is studying, there is still the possibility of being affected by the values and prejudices of one’s own social context. For example, when studying a caste or religious community other than her own, the sociologist may be influenced by the attitudes about that community prevalent in her own past or present social environment. How do sociologists guard against these dangers? One method is to rigorously and continuously examine one’s own ideas and feelings about the subject of research.
More generally, the sociologist tries to take an outsider’s perspective on her/his own work — she/he tries to look at herself/himself and her/his research through the eyes of others. This technique is called ‘self-reflexivity’, or sometimes just ‘reflexivity’. The sociologist constantly subjects her own attitudes and opinions to self- examination. S/he tries to consciously adopt the point of view of others, specially those who are the subjects of her research.
One of the practical aspects of reflexivity is the importance of carefully documenting whatever one is doing. Part of the claims to superiority of research methods lies in the documentation of all procedures and the formal citing of all sources of evidence. This ensures that others can retrace the steps we have taken to arrive at a particular conclusion, and see for themselves if we are right. It also helps us to check and re-check our own thinking or line of argument.
But however, self-reflexive the sociologist tries to be, there is always the possibility of unconscious bias. To deal with this possibility, sociologists explicitly mention those features of their own social background that might be relevant as a possible source of bias on the topic being researched. This alerts readers to the possibility of bias and allows them to mentally ‘compensate’ for it when reading the research study. (You could go back to Chapter , and re-read the section (pp.
- ) which talks about the difference between common sense and sociology). Another problem with objectivity in sociology is the fact that, generally, there are many versions of the ‘truth’ in the social world. Things look different from different vantage points,