8 The Problem of Objectivity and Value Neutrality

Subhendra Bhowmick

1. OBJECTIVE

This module is meant for developing some ideas regarding ‘objectivity’ in different senses of the term. The questions of values in social research are closely connected with objectivity too; they will be given due importance in this module. However, attempts are made to underscore the fact that the achievement of objectivity and value neutrality are neither easy nor always desirable for the sociologists too.

2. LEARNING OUTCOME

Since sociology has the reputation of a science, it is imperative on its practitioners to remain personally detached from their subject matter. Thus objectivity and value neutrality are the two virtues that the sociology can never eschew completely. However, when the researchers go into their field and meet flesh-and-blood human beings, they understand how much different their ‘objects’ are; and then they realise that the scientific virtues of objectivity and neutrality are to be combined with another set of virtues—empathy and criticism. Our module is a modest attempt to help appreciate the above qualities on the part of a social researcher.

3. INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS OBJECTIVITY?

Whenever we look at something, what actually happens is bringing together of two things or parties— one, who looks and the other, who is looked at. The same can be said in case of hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and even feeling for, or thinking about, the thing concerned. The first party is the ‘subject’ and the second, the ‘object’; and this relationship is famously known as the subject-object relationship. For some philosophers, the subject’s experiences, even when they are about hard material facts like hunger and poverty, are, in the ultimate analysis, ‘idealistic’; and, for other more materialistically oriented philosophers, the subject itself is one of the objects of experience (Blackburn 2005: 354) with her/his flesh-and-blood existence.

However, the matters take on immensely complex shape as we move on to the ideas of objectivity and subjectivity instead of object and subject.

Objectivity stands in contrast to subjectivity: an objective account is one which attempts to capture the nature of the object studied in a way that does not depend on any features of the particular subject who studies it. An objective account is, in this sense, impartial, one which could ideally be accepted by any subject, because it does not draw on any assumptions, prejudices, or values of particular subjects (Gaukroger 2001: 10785).

Objectivity, however, can mean several things.

Objectivity in the sciences, especially the social sciences, is paired implicitly or explicitly with its opposite, subjectivity. Less obvious yet commonplace pairings with the term objectivity are partiality, relativity, and the arbitrary. [We deal] primarily with objectivity in opposition to subjectivity. Subjectivity is associated with the …concept of the self (Daniel 2001: 7).

We too would be concerned here with (i) the notion of objectivity as opposed to subjectivity, and (ii) in the sense it tries to prevent the scientist from being “partial”. The latter sense is more or less similar to value neutrality, for the issue of partiality centres round value preference. For our convenience, we would call it ‘neutrality’. However, there are certain instances when generality assumes immense importance apropos objectivity.

Objectivity, our first issue, is more complicated and too difficult to be attained by the researcher. We cannot but remain tied to our subjectivity, particularly while dealing with someone having subjectivity like us. In these cases, to put it bluntly, it is human beings studying human beings. How can one be objective while handling or reflecting on issues that are related to our self-identity? For instance, it is possible to be perfectly ‘objective’ while thinking about our preferences for food or choices? Neutrality is another problematic thing to achieve on the part of the social scientist — for similar reasons, more or less. How can the analysts remain indifferent to the welfare of fellow human beings?

However, sometimes, in arenas other than science, one can be (un)fairly ‘objective’ but not ‘neutral’— and self-consciously so. Suppose the behaviour of the Nazi perpetrators in the infamous concentration camps. They acted on the basis of perfect calculability and objectivity insofar as their carefully chosen means are concerned—literally taking the human beings as ‘objects’ to be perished in the most ‘efficient’ manner (Bauman 1989); but had they been ‘neutral’ by any standard? Their ends are dictated by their interests alone.

Objectivity, in the social sciences, has thrived on some metaphorical sense of the word ‘object’, for, in the realm of culture, there is hardly any ‘object’ to consider — i.e. in its chief material sense: “anything that is visible or tangible and is relatively stable in form” (Random House Webster Unabridged Dictionary 2001: 1335-36).

We are allowing ourselves to be guided by the concrete sense of the word – object — with its substantiality assuming to be the cause to ‘object’ or obstruct the investigator’s vision through its own body (Ayto 2005: 354), and thereby rendering the object to be ‘seen’ or observed. The hardness inhering in the object is a perceived guarantee for certainty too. And this sense of certainty perhaps encourages the investigators to use the word ‘objective’ in yet another sense, namely the goal or purpose of the research work – something unwavering and clearly ‘recognisable’.

