher to understand the limits within which the objects are discussed, as well as the groups, institutions, and social actors responsible for informing the researcher’s view on the topic that the researcher has chosen.

Without presenting them as models, which would contradict what has been discussed previously, we mention some accounts of the constitution of heterogeneous, diversely sourced archives that allow for a problematizing look at the objects in question, that is, the representations of infancy, the situation of Bolivian immigrants in the city of São Paulo, and the emergence of a discourse specifically on diversity and multiculturalism—in public education policy documents (Kowalewski, 2017; Schilling & Ferreira, 2016; Schilling & Magalhães, 2012).

These are research papers that uncovered articles from widely circulated newspapers, academic discourses on the topics, and national and international public policy documents. The variety of the sources allowed for different experiences regarding the qualitative analysis of the chosen materials, constituting multifaceted and dense archives, which proved essential for noticing trends in the construction of certain approaches to a given subject, regularities that could prevent the perception of other possible approaches—and thus of interventions—to the research questions.

The Archaeogenealogical Perspective: Foucault and the Archive

The Archive and Qualitative Research

This dialogue between the sociological and archaeogeneological perspectives regarding the potential of archives in qualitative educational research was not intended to formulate any kind of epistemological clash between both theoretical fronts. On the contrary, this article aimed to promote a kind of dialogical articulation of both, especially bearing in mind that both hold criticism as a common analytical horizon.

This is because the construction of the research object presupposes an attitude of suspension, which involves an openness to the existing notions about the practice under analysis and, simultaneously, “an ambiguous trust” (Mills, 1982, p. 213) in relation to preexisting theorizations and data.

In this way, the archive conforms from the perspective of the porosity of investigative events. There is initially no clear boundary. It is necessary to open up to the heterogeneity that surrounds a certain problem or research question: How do we talk about the object? To whom do we speak? What are the institutional places of enunciation? At this point in the construction of the archive, there is no clear distinction between what is academically consecrated and what circulates in common sense.

The alignment between the constituent sources of a given archive allows new questions about the problem or research question. However, it is not just the arrangement of a new data set that is key but its archival reassembly. The critical attitude toward the constituted data, through the verification of their displacements from the history of the problem or question at hand, allows one not only to know, but also to displace, the socially attributed meanings, in the present, of what is being researched. Thus, the archive with which we work becomes a pulsating and questioning instance of “reality,” which can be explored in several directions.

Through the profusion of possible argumentative paths there should be some theoretical support. This is a mandated choice, since the archive is always wider than the one we find in our searches. This excessive character is precisely what gives the archive the analytical advantage we desire.

The central gesture, which gathers the methodological precautions surrounding the problematic at hand is the configuration of the temporal emergence of the research problem or question. This is based on social struggle, consubstantiated in a discursive arena that involves institutions, social movements, and new discourses, allowing one to relate the micro- and macro-analytical levels involved in the event under investigation.

Thus, it is important to keep in mind that the analysis of the archive does not lend itself to an exegesis of the discourses of the time, nor a hermeneutic reading of them. Thanks to the patient work with the sources that s/he has chosen, the researcher can capture certain inflections of the present on the surface of what is said, describing critically its functioning and its dispersion between different practices, those responsible for giving form to the problems or questions to which s/he dedicates him/herself in the scope of the research.

This article has presented the main contours of qualitative research in the field of education, a goal without any prescriptive intent. Before being configured as a methodology, the discussion proposed was based on the notion of archiving as a way of conceiving and, at the same time, conducting oneself in the investigative process.

Through the idea of the archive, new and undetermined horizons open themselves to qualitative investigations, at once granting them originality and critical rigor.