NEITHER RIGOROUS NOR OBJECTIVE? 83The relationship between the understanding of rigor as stepwise and unyielding and objec-
tivity as physically and emotionally distant, along with extensive attention to the intricacies of
tools and techniques, serves to mask underlying aspects of research that are perceived to be prob-
lematic. The terms and the anticipated (or real) accusations work as a “myth,” not in the sense of
misguided belief but in a structural sense, deflecting attention from elements for which there is no
shared consensus or that might undermine a tentative or fragile one (Yanow 1992b). The rigor/
objectivity charge blocks a focus on problematic aspects central to the research undertaking: the
trustworthiness of its “findings.” Attention is being diverted from the claims to knowledge, cer-
tainty, and “truth” that make research trustworthy and that support the social status of science—
and, most specifically, from our discomfort with the idea that bodies and emotions play a role in
generating scientific knowledge.
The myth is that analytic rigor entails logos alone, rather than pathos and ethos as well.
“Objectivity”—disembodied reason based on facts (logos), rather than feelings (pathos), follow-
ing the laws of logic (also logos), rather than emotion (or a moral feeling, ethos)—denies the
latter; accepting subjectivity threatens to undermine the separation. Policing research for its rigor
and objectivity is either the remnant of an earlier historical battle to establish the scientific bona
fides of the several social sciences, or it is a present, real concern to shore up that “scientific”
character of their practices among governmental agencies and a broader public as other than
commonplace literary, impressionistic, armchair activity. It is as if the acceptance of the all-
too-human characteristics of the researcher in the generation and interpretation of data por-
tends the descent of social science back into its amateur roots, if not its even earlier metaphysical
antecedents. As Furner (1975, 290–91, 323) notes, “objective,” in the new economics, sociol-
ogy, and political science associations at the end of the nineteenth century, was defined in a
special way: “It restricted open public advocacy of the sort that allied [these disciplines] with
reforms which threatened the status quo.... [A]t least the appearance of objectivity was essen-
tial to survival, for without it there was no assurance of professional support in time of need.”
“Rigorous,” “objective” social science would not get mixed up with social reform. “Public
sociology” (Burawoy 2005), for instance, is problematic in this view because the sociologist is
then no longer “outside”—external to—the social world: she is no longer “objective”; his re-
formist zeal threatens rigorousness.
Claiming knowledge based on an external authority distances us from these problems and
eliminates the messiness that is part of being human; it maintains the illusion of human perfect-
ibility and scientific “progress.” The time and energy spent debating tools and techniques—the
so-called methodism or methods fetishism—keeps researchers from engaging these other, highly
problematic issues. An unyielding procedural “rigor” that enables claims to “objective” knowl-
edge keeps researchers from having to relinquish a shop-worn distinction between body and
mind that is increasingly blurred; from seeing that the source of research authority is vested in and
regulated by communal discourse; and from being accepting of a knowledge whose character is
neither absolute nor universal, but deeply, unremittingly human, and therefore potentially flawed.
A human science, “mired” in human fallibility, renders us firmly in our humanity.
It is, in the end, interpretive science’s insistence on reflexivity, in the spirit of the testability
that is a hallmark of scientific work, within the context of a community of practitioners, that
enables researchers to maintain a check on idiosyncratic, biased, erroneous interpretation. Such
a reflexive science proceeds with “passionate humility” (Yanow 1997), the recognition that
our analyses—indeed, even our prior suppositions—might be wrong, married with conviction
in our analytic rigor and faithfulness to self and other, based on methodical, systematic re-
search processes.