NEITHER RIGOROUS NOR OBJECTIVE? 73Thoreau, noting that “[i]n most books, the I, or first person, is omitted,” asked his readers’ indul-
gence as he followed a different course of action. Over 150 years ago, he put his finger on a
tension that befuddles social scientific writing today: To signal “objectivity,” the writer uses all
manner of circumlocutions that enable her getting around the presence of the first person I (as this
writer has just now done); whereas, especially in field research, what is being reported is nothing
less than the researcher’s I/eye account of what was learned there (including from others’ ac-
counts of their own lives). The presence of reflexivity in interpretive methods focuses on the
central fact of the researcher herself living “in a distant land” and the ways in which that lived
experience shapes her interpretation of others’ interpretations of their own metaphorically distant
lands. The “I” whose absence was intended to communicate impersonal objectivity is increas-
ingly de rigueur on the written pages of interpretive science, for important philosophical reasons,
alluded to by Thoreau.
How does this touted subjectivity comport with scientific demands for objectivity? As with the
previous discussion, an explication of the wide range of meanings with which “objective” is used
helps clarify the arguments. As with the discussion of rigor, I will explore its entailments from the
perspective of its common usage in textbooks and in research practices, rather than starting from
philosophical definitions and discussions.^16 These meanings-in-use treat objectivity as an attribute
of two different aspects of research practice: as a characteristic of evidence or as a characteristic of
the process through which the evidence is produced. The latter includes the character of the person(s)
producing the evidence, that is, the acts and attitudes of the researcher and/or the actors in the
research setting. The intertwining of evidence and persons blurs ontological and epistemological
objectivities, as objectivity refers variously to physical and cognitive-emotional distances, which
meanings themselves become intertwined in discussions and debates. Once again, definitional-
terminological and procedural stipulations are mutually implicating, and both are enacted in the
philosophical distinctions. I take them up in this order.
Definitional Matters
A Focus on Evidence. The most basic dictionary definition draws on the simple linguistic struc-
ture of the word, as “of or pertaining to an object” (first definition, Webster’s Revised Unabridged
Dictionary 1998). The antonym invoked by the term’s linguistic structure, “subjective,” carries a
similar basic definition; yet “of or pertaining to a subject” immediately introduces persons into
the picture. In a research context, “subjective” evidence, research, or meaning would pertain to
either the researcher or a situational actor (that is, it would be “of”—in the sense of “belonging”
to, or deriving from—that subject). Who, then, is the creator of meaning that pertains to an object,
and, more crucially, what is his relationship to that meaning?
Webster’s second definition points toward an answer. It constitutes a metaphoric extension of
the basic linguistic construction:
- (Metaph.) Of or pertaining to an object; contained in, or having the nature or position of,
an object; outward; external; extrinsic;—an epithet applied to whatever is exterior to the
mind, or which is simply an object of thought or feeling... [emphasis added].
This presumes a human actor (or her mind) apperceiving something exterior to her, to which she
has directed thought or feeling. There is no reflexivity here: the object is not describing itself or
something of its creation; and the human actor is physically, cognitively, and emotionally sepa-
rate from the object in question.