Can Sociology Be Value Free?

Question 1

Define

Answer 1

Being “value free” is sometime described as being objective: to uncover truths about the world, one must aspire to eliminate personal prior beliefs, and emotional and personal involvement, etc.
Value Freedom Research refers to the ability of the researcher to keep his or her own values (per- sonal, political and religious) from interfering with the research process.

Question 2

Positivism and Value Freedom

Answer 2

 In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Positivist Sociologists such as August Comte and Emi- le Durkheim regarded Sociology as a science and thus thought that social research could and should be value free, or scientific.
 Positivists believe Sociology can be value free because they are uncovering the ‘objective’ laws of how social systems work – these laws exist independently of the researchers observing them. All the researcher is doing is uncovering ‘social facts’ that exist ‘out there’ in the world – facts that would exist irrespective of the person doing the observing.
 Illustrated in Durkheim’s study of Suicide (1899) – by doing quantitative research and uncover- ing macro-level social trends Sociologists can uncover the ‘laws of society’.
 Value-free social research was crucial because the objective knowledge that scientific sociolo- gy revealed could be used to uncover the principles of a good, ordered, integrated society, principles which governments could then apply to improve society.
 Research should aim to be scientific or value free because otherwise it is unlikely to be taken seriously or have an impact on social policy.

Question 3

The ‘New Right’ – Sociology is not value free – it is left wing propaganda!

Answer 3

 In the 1970’s and 1980’s, Sociology came under attack for its ‘left-wing’ bias.
 David Marsland argued that sociology as a destructive force, exaggerating the defects of capi-
talism and ignoring its many benefits.
 In ‘Bias against Business’, Marsland suggests that many Sociology textbooks ignore the central features of capitalist economies concentrating on job dissatisfaction and alienation.
 Sociology underestimates the high levels of job satisfaction which empirical research has con- sistently identified.
 It neglects for the most part to inform students about the oppressive direction of labour of all sorts of socialist societies, or to keep them in mind of the multiple benefits of a free competitive labour market. It treats the need for economic incentives with contempt.’

Question 4

Feminism – Sociology is not value free because it is biased against women

Answer 4

 Critical of the ‘value-free’ scientific claims of ‘malestream’ Sociology, arguing it is at best sex blind and at worst sexist, serving as an ideological justification for the subordination of women.
 Oakley (1974) claimed that ‘Sociology reduces women to a side issue from the start.’ While Sociology claims to put forward a detached and impartial view of reality, in fact it presents the perspective of men.

 Feminist responses to the male bias in Sociology have been varied; on the one hand there are those who think that this bias can be corrected simply by carrying out more studies on women;
 A more radical view (arguing along the same lines of Becker’s ‘Whose Side are We On’) sug- gests that what is needed is a Sociology for women by women; that feminists should be con- cerned with developing a sociological knowledge which is specifically by and about women.

Question 5

Interpretivism – Sociology cannot and should not aim to be value free

Answer 5

 There are three main Interpretivist Criticisms of ‘Positivist’ sociology – from Gomm, Becker and Gouldner:
 Gomm argued that ‘a value free Sociology is impossible… the very idea is unsociological’.
 Gomm argued that social research always has social and moral implications. Therefore Sociol-
ogy inevitably has a political nature.
 Gomm further suggested that when the sociologist attempts to divorce himself from his own values to be scientific, to become a ‘professional sociologist’ he is merely adopting another set of values - not miraculously becoming ‘value free’ – what Positivists call value freedom often involves an unwitting-commitment to the values of the establishment.
 Gouldner, along similar lines to Gomm, argued that it is impossible to be free from various forms of value judgment in the social sciences. Those who claim to be value free are merely gutless non-academics with few moral scruples who have sold out to the establishment in re- turn for a pleasant university lifestyle.
 Gouldner suggested that the principle of value freedom had dehumanised sociologists: ‘Smugly sure of itself and bereft of a sense of common humanity.’ He claimed that sociologists have be- trayed themselves and Sociology to gain social and academic respectability; confusing moral neutrality with moral indifference, not caring about the ways in which their research is used.
 Howard Becker, in ‘Whose side are we on?’ took this argument to its logical conclusion arguing that since all knowledge is political, serving some interests at the expense of others, the task for the sociologist is simply to choose sides; to decide which interests sociological knowledge should serve. Becker argued that Sociology should side with the disadvantage