Subjectivity too, in its turn, should be strictly distinguished from what Professor Amartya Sen calls “positional objectivity”. That the moon and the sun look more or less of the same size from the earth to anybody on this planet is indeed revisable with the altered position of the observers and the observed items, but these perceived visions have got nothing to do with one’s subjective preferences, which are based in her/his mind. Our positional oneness is productive of the generalised optical illusion notwithstanding our mental makeup. Hence, there is no view from “nowhere” and we can only have “identified positional perspectives… as the view from a specified and delineated somewhere” (Sen 1996: 4-9).

The issue of objectivity is philosophical and meta-theoretical in that they lie at the background (and foreground too) of the domain of science at large. But here we are concerned with the problem in maintaining objectivity in sociology which, in its turn, is closely connected with the problem of objectivity in any social and human science. However, since objectivity or detachment is an abstract idea, we will shortly have a concrete illustration from everyday life. This example will also give some clues to understand our concern with neutrality. Our two concerns—objectivity and value neutrality (hereafter neutrality) — may be revised as follows. One, a requisite distance from the investigator’s self and the other, disinterestedness in the moral or affective sense. We can see that they are quite close. Therefore, at certain times, we may consider them as two aspects of what is broadly a singular concern. The first aspect is intellectual and epistemological, while the second is emotional as well as ethical and political.

Now the illustration goes.

3.1. An Illustration from Everyday Life

Suppose I want to study the chair I am now sitting upon. In order to observe the whole of the chair, I better come down and watch it from a distance. However, if I am short-sighted or colour blind, and, worse, if I am not aware of my ocular handicap(s), then I may have a compromised vision of the artefact. Therefore, some other persons should observe it and then, in order to arrive at a uniform visual image of the chair, we all sit together and place our individual observations before one another. If some considerable disagreement occurs, we decide to go to an expert, who may not depend on sense data alone but would get her/himself one measuring tape and a camera etc. As regards camera, unless we play trick with the machine, we will have a fairly ‘objective’ image of the chair concerned.

Then, let us come to the second aspect of detachment: disinterestedness. If I am detached enough, then I would be interested in the shape and look of the chair not because I love or hate it, but because I am curious about it. If, however, the chair belonged to my beloved but now deceased grandfather, who was very fond of this chair, and now if I find that my friends are trying to belittle its value which annoys and hurts me, then we may safely conclude that the chair has trespassed into my own self to a certain extent; and I am no longer emotionally disinterested.

SELF-CHECK EXERCISE – I

Question No. 1: What is the meaning of objectivity?

Mostly, objectivity is understood in outright opposition to subjectivity or subjective biases and preferences as well as errors that might vitiate judgements of the researcher even without her/his knowledge. However, there can be a variety of closely connected meanings too: impartiality as well as generality and constancy.

Question No. 2: How would you distinguish between objectivity and value neutrality?

Objectivity is generally about the capacity of the researcher to recognise something as it is without being affected by her/his subjective faculties; neutrality is directly concerned with the researcher’s taking sides with something/someone at the expense of the others implicated. And they do so only on the grounds of their moral or emotional preferences. Arguably, value neutrality is a special case of objectivity, where researchers’ morals and affects — conscious or unconscious — constitute some of the sources of subjective variation.

Question No. 3: What is subjectivity?

Subjectivity is the subject’s own investment in the outcome of subject-object contact. That a particular thing is perceived differently by different observers is partly caused by the variation of their mental makeup and the issue of their selfhood. However, subjectivity should be distinguished from what Professor Amartya Sen calls “positional objectivity”; the latter is about the view from a given position by anyone situated there — which may be illusory but still common for all, hence ‘positionally objective’ from that particular point.

