OBJECTIVITY AND VALUES IN SOCIOLOGY

Objectivity means not letting personal views get involved in research. In the 1850’s early sociologists took a more scientific approach to study the factors that affect society and how it works. They were the positivists who believed it was more necessary in order to obtain reliable data not letting the researchers influence or values affect the data. However over time, more recent sociologists influenced by Max Weber’s work have realised that methods that are objective tend to gather statistical data that creates social constructions.

DURKHIEM (VALUE FREEDOM)
Positivists like Emile Durkheim emphasize the scientific approach to Sociology when its objective as it discovers the truth about how society works. Disregards the interpretivist ideas as improving society wouldn’t be a matter of opinions but about what was best. His view aims to discover society’s laws of behaviour and believes social facts can be discovered. (See study of Catholics and Protestant’s suicide rates, integration.)

MARX (HISTORICAL MATERIALISM)
Marx argued that values do not necessarily cause a comprehension problem because if it is present it is explained through analysis of the past. For example, divorcees are more likely to commit suicide but don’t necessarily mean we should make divorce harder to obtain because it’s a more likely fact. This is because there is nothing about a fact that compels us to accept the value. Values are argued from different points such as “marriage” “wishing suicide” and other numerous ones.

WEBER (SEPERATION OF FACTS AND VALUES)
Interactionists like Max Weber define sociology as being made up of a meaningless infinity of facts that make it impossible to study in totality. The best a researcher can do is selecting certain facts and study them. Thus we are able to select aspects of facts depending on our own values or in other world value relevance towards us.

MYDRAL (COMMITTED SOCIOLOGY)
Argues that its neither possible nor desirable to keep values out of research because value free sociology is pretty much:
· Impossible: This is because values are required to create conflicting arguments in sociology. Many theorists and researchers are committed or support a certain kind of theory so they aim to discover evidence related to that perspective. If they believe they have spotted something in society, they need to research evidence to support an aim or hypothesis before concluding it with findings.
· Undesirable: Without values, sociologists put their services at the disposal of the highest bidder. Arguing onwards, sociologists commit themselves to certain types of theories such as Functionalism, Marxism, Feminism, Interactionism and Postmodernism. All these theories argue against each other in some way or form. According to Thomas Kuhn it’s a subject that has no agreed paradigm or agreed set of perspectives about society itself.


BECKER (TAKING SIDES)
Becker argues that values are always present in sociology. Traditionally sociologists (especially functionalists and positivists) seem to take the viewpoint of the powerful so instead of seeing things from the perspective of the “over dogs” adapting more methods to adopt a compassionate stance and take more sides of the “under dogs” they would understand both sides better to outline more reasonable ways of improving society. For example, Functionalists are more likely to look for evidence to support society's function in through its social structure and value consensus.(However, Marxists are likely to do studies that look for evidence to support class inequality.)