Martine KaluszynskiDirector of Research at the Pacte laboratory and lecturer at Sciences Po Grenoble
How would you define objectivity in political science?
Social science requires a kind of abstraction, a distancing from the object, all the more necessary as we belong to the society we wish to study. This rule of distancing is not easy to apply, as the social sciences are not simply intended to describe, but also to analyze, to give an account of the processes and mechanisms that explain (and do not excuse), with the possibility of making mistakes, as reality is fluctuating and changing.
The absence of value judgments is a sign of what social science research should be: the relationship to values may lead to certain choices of object, or favor certain questions, but the answers provided and the analyses carried out are based on a suspension of judgment (while integrating the relationship to the actors' values into the analysis itself). The great sociologists have given much thought to this situation. Émile Durkheim laid the groundwork, calling for objective, methodical sociology.
When working as a historian on the past, distance is (de facto) imposed, but the difficulty is the same. You have to bring together a range of materials to produce a narrative as close to reality as possible, using scientific writing. Because it's scientific, some people make it sound jargon-y, descriptive and overly conceptualized, as if objectivity nestled in this technical austerity. Yet scientific writing can be poetic, literary and imaginative, as great historians and sociologists have shown.
Objectivity in the social sciences means trying to render (and/or aiming towards) the reality of a situation, not the truth, a single and definitive truth, in the face of the material and with rigorous methodologies. The work carried out necessarily passes through the filter of our subjectivity, understood not in terms of convictions or ideas, but constructed from our culture, our history, our sensibility, all of which play a role in the way we grasp the material, interpret it and write it down. To believe otherwise would be to delude ourselves.
Is researcher neutrality possible and desirable ?
I don't believe in the axiological neutrality of the researcher, a term that is already incompatible enough with the very nature of the human being. Axiological neutrality is a kind of ideal that does not reflect the scientific world, which has always been nourished by controversies that feed, enrich and advance situations.
The term neutrality evokes a non-judgmental, non-value-judgmental attitude. Indeed, the sociological point of view is not a normative view of the world, where what is good or bad, right or wrong, should stand out. But a researcher has convictions, intuitions and, dare we say it, sometimes even a passion for his or her profession, which distances him or her from neutrality.
Max Weber launched the debate on axiological neutrality using the term Wertfreiheit, which was translated in the USA in 1949 as axiological neutrality. It is the need to develop a scientific discourse that is "autonomous in relation to values", without denying the existence of a relationship to values that guides the choice of research object and method. This concept has been discussed by Isabelle Kalinowski, Delphine Naudier and Maud Simonet, who praise the commitment of sociologists (Des sociologues sans qualités ?Pratiques de recherche et engagements, La Découverte, 2011), and more recently by Roland Pfefferkorn, who speaks of an impossible axiological neutrality.
Scientists can intervene in the public arena, but they must adhere to a code of "intellectual probity", which implies reflexivity about the relationship between their values and scientific work, and which also requires them to make clear to their listeners what belongs to their posture as researchers and what belongs to their posture as citizens. In this way, you can happily integrate your commitments with your scientific work.
It is possible to be a committed researcher according to a certain conception of commitment, based on articulated theoretical choices. Not believing in axiological neutrality is not the same as refusing it, nor is it necessarily adhering to a cause, defending the need for an assumed "committed" posture that does not distinguish between ethical and political stances and scientific work.
The researcher may advance with intuitions, convictions at times, doubts always, certainties never. It is in this way that the researcher achieves not neutrality, but an attenuation of his subjectivity in the restitution of a scientific work articulated to a demanding deontological rule.
As with objectivity, axiological neutrality is not necessarily impossible. The real trick is to strike a fluid, flexible balance between who you are (culturally) and what you do (scientifically). It's all part of the sociologist's job to free ourselves from the presuppositions we hear everywhere, that we ourselves have as social agents, and to be reflexively lucid. We can refer to Rose-Marie Lagrave's magnificent work, an intellectual self-analysis showing that we need to take stock of ourselves, others and the work we produce.
How important are methods to you as a researcher?
Methods and the rigor they require are extremely important, fundamental, in research work. It's what sets us apart from journalistic work, no matter how thorough. This is why it's so important to be extremely vigilant about how our work is used by the non-academic world, and to master our expertise to the very end.