4. OBJECTIVITY AND SOCIOLOGY

In case of physical sciences dealing with non-living things, this detachment is the easiest thing to achieve. And, as for the non-human life sciences, we can maintain our objectivity with little additional caution. But when we deal with the ‘human sciences’ (Foucault 1970), we are ‘always already’ deeply implicated. However, even among these sciences, the science of medicine is less problematic than any science working with conscious as well as social human beings— anthropology or sociology, for example. In the latter cases, the extent of difficulty is the maximum. How can we detach ourselves from our consciousness or thinking mind? At the level of physiology, I am quite unable to separate myself from my pain unless I have already been anaesthetised. Nevertheless, I can at least separate my mind from this pathology and bring myself to a doctor. But when I feel mentally deranged, I generally cannot realise what is wrong with me. With their minds detached from my own, my friends and kin can detect my trouble. However, it is simpler for those who are less involved with me, for, often, familiarity begets blindness. On the other hand, closeness might be helpful too in noticing the malady. Later in this module, we will see that this argument for closeness to the object of study is now being increasingly felt and the necessity of attachment is now gaining grounds in the social sciences. In order to measure something we often need to come close to it. Distance is not the fundamental problem, but observer’s involvement is. Actually, the issue of involvement is more complicated; for a social scientist, it is boon and curse simultaneously. In order to be objective, however, we generally take recourse to the various measures of validity and reliability that ask whether I am measuring the right thing or not (validity), or, provided that I am now measuring the right thing anyway, whether I am not particularly handicapped through my partial or myopic, or simply inefficient and inconsistent, vision (reliability) (Bryman 2004:70-72). [The details of validity and reliability are discussed in module RMS 16].

Now, those who are close to me would be unhappy with my condition and try to intervene with a ‘positive’ frame of mind. But then we are admitting involvement. In the human sciences too, it is difficult to say a clear “NO” to this kind of involvement, not only because (i) we need to be responsible to our ‘subject’, which has, unlike the other non-human objects, subjectivity as do the researchers themselves, but, (ii) as will be clear when we take up the issue of requirement of sympathetic understanding, our knowledge would be seriously compromised without some involvement with the thinking people — our object of knowledge whom we call ‘subject’ too!

Thus, we are being brought to a multiplicity of approaches. Let us resort to a schema to understand them. Hence, adapting from Neuman’s terms (Neuman 2007: 41-44) we may propose:

1. Positivism (Comte, J.S. Mill, Durkheim, Parsons and others)
2. Interpretivism (Weber, Simmel, Schutz, Berger and Luckmann, Garfinkel and others)
3. Critical Approach (Marx, Frankfurt School Critical Theorists, Feminist Theorists and others)

Positivism is a philosophy of science which believes that a uniform natural scientific approach is applicable for all the realms and levels of reality—natural and social—and after having assumed the core value that any science has the capacity to ensure a very broad-based kind of human welfare, it eschews any more value to allow unauthorised inroads into the scientific enterprise. Interpretivism or hermeneutics rejects the idea that such a singular natural scientific approach is either possible or desirable, for in a socio-cultural context, one of the most important things is ‘subjective meaning’ that cannot be understood without empathy. The votaries of this approach also tell us to be less dispassionate, since authentic knowledge would remain incomplete without becoming passionately involved with the studied object— here the people’s behaviour. Hence, even if they speak of passion, their interest is intellectual, not moral as such. However, neutrality is important for most of them, as science is a ‘vocation’, which cannot allow partisanship. With Marxists, critical theorists and feminists etc, neutrality is another name for accepting the ‘ruling’ ideology at face value, which should be criticised both as inauthentic and irresponsible. They are generally less concerned with objectivity independently of the issue of neutrality.

Let us elaborate the above schema.

4.1. POSITIVISM

Positivism, at least in its early ‘embryonic’ (Baronov 2004) stage, acted as a doctrine professing to lead gradually toward an advanced, hence, preferred way of life. Since Renaissance, Man has measured up himself as someone taking his birth from the God (See Picture: 1— below – for the famous fresco, “Creation of Adam”, painted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican City). The severing of the ‘umbilical link’ off the body of the divine is possible only when one has attained his independence. [However, this Renaissance ‘man’ would have to struggle through a few centuries more to wipe out the divinity from the canvas altogether and become a self-reliant and liberated being in the Kantian sense (http://www.allmendeberlin.de/What-is-Enlightenment.pdf). It is an interesting coincidence that the God and His child were male. This had serious implications for the men of science. The practice of science is a serious vocation that should neither give way to frivolous subjective biases, nor to any weakness derived from sympathy. The popular perception has that these are generally ‘feminine’ vices.

Positivism consists in inculcating in social scientists a ‘positive’, i.e. mature and resolute state of mind and following the time-tested natural science methods – observation, comparison and experimentation— in the realm of social phenomena. It is an epistemological position that advocates the application of the methods of natural sciences to the study of social reality. Like Comte, a positivistic social scientist would assume that humans will always act rationally and hence society can be studied ‘scientifically’. Let us explicate here Durkheim’s position on objectivity and the questions of values in sociological research as an example.

