Objectivity & values

• Comte + Durkheim


  Early positivists who believed the creation of a better society is a science, to discover the truth about how it works, to objectively prescribe how things ought to be
• Marx


  Saw himself as a scientist who could reveal the line of development of human society: a series of different types of class, leading to a future classless communist society
• Weber's 4 stages of the research process

  1. Values as a guide to research

  2. Data collection and hypothesis testing

  3. Values in the interpretation of data

  4. Values and the sociologist as a citizen
• Values as a guide to research

  Social reality is made up of a 'meaningless infinity' of facts that make it impossible to study in its totality, e.g. feminists value gender which leads them to study women's oppression and to develop concepts
• Data collection and hypothesis testing

  Objective + unbiased
• Values in the interpretation of data

  Facts need to be set in a theoretical framework, presenting out our values so that others can see if unconscious bias is present
• Values and the sociologist as a citizen

  Scientists and sociologists must not dodge the moral and political issues their work raises, they must take moral responsibility
• Comte + Durkheim: Modern positivists


  Tended to argue that their own values were irrelevant to their research, reflecting a desire to make sociology respectable and a 'gentleman's promise' that they would not rock the boat by criticising their paymasters
• Committed Sociology


  Sociologists should openly take sides, as it is neither possible nor desirable to keep values out of research, and without values to guide research sociologists are merely selling their services to the highest bidder
• Committed Sociology perspectives

  • Myrdal: sociologists should openly take sides
  • Becker: sociologists should adopt a compassionate stance and take the side of the underdogs
  • Goffman: to describe the situation of the mental patient we must take their side
  • Gouldner: sociologists should take the side of those who are 'fighting back'
• The body that pays for the research controls the direction it takes, and funding body may block publication of the research if its findings prove unacceptable, so some sociologists may censor themselves for fear that being too outspoken will harm their career
• Functionalists have concluded that inequality is beneficial


  Marxists conclude that it produces exploitation of the poor by the rich
• Interactionists preference for qualitative methods


  Fits with their desire to empathise with the underdog
• Relativism argues that there is no absolute or objective truth, just truths plural
• Relativism and postmodernism reject the idea that any one account of the social world is superior to any other, which is self-defeating as it claims to be telling us something true, while telling us that no one can tell us what is true