Introduction: Deleuze and Research

Methodologies

Rebecca Coleman and Jessica Ringrose

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It is widely acknowledged that Deleuze’s work is having a significant

impact across different fields in the social sciences and humanities. Our
aim in this book is to examine the ways in which Deleuzian thinking is
inspiring empirical research practice. Deleuze’s work has typically been
viewed as ‘high’ theory, and as a set of ideas that work in an abstract
way but which have little relevance to ‘doing research’. For example,
Deleuzian ideas have been explored in social, cultural and feminist
theory (see for instance the other books published in the Deleuze
Connections series) and in the fields of art, film and media studies (see
for example Colman 2011; Munster 2006; O’Sullivan 2006). As such,
there has tended to be a focus on textual modes of analysis, with the
‘practical’ dimensions of Deleuze’s philosophy and approach to the
empirical largely neglected. However, it has recently become apparent
that Deleuzian inspired empirical research in the social sciences is stead-
ily growing (see as examples Hickey-Moody and Malins 2007; Masny
and Cole 2011; Ollson 2009; Potts 2004; McCormack 2007; Latham
and McCormack 2009; Tamboukou 2008; Jensen and Rödje 2009).
Deleuze and Research Methodologies draws on and contributes to this
movement. At the same time, it contributes to wider shifts in social
science, which indicate the need for methodologies capable of attending
to the social and cultural world as mobile (Buscher, Urry and Witchger
2010), messy (Law 2004), creative (Massumi 2002), changing and
open-ended (Lury and Wakeford 2012), sensory and affective (Stewart
2007; Orr 2006; Pink 2009), and that account for the performativity of
Copyright 2013. Edinburgh University Press.

method; social science methodologies not only describe the worlds they
observe but (at least in part) are in involved in the invention or creation
of the world (Law and Urry 2004; Barad 2007).
Taking up these concurrent trends, the book begins from the position
that Deleuze’s work, with its focus on becoming, affect, relationality,

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