4.1.1. Emile Durkheim

Durkheim, following Comte, did not eschew the affirmative role of science including sociology. For him sociology would not be worthy enough to be studied even for a short while if it could not do any good to  the people. Thus he had one sense of a value of science deeply based in human wellbeing. However, he advocated “astuteness” to gain certainty about the findings before suggesting any policy intervention (Coser 2012: 173). For Durkheim, it is difficult to decide over what is really ‘good’ for the human beings, for the definitions of good and bad are relative to the context of socially acceptable moral standards. With a very broad approximation of ‘health’ he went on to equate “normal” with the general, if not average, over a range of a ‘species’ of human society belonging to a definite phase of development (Durkheim 1938: 64).

In matters of arriving at objective findings and vindicating the ‘positivist’ approach in sociology, Durkheim had a very detailed protocol outlined in The Rules of Sociological Method (ibid). Now, what are the basics of Durkheimian positivism?

First, to treat social facts—the substance for sociological analysis— as “things” i.e. objects. Then we perceive them through quantitative and exterior aspects like rate of suicide instead of suicide itself, or punishments in order to come to grips with the morality of a society; “collective conscience”— i.e. the summation of beliefs and sentiments common to an average member of a society— can act as a kind of ascertainable representation of society as a whole too.

Next, the ‘social facts’ must be outside or “external” to the individuals and must “constrain” them in the form of coercion. ‘Things’ that ‘coerce’ someone from ‘outside’ are generally incongruent with her/his subjectively held wishes and ideas.

Durkheim’s social facts are generally of two kinds: “material” and “non-material”. Society itself; the “structural components” like church and state; and the “morphological components” such as population distribution, channels of communication and “housing arrangements” are material social facts. And morality, ‘collective conscience’, ‘collective representations’ and ‘social currents’ like ‘suicide rate’ are instances of ‘non-material social facts’ (Ritzer 2011: 76-77). That he conceived of such an ingenious notion of materiality of social facts is a testimony to Durkheim’s concern with objectivity.

4.2. INTERPRETIVISM

Alan Bryman, in his book Social Research Methods divided the various research methods into two big camps: quantitative and qualitative. His schema tells us that the researchers and their favourite research methods can be divided by their philosophical orientations, i.e. ‘ontologically’ as well as ‘epistemologically’. Those who believe that, ontologically, social reality is “objective” are “positivist” in their epistemological concern and would prefer quantitative methods. On the other hand, the “constructionist” ontology would spawn the epistemological outlook of “interpretivism” and its followers would pursue qualitative methods of enquiry (Bryman op cit., 1-21). The whole arena of hermeneutics and phenomenology that emphasise on subjective meanings and subjective experience, respectively, belong to the latter ‘paradigm’. Their common assumptions are: society is a mental construction and its reality has to be searched into the meaningful actions of the individuals. Sometimes, the hermeneutic approach rummages meanings through ‘discourse analyses’ too and thereby leaves some space for ‘discursive structures’ to appear that might constrain the individuals. By discourse analysis we mean “forms of textual analysis”. The texts (e.g. The Mahabharata, The Bible etc) are generally frozen forms of meaning, and the purpose of analysis is to “exhibit” their structures (Jary and Jary 2000: 158) and, sometimes, relate them to the extant social practices. Phenomenology, on the other hand, banks on the experiences that can be extremely fluid, and multiple, and devoid of sufficient time to freeze like the discourses. For phenomenology, Alfred Schutz will be our chosen sociologist. However, we must start with Max Weber, whose name is perhaps most intimately associated with the vast arena of interpretative sociology.

4.2.1. Max Weber

Max Weber proposed detailed and interconnected methods of attaining objectivity in sociological research which has several aspects. First, having approximated the individuals’ personalised meaning(s) through verstehen or “interpretative understanding”, the investigator subsequently attempts at somewhat impersonalised explanation. ‘Interpretative understanding’ is a rigorously planned strategy to place the researchers in the position of their subjects to interpret the ‘subjective meaning(s)’ imputed by the individual subjects. Once a researcher “understands” that to touch an elderly person’s feet has a religious value for a devout Hindu, s/he would ‘explain’ this behaviour simply by looking at the extent of regularity of the practice. The (natural) scientists may ‘explain’ a phenomenon at various levels, but there remains a “remainder” (Freund 1978: 166-174) to be dealt with by way of explanation on the basis of ‘subjective meaning’ when it is about ‘actions’ and ‘social actions’ of human beings. Weber defines action by virtue of the ‘subjective meaning’ imputed into it by the acting individuals themselves. ‘Action’ becomes ‘social’ when more than one individual are involved in the same and they act on the basis of the shared meaning. Suppose a man is violently cutting wood in a forest with a reddened face (Parkin 2002); one may explain this action by invoking physiology whereby his physical exhaustion and consequent reddened face are explained. The fact that lifting and wielding a heavy axe requires a great deal of energy may again be explained at biophysical level as well as at the level of physics. However, it “remains” to be explained why does the man go for such a hard work at all? Again, at the physiological level, one may explain it by the cause of hunger. But human beings do not eat wood straightaway; the “woodchopper” may use it as “firewood” or he may sell it in the market. Thus, one may ‘explain’ the business of woodcutting only by ‘understanding’ the reason the woodchopper has (Weber 1978: 8).

