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There has been a long-running debate about the role or place of things called "values" in sociology and sociological research. The sociological term "value" refers to attitudes, beliefs or opinions which people hold more or less strongly and which influence their behaviour. ... Some sociologists emphasise the need to free sociology from values and so be totally objective while others say that this objectivity or neutrality is impossible.
From a positivistic approach, sociology is a science. ... However value judgements are statements about what ought and what ought not to happen. ... Positivists believe that only a value-free sociology is acceptable and if values do influence sociological research then that work is "contaminated" by subjective feelings and no one else would find it useful or take it seriously. ... This concern is a good example of a value and, as a result, he chose to study bureaucracies. But Weber also believed that with care and the right methods, research itself could be "value-free" or as he put it "cleansed of values". ... Anti-positivists or interactionists as they are also called were partly influenced by what Weber had written half a century earlier but they disagreed with his view that it is possible to devise methods and techniques of research which will make some degree of value-freedom possible.
Approximate Word count = 928
Approximate Pages = 3.7
(250 words per page double spaced)
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