Committed Objectivity in Race-Class-Gender Research

Abstract

This article argues that objectivity and commitment are different but that they are articulated rather than being separate issues in social research. This article challenges those who believe that objectivity is impossible or undesirable as well as those who believe that commitment is undesirable in social science. This approach is close to the call by Sandra Harding (1991, 1993) that the methods of science should be applied to science itself by raising the women question in science and the science question in women's studies. Here, she develops her earlier analysis of feminist research agenda in science in terms of empiricism, standpoint epistemology and post-modern feminism. In this paper, a slightly different formulation will be advanced to resolve what could be said to be a false dichotomy between objectivity and commitment. Committed objectivity or objective commitment could be used to capture the inextricability of the articulation of the processes of commitment and objectivity. The article concludes that both objectivity and commitment are necessary elements of good research by all researchers irrespective of (or even because of) race-class-gender differences.