Hence, the remainders are resolvable at the level of ‘meaning’ alone, which is understandable only by a fellow human being. Thus, the ‘hard’ work of our woodcutter is meaningfully associated with the need to earn his livelihood which we can well ‘understand’, for everyone, including the investigators, has to ‘work’ in order to have some income. How far these ‘meanings’ are shared and fare as ‘objectively’ given is a question remains to be asked, for everything is not finally rooted in our commonly held physiological drives and reflexes. How do we read each other’s mind— be that of my neighbour or of my informant— remains a puzzle! Schutz would raise this question, as we would presently see.

Now we turn to Weber’s another tremendously influential conceptual tool: ‘ideal types’. Ideal types were proposed to see whether and how sociology could make causal analysis on objective grounds. Let us quote:

An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct (Freund 1968: 60).

Freund tells us that this tool of ‘ideal type’ is an ingenious way to resolve the tension between the ‘individualising’ and ‘generalising’ tendencies that sociology can never get rid of (ibid.). Since ‘ideal types’ are not real types, one could encounter them at the time of sociological theorising only, i.e. while explaining with prior understanding. To theorise is to move from individual data and make projections for collectivities. This we can do, but with some probability, for it would not be alike for everyone. Moreover, one cannot expect that the ‘meaning’ would be exactly the same, or even similar, for all the individuals. Therefore, Weber calls for an assortment of meanings deriving out of a “great many…

individual phenomena” (one may also note that not only that the sociologist is not a sovereign entity to arrogate the meaning s/he holds as to be the meaning, but the whole proceeding on her/his part actually duplicates the way meanings get shared at the commonsense level. The ‘ideal types’ of the scientist are, in certain cases, careful re-presentations—with due rigorous alterations carried out by her/him – of the ‘ideal types’ slovenly drawn by lay individuals. So, Weber is busy at distinguishing the ‘order’ of science [‘second order constructs’ for Schutz] from the ‘order’ of the everyday/commonsense [‘first order constructs’ or ‘typifications’ for Schutz]). Weber’s quest for generality out of individualities is well matched by his searching for ‘adequate’ and probabilistic causality, but again from numerous possible chains of what is conceived of as ‘multiple causality’ by him. Hence, to Weber, sociological objectivity is not given; here he sharply departs from Durkheim, whose favourite approach has been to cancel out many possible causes to salvage the real cause from the mess of social complexities.

About value neutrality, Weber is well aware that the researcher her/himself is a (wo)man with her/his own ‘subjective’ take on the issue. Hence, s/he has to devise something that will help her/him to prevent her/his value preferences to jeopardise the business of scientific, i.e. objective, explanation of social behaviour. But being a human being as s/he is, s/he cannot deny her/his subjectively held values altogether. Actually, s/he is free to select the problem according to her/his interests, which could probably have relevance to her/his values (Coser op cit.). This is, putatively, Weber’s notion of ‘value relevance’. But once the area and the problem have been chosen, s/he must, upholding the virtue of the scientist qua scientist, free her/himself from all sorts of personal biases and feelings. Following Kant, Weber leaves no stone unturned insofar as keeping the ‘world of facts’ strictly apart from the ‘world of values’. Interestingly, when he was asked why he took such a huge intellectual load throughout his life, he answered, in contradistinction to the moral concerns of Marx and even Durkheim, that he had wanted to know how much he could “take” (ibid.: 222). Nevertheless, Weber was value sensitive in the sense that the problem of value cannot always be wished away. When total neutrality seems really impossible, the researchers are enjoined by Weber at least to make clear what those values are and how they can affect their work.

Now it is time to turn to Alfred Schutz.

