Thinking With New Materialism in Qualitative Case Studies

Abstract

In this article, we discuss challenges and implications of thinking with new materialisms and the Deleuzian philosophy of immanence in qualitative case studies. The aim is to establish a terrain and language of “minor case studies.” Deleuze denies two-world ontologies and the ontologically status of single bodies, emphasizing instead how assemblages of human and non-human bodies together produce the world. In this terrain, cases are not objects of inquiry, but life-giving forces that create movement. This in turn changes the premises for how we can approach and explore cases. Rather than represent, comment and explain what cases are, we illustrate how a case-assemblage creates possibilities for event-based thinking regarding interesting phenomena (cases), and how these cases are twisted, stretched and pulled out of a conventional case study design. We conclude by discussing epistemological consequences of new materialist ontology.