Values

• O’Connell Davidson and Layder 1994 - value free :

  • Personal biases +political opinions of researchers = irrelevant as long as the research = well designed + no attempt to distort/alter findings
• In ‘Market Killing’ Philo & Miller (2000): (paying for research) value laden -

  • argued that increasingly all sciences are having their critical researchers silenced through targeted funding + use of research consultancies

  Eg- Sociologists working for British Government often sign a contract allowing the Government to block publication if they don't like findings
• Lyotard (1984) and Baudrillard (1998) - (post modernist)value laden :

  • argue the whole process of sociology is based on a series of values
  • Science itself is seen as product of postmodernist thought
  • PM’s dispute that verifiable evidence is superior to other approaches
  • Argue that scientific thinking = one way of understanding but is not better + doesn't offer superior truths
  • Science = based on a set of values in the same way sociology is
• Becker :

  • Sociology traditionally on side of the powerful
  • Tended to look at issues from viewpoint of the police/social worker rather than those of the criminal, client or patient
  • He called for sociology to begin looking at the ‘underdog’ which he felt would uncover new facts and questions
  • This approach = Labelling theory
• Gouldner :

  • Claimed Becker didn't go far enough and strengthened the status quo
  • He felt sociology needed to study the really powerful who create the structures of oppression of which people like police officers are merely agents