4.2.2. Alfred Schutz

There are a variety of sources whence the objectivity in sociology could be spoiled. As we have seen earlier, objectivity consists of detachment of the researcher from the object of her/his research. Since a sociologist studies human beings in their socio-cultural setting, s/he is actually looking at the very surface of the multi-level reality—the surface s/he shares with the people s/he is studying. The “shared assumptions” are not innocuous enough not to vitiate the scientific requirement of objectivity, for we doubt whether they are not “mistakenly” believed by “all” (Gaukroger op cit.) including the scientists. We have mentioned the “first” and “second order typifications”, as distinguished by Alfred Schutz. The latter are necessary to distance from the everyday world of the people. However, this distance would not be sufficient to rectify the things “mistakenly” believed in, if they were shared by “all”. Sociologists can, at the best, tell us about what is generally shared and believed, but not what really is ‘out there’. However, redefining the words of popular parlance rigorously enough to suit them for a science of society is a way to understand what is intersubjectively believed to be true. And sociologist cannot think beyond this. Thus, to put it straight: intersubjectivity itself is sociology’s objectivity.

The natural scientists too begin with a very few everyday concepts. Heat, light, weight, life, blood etc are some of them. Scientists scarcely bother what people mean by them, and these things never ask us to look into what ‘they’ mean by being ‘heat’ or ‘light’! But this is not the case with the sociologists. If the usage of the people swerves to some novel direction, sociologists must take note of that. Take, for example, the notion of caste in Indian society. The ritualistic and ‘ideological’ slant of the meaning of caste is now gradually being supplemented/supplanted by its secular-political connotation (Srinivas 2002). Moreover, caste is nowadays— as distinct from a few decades back— more of an idiom of identity than that of system (Jodhka 2012). However, Schutz’s radical proclamation that intersubjectivity is the sociologist’s objectivity is dubious, since whether it is a single individual’s consciousness or that of a plurality, the investigator can penetrate neither of them in the physical sense of the term. That people actually think that they share their ‘lifeworld’—the everyday world of the ‘natural attitude’— is no more than a ‘taken-for-granted’ notion (Schutz 1970). Thus, we are returned to Weber, who remains happy to apply verstehen only, which is rather an apprehension as well as approximation of some other individual’s quarry of meanings.

The ethnomethodologist like Garfinkel took a different stance and realised that the methodological soundness depends on the robustness of data. They were extensively empirical but never claimed to have cracked the ontology of social reality. They were content with the study of the strategies of daily life that help to maintain the ‘taken-for-granted’ nature of the sense of social order, never the social order itself (Turner 1995).

Now we may turn to the third approach: the ‘critical’ one.

4.3. CRITICAL APPROACH

“The critical approach shares many features with an interpretive approach, but it blends an objective/materialist with a constructionist view of social reality” (Neuman op cit., 44). The tradition of criticism goes back to Kant, Hegel and Marx. The Frankfurt school theorists like Horkheimer, Adorno or Marcuse were also influenced by Nietzsche, Freud and Weber and, therefore, their critical approach was not simple minded. However, for other thinkers like Lukács, Korsch (Cipolla and Giarelli 2000: 822) and Gramsci, Marx was perhaps the most important figure. Hence, our focus would be on Marx— who never ceases to loom large for anyone who would come to have a critical stance about human alienation, social oppression, economic exploitation etc.

4.3.1. Karl Marx

Marx, via Feuerbach, demystified the gorgeous idealism of Hegel by opposing Hegel with categorical inversion of the relationship between the ideas and the material world, as conceived by Hegel. While Hegel considered the ‘idea’ as the prime mover, to Marx ideas are, in the end, produced in the human brain (Giddens 1971). However, he was so fond of the dialectical method of the former that his system too, partially at least, resembles the grandeur of Hegel which does not exclusively anchor in day-to-day empirical fact findings—the anchorage that materialists such as Hume or Francis Bacon would always enjoin us to search for, and would hold to be very important for their brand of ‘objectivity’.

Marx blended idea and practice, or thinking and labouring, into one single concept – ‘praxis’. One’s ideas are closely associated with his (the male pronoun was the general style at the time of Marx) class location, which he realises chiefly through his embroilment in the practices that he finds himself carrying out as a member of his class. Since this arrangement has caused enough woes for the mankind, once class divided societies were formed thousands of years ago, our materialist philosopher cannot propose to stay ‘neutral’ or impartial — which is nonetheless impossible too, for he cannot remain un-entangled by the ‘ruling’ or some other kinds of ideologies. And, he had famously opined, philosophers have described the world in many ways, time has come to change it.

