Marieke LouisLecturer in political science at Sciences Po Grenoble and at the Pacte laboratory,@marieke_lisbeth

How would you define objectivity in the social sciences?

For me, the quest for objectivity objectivity implies first and foremost distancing ourselves from our subjectivity and that of others. and that of others. All scientists, whatever their discipline have a situated relationship with the world world, because of the environments in which they have been or are currently socialized. These relationships, of all kinds, can give rise to biases. the most frequent being bias in the way we select the information available to us, or the bias that consists in ranking subjects according to of our own or our reference group's scale of values. reference group. In principle, a little introspection and reflexivity should be enough to overcome these biases, but since there's little consensus that our various socializations and commitments could potentially be a problem for the potentially be a problem for the objectivity of our work, everyone does as they please.

Despite this, we can nevertheless that objectivity implies the confrontation of points of view (of all points of view). points of view ( all points of view) with facts and theories, and the debate and evaluation of our work by our peers (hence the importance by our peers (hence the importance of the composition of the editorial and editorial boards of journals and publishing houses), but also by a wider public, aware of the scientific approach, which is still far from being the case including in the media.

To claim objectivity requires above all doubt. Not about everything and anything, as in the misnamed "conspiracy theories", but about our ability to "be absolutely right". It seems to me that there are two types of excessive posture in research that distance us from objectivity: the one that consists in claiming to know everything, and the one that consists in doubting everything, all the time. It is this reasonable (not existential) doubt and curiosity that drives us to read the work of others, including from other disciplines and sub-fields, that allows us to integrate positions and works that do not necessarily correspond to our interpretation of the facts, and finally to discuss them rather than disqualify them out of hand or in a footnote.

In this respect, I sincerely prefer a little intense controversy on common issues, to the prevailing indifference to the work of others. I regularly experience this indifference as a member of the editorial board of the magazine La Vie des idéesThis indifference is something I regularly experience as a member of the editorial board of La Vie des idées, particularly in the difficulty of finding researchers willing to write reviews of their colleagues' work (reviews that everyone else wants for their own work...). In this respect, I think that certain ways of evaluating research, particularly those that put constant pressure on self-publication, are counterproductive and risk losing objectivity, by encouraging us to over-specialize and build niches of knowledge that ignore each other more than they confront each other.

Is researcher neutrality possible and desirable?

Yes, especially at the moment in a context where science is in a paradoxical situation: constantly solicited (knowledge is indeed a determinant of power, as Foucault identified) and constantly challenged and disqualified. disqualified. Personally, I see in the ease with which detractors of social science to discredit our work, a real collective failure. This failure should alert and mobilize us as a professional body, less into political posturing in support of this or that support for this or that candidate or party, but around the defense of the values of our profession.

I don't intend to renew the debate on axiological neutrality. I'm leaving the floor to all those who have devoted a good part of their work to thinking about this very question, and whose legacy I find it a shame, even dangerous, to be "trashed" today by constantly trying to show that they had a "vested interest" in arguing in favor of this neutrality, and were therefore in no way neutral. Here, I'd like to focus on my relationship with neutrality, as a teacher-researcher.

For me, neutrality neutrality is a professional ethic. It's our own Hippocratic oath. oath. Not to mention the fact that most of us are civil servants civil servants (and therefore subject to the obligations that go with that status), for me for me, neutrality is above all a commitment to science and to the aspiration to produce objective knowledge, but also, and above all, a commitment to the public commitment to the public, starting with our students, so that they have confidence in the knowledge we pass on to them. A so that they don't think or claim that we've given them knowledge knowledge, we've passed on ideology (whatever that may be). whatever it may be). It's partly for this reason that I believe it's important to teach political ideas and the way ideologies are produced, to give students give students the opportunity to exercise their faculty of discernment between the production of scientific knowledge and ideology. and ideology. Yet political theory in general is tending to disappear from curricula, I think this is a shame.  

It's often said that commitment. On the contrary, I believe that neutrality is a form of commitment: a professional commitment. And not the easiest simple, because it implies restraint, even when certain situations when certain situations outrage us or, quite simply, put our convictions to the test. convictions to the test. It also means fighting against the impulses of our subjectivity. of our subjectivity. For me, being neutral doesn't mean being detached from the social world; on the contrary, it means being in a state of of "constant vigilance", as the saying goes...

