The inevitability of normativity: A response to Martyn Hammersley's ‘Use and abuse of the normative in sociological research’

Abstract

Martyn Hammersley argues that sociology should confine normativity to the selection of research questions and research ethics, while excluding it from the production and justification of knowledge. His case rests on two related claims: first, that factual descriptions can and should be separated from normative evaluations; second, that introducing practical values into inquiry increases the risks of illegitimate intellectual authority, scientism, and bias. This commentary challenges both lines of argument. I begin by questioning the possibility of separating the evaluative from the descriptive, arguing that apparently factual concepts already orient subsequent evaluations. I then reconsider his objections to normative sociology. Once normative commitments are understood not as scientific findings but as explicit philosophical assumptions accompanying empirical inquiry, concerns about illegitimate intellectual authority, scientism, and bias lose much of their force. Rather than undermining scientific rigour, making such commitments explicit strengthens intellectual accountability. I conclude that the normative character of social science is unavoidable and that the relevant choice is not between describing the world and evaluating it, but between normative commitments that are acknowledged and ones that are not.