Marx had a queer relation with the sociologists, whom he did not like much for their ‘conservatism’. On the one hand, his ethical position was clearly pro-deprived which sociology as a science must beware of. On the other hand, he claimed to have found certain general, natural-science law-like principles of social dynamism; and the dynamism will have consequence for the acts of people, who being organised on the basis of their objectively ‘determined’ class position must have to push the cartwheel of social progress. If that progress means revolution, then it will have to wait for the ‘class consciousness’ to grow among the ‘progressive’ class. This is somewhat contradictory, for the impact of human consciousness and its constellations can hardly be predicted beforehand. This again brings back the issue of subjectivity, for revolutionary praxis is based on (class) consciousness.

Marx took science for granted and did not interrogate much as to how a science of society could be made possible, as did Weber and Durkheim. His concerns with methods — dialectical, materialistic and structural — were more philosophical than sociological and, perhaps, a little more implicit than explicitly argued for. Besides, he openly criticised those who would not stand by the socio-economically oppressed and defied staying ‘neutral’ to his object of study; for, he presumed, an ideological class division had long been operating which encompassed the investigator too. Thus, having pledged to build an invariant or at least precise natural science of society that would follow ‘historical materialistic’ principles, he went on to analyse the capitalist economy and society in every detail. On this tortuous path, he tried to remain faithful to historical and sociological factuality and complications with a subdued zeal for empty generalisations but, perhaps, with a little care to the meaning at the level of the individuals too. On the other hand, he pooh-poohed those who boast of ‘value neutrality’.

What more or less unite the critical theorists of various affiliations — Marxists, dialecticians of the Frankfurt school critical theorists, postcolonial theorists, feminists, psychoanalysts, poststructuralists etc., that they never accept things at their face value. Their suspicion is that, on the surface, the things are so arranged as to benefit the status quo; and scientism as well as objectivism are not outside this ‘order’. Hence, the critical theorists are always critiquing, and, whenever possible, subverting, everything that is apparently held fast by the authorities of every kind.

SELF – CHECK EXERCISE – II

Question No. 1: How do we distinguish ‘interpretivism’ from positivism?

The positivists claim that the realms of science – be they natural or social — are governed by similarly invariant and objective principles. They treat human behaviour as observable data more or less in an unproblematic manner. The interpretivists, on the contrary, would start from the subjectively understood meanings of human social actions; and though they do not altogether deny the possibility of attaining objective explanations of human behaviour on some prior basis of the meanings thereof, they would generally point to the multiplicity of the explanatory models.

Question No. 2: What is critical about ‘critical theory’?

The critical theorists are critical in the sense that they always doubt what is apparently out there and accepted as veracious. They delve into their structural makeup and also into the idea systems that sustain them. They are critical about everything unexamined, even abandon the protocol of remaining uninvolved and impartial in matters of objective analysis of human social behaviour.

Question No. 3: What is the location of intersubjectivity?

Intersubjectivity literally refers to the space that lies in-between a plurality of subjects. It is thus a kind of ‘objectivated’ space without having any concrete existence as such. Hence, in the end, it resides in people’s individual minds that imagine about the commonality of their thinking and, more or less, take things ‘for granted’.

5. MORE ON SOCIOLOGY AND OBJECTIVITY

The positivists tried hard to sell their empiricist model, already used by the natural scientists, to the sociologists and other social scientists since the days of Comte and J.S. Mill. They were particularly successful with economics and psychology and only partially with political science, anthropology and sociology. Since these latter sciences deal more with qualitative than quantitative data, the employment of various measures, statistics and mathematics are less common here. However, this natural lack of mathematical precision should not pose irresolvable difficulty in matters relating to objectivity. There are always attempts to explore some kind of objectivity in variegated manners—conventional or not. We can try to recount few of these attempts that seek aid to the comparative sociology and to the practice of opening up one’s own findings in details to other sociologists and even to the informants, as well as pledging to remain ‘fair’ to alternative standpoints.