And being neutral in one's work does not mean being neutral in all circumstances. To be neutral means above all to be able to discern the different areas of intervention, and this is undoubtedly the most difficult thing today, in societies where the boundaries between areas and registers of intervention are in flux. We see this with expertise, for example, which is becoming indispensable, and I think it's all to the good, in terms of public policy. This is what we're currently exploring with the Association française de science politique in the Politistes dans la Cité podcast series.

As far as I'm concerned, choosing to be a teacher-researcher also meant giving up other types of career: activism, journalism or the arts. And while I believe that dialogue between the various professions and the spaces in which they intervene in the city is necessary, their (con)fusion seems problematic to me. We must therefore be cautious about certain commitments, especially when they are public and easily "recuperable" in the non-scientific arena.

How important are methods to you as a researcher?

I attach great importance methods in my research, because they are the proof, if not of my objectivity proof, if not of my objectivity, at least of my efforts to be objective! objective! To put it another way, while it's sometimes difficult to be objective objective, we can nevertheless demonstrate objectivity by being transparent about our research methods, as a form of traceability of our "product". "product". I was a latecomer to trained in social science methods, only during my thesis, precisely because many of my trainers considered (and they weren't necessarily wrong) that that "a good method would never replace a good question, let alone a good a good question, let alone a good idea" (!)

Nevertheless, while I undoubtedly place more value on discovery and good intuition than on instruments and techniques, our methods, whether qualitative or quantitative ( like others, I'm rather skeptical about the usefulness of this distinction), also add value and guarantee a form of objectivity. The methods I use are observation, archive analysis and interviews, from a socio-historical perspective that pays attention to the long term, and to the "profound" transformations of the social body. These methods are particularly "reactive", in the sense that the results we draw from them owe a great deal to our interpretation. Their validation requires a great deal of cross-referencing and cross-checking with other sources. But that's also what makes it interesting.

In addition, without statistical analysis, I also pay attention to quantifying the phenomena quantification of the phenomena I study: in particular, during my thesis my thesis on the differences in representation between countries and movements movements in international organizations, which obliged me to "count" a certain number of situations a number of situations, and to put them in graphical form. graphically. In particular, this led me to qualify certain statements about the under- or over-representation of certain groups. The problem with quantification is that it also leaves interpretation open: figures never figures never speak for themselves. At the moment, I'm investing more in so-called to reconstruct network phenomena, and above all, I'm trying to mobilize above all, I'm trying to mobilize the comparative reflex more. In short, I have no religion when it comes to methodology. methodology. It seems to me that it's the research question that should guide the choice the choice of method, and not the other way round (although I'm well aware that you can't master all methods). In particular, this is what I learned a professor I met while studying at the London School of Economics, who reproached a doctoral student who who criticized a doctoral student who was using Foucauldian concepts at every turn for wanting to "hammer in a nail". to "drive a nail in with a screwdriver".

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?

I'm going to take a little liberty with the question, and use an example taken not from my work on international organizations, but from a course I've been teaching for several years at Sciences Po Grenoble entitled " Between Fiction and Politics: (Mis)Representations of the United Nations in literature and movies ", and which required me to do a lot of upstream research! The whole point of this course is precisely to raise awareness and work with students on questions of objectivity and subjectivity, in a context of knowledge production that is sometimes competing, sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory, around the case of the United Nations and international relations in general.

The question I put to them from the outset is: " Why read long scientific articles on international relations and the workings of international organizations, when we have at our disposal other, much more attractive sources such as films, TV series, novels and documentaries, which also provide us with answers to fundamental questions such as war and peace? " In addition to demonstrating the added value of the social sciences (and I do mean added value, not superiority) in the analysis of international relations, I use this course in particular to make students aware of the confrontation between different, and sometimes competing, ways of producing knowledge and judgments on social facts, starting with the "failure" of international cooperation in the event of war or genocide.

I use a similar a similar method when I ask students to do a critical review of current events a critical review of current events based on reading the media. The idea is also to make them realize that if their reading of the world were in any way the one you read in this or that newspaper, or watch in a documentary documentary, no matter how serious, then training in the social sciences would be of little use.