All methods depend, to a large extent, on a consensus on their use (which must be rigorous, clear in its statement, and sometimes explicit), which succeeds in federating the scientific world, however fragmented it may be. In the social sciences, all reported facts and statements must be supported by evidence. All information necessarily comes from a book, an interview or a text, and, as a historian, the need for notes to accompany the narrative is an essential element in the constitution of a scientific text.
If the bibliography is a working tool that provides information about the work carried out (and also about the author's intellectual curiosity), it must be open, rich, overflowing with its own purpose, without falling into the trap of swindling, or displaying excessive erudition that is poorly mastered. But the notes are essential, as important as the text itself. It's an infra-text that shows how the scientific text was constructed, and on what supports and references; a fundamental element in enhancing the value of scientific work and its architecture. The notes, testimony to the references used, shed light behind the scenes of scientific work. They are an indispensable pedagogical tool for the reader, enabling him or her to follow and understand the researcher's intellectual path and the way in which he or she grasped the material.
Talking about methods and data today means asking questions about how they are used, what choices are made, what research is involved, and in so doing, getting to the heart of the research that is initiated and produced. Talking about methods and data today means asking questions about the research being carried out, and just as much about the profession itself, what makes it unified - in other words, the set of skills shared by all, and the researcher's ethics.
Could you present an example of research, ideally from your own work, to illustrate the issues and tensions surrounding objectivity and neutrality in the social sciences ?
To maintain a pedagogical approach, I'll be drawing on my first scientific work, which was the subject of much discussion, not about the way it was handled, nor about the methods, but simply about my choice of subject.
As a historian of the 19th century, and a passionate follower of the teachings of Michelle Perrot and Arlette Farge, and a reader of Michel Foucault, I wanted to work on the Republic (the Third Republic), wanting to go beyond the republican idea, as defined by Cl. Nicolet, i.e. understood in its ideal and eschatological value, and to focus not just on the republican form of the regime, but on its content. During this period (the 80s), the majority of historians were still in the classical tradition, supported by the work of the great republican historians, who took up and dug deeper into the tradition of political history, shaping the mythology of the Republic.
I was interested in the question of the police, and in particular in techniques for maintaining order, such as forensic anthropometry, the first scientific data-filing technique, and then in penal policies in France, with its extremely severe laws on relegation and transportation. I showed the ambivalence of a regime navigating between its principles and its actions, implementing highly fertile penal policies oscillating between prevention (eugenics, patronage societies) and repression (relegation, transportation); the two principles adjusting, juxtaposing, sometimes complementing or canceling each other out. It was the choice of a work of unveiling, of elucidating the richness, the complexity of a power in place confronted with the eminently political question of private and public security and which must resolve this question.
Neither sanctified nor sacrificed; an untouchable and disciplinary, institutional and intellectual object, but also a common good, belonging to citizens, profoundly political and affective, the Republic could show something other than its hagiographic narrative and also reveal its shadow side, without detracting from its essence but revealing all its aspects, thus respecting the entirety of its project and philosophy (see here what Michel De Certeauwrites about the "historical operation"). This choice has been seen, by some historians, as "a deterioration", a denunciation and an attack on the image and therefore the republican narrative.
There is a back-and-forth between the discipline and the social world of which the scholar is a part, and to which he or she is as accountable as to the professional community on which he or she depends. The choice of subject (and its approach) is never neutral. Apprehending it in a different way can have a cost, and puts you in a position that can be described, as Bastien François puts it, as a smuggler's position. Which is what I've become. Today, this anecdote seems to refer more to an era than to a debate, but it does show that assignments are still alive and kicking, and that academic freedom is still fragile. If there's anything we need to preserve and solidify in the social sciences and humanities, it's undoubtedly a form of intellectual honesty in one's choices, assessments, work and practice.
I've always had a personal propensity to seek out dialogue with holders of different but closely related types of knowledge, which is justified by a deep-seated conviction in the scientific value of working at frontiers. The idea is to encourage an import-export activity of intellectual schemes in these zones, where the analytical schemes built up from one's own discipline are questioned, challenged, confronted and ultimately enriched by concepts, theories and empirical observations produced by other disciplines, which are likely to convey as many different worldviews. But this constantly sought-after interaction must be accompanied by a constant concern to strengthen one's own disciplinary identity, by an attentive intellectual ethic, sometimes making concessions but without compromising, all within the framework of a balance to be maintained, which can be based neither on dogmatic and sclerotic confinement nor on a multidisciplinary ecumenism that allows one to talk about everything without really finding the meaning of anything.