According to Durkheim, ‘comparative sociology’ is not any special branch of sociology, but sociology itself (Beteille 2009). It is through this method that a general understanding of the ‘social’ would be possible at the global level, with varieties of standpoints meeting one another in a continuous fashion. With this tool of comparison, the biases pertaining to the specificity of standpoints could be cancelled out. Margaret Mead told us that in New Guinea the Tchambuli tribesmen “adorn themselves…and spend their time planning ceremonial festivities” and the women there work outside and “run the society”, and that both sexes of the Arapesh people are “involved in child rearing” with equal ‘maternal’ care. With such information we have our misconceptions relating to the naturalness of sex role division and maternal care rectified. We understand that the differences are, actually, cultural constructions (Smelser 1993: 212-13). When Louis Dumont compared Indian society with the European societies, the phenomenon of caste was articulated in a novel manner. He made a universal comparison between two types of societies: namely, homo hierarchicus (traditional societies in general) and homo equalis (modern European societies) (Dumont 1980). With comparisons between whole societies or between certain aspects of different societies, similarities and differences between social forms get distilled. This is indeed a service toward more objective understanding of human social life.

As regards detailing out one’s research findings and getting them verified by others, Professor Anthony Giddens proposed the idea of “public character” of sociology. Let us quote from the introductory chapter of his undergraduate textbook, Sociology:

Sociologists strive to be detached in their research and theoretical thinking, trying to study the social world in an open-minded way. A good sociologist will seek to put aside prejudices that might prevent ideas or evidence being assessed in a fair-minded manner. But nobody is completely open-minded on all topics… However, objectivity does not depend solely… upon the outlook of specific researchers. It has to do with methods of observation and argument. Here the public character of the discipline is of major importance. Because findings and reports of research are available for scrutiny – published in articles, monographs or books – others can check the conclusions, claims made on the basis of research findings can be critically assessed and personal inclinations discounted by others (Giddens 2002: 22-23).

Nowadays, the field workers too are required to state their own field experiences and standpoints related to race, gender, class as well as that of being an ‘observer’ to their subjects (Giddens 2009: 51). They generally try to write the exact words that their informants have used. All these help to increase the level of objectivity, for anybody who likes to revisit the data would be benefited by these literatures. Thus, the

new methods to gain objectivity are actually drawing the sociologists closer to their subjects and nearer to their relationship with their subjects, instead of distancing them from the latter. However, to bring the sociologist and her/his informants nearer to each other is not for the purpose of achieving the ‘rigour’ of objectivity only; but as feminists and other critical thinkers would always say, with “human beings studying human beings”, it is not fair to treat them as mere objects. Perhaps it is one kind of ‘poetic justice’ that sometimes we call our human objects ‘subjects’ – which is clearly different from ‘informants’, ‘respondents’ etc. Sociologists cannot just ‘subject’ them to dispassionate observation but it is justice that demands that they would honour their subjects’ own subjectivity.

Professor Andre Beteille stressed on treating “objectivity as fairness”. Since sociologists cannot and should not avoid taking up contentious issues where her/his own standpoint is embroiling enough too, s/he has few recourse to remain objective other than through “fairness”, and we have seen above that Giddens too is of similar opinion. Now let us read from Beteille’s “Religion as a Subject for Sociology”

— a chapter in his book, Sociology: Essays on Approaches and Methods:

The demand for objectivity in the social science is most typically made in the name of intellectual rigour. To treat social facts as things is to place oneself on the same footing with them that the physicist or the biologist secures with respect to the facts that he or she investigates. Here objectivity is viewed as the separability of the investigator from the object of investigation …But … in dealing with human beings…we have to be governed by considerations not merely of intellectual rigour but also of fairness…..

It is this need for fairness in presenting, or … taking into account, different points of view that gives to social enquiry its distinctive character…. [I]t is not simply that the same subject appears different when observed from different points of view, but, further, that the viewpoint of the observer must be constantly matched with that of the actor. The sociologist can at best bring these various points of view into the open and … can be candid about his own values…

(Beteille op cit., 197-99)

It is perhaps to pay heed to this requirement to be “fair” that the qualitative researchers of these days, sometimes, offer her/his research report, before sending it to the publisher, to the people among s/he has studied. The purpose is to have the report seen and checked by the subjects themselves and to ask them whether the researcher has understood the ‘native’ way correctly (Bryman op cit) and whether s/he is not being “unfair” to them as human beings (studying human beings).

6. CONCLUSION

The need for objectivity and value neutrality cannot be denied wholly, since sociology claims to be a ‘science’. However, as its subject matter is the behaviour of conscious human beings, it is a science very different from the natural sciences. Discussion in this module makes it clear that ‘positivism’ is gradually being corrected by ‘interpretivism’ or ‘hermeneutics’ on the front of objectivity. A critical and responsible approach has pushed much of ‘positivism’ to the sidelines. At the same time, the believers in the critical approach are now vying with the interpretivists too, as the latter group is still trying to evade the question of values in the context of sociological research.

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