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How to maintain objectivity when using qualitative methods has inspired many challenging debates. “People just don’t realize how representative they are. Their thing is everybody’s thing” (Fletcher, 1974, p. 141). However, discussing

objectivity from an ethical perspective addresses mainly one issue: is the researcher free of biases, prejudices and subjective interpretations when approaching his subject and analysing the generated data? In other words, is it possible for a different researcher with a different political or cultural background to reproduce previous research findings when using similar methods? Thus, objectivity in this context addresses questions of validity and reliability. The question arising at this point is: what kind of knowledge is used in a specific context during the analysis? The answer to this question will vary according to what paradigm the researcher believes in when approaching their research subject.

What does objectivity mean? Evans and King (2006) give the following definition: “When you take an objective stance towards your work you try to keep some sort of distance from your material […] like aliens from another planet who observe their surroundings but feel no engagement or attachment to the events or people under observation. […] Only by applying these rules, and strict, logical thinking, can we ensure that […] we transcend personal understandings, prejudices and subjective values in order to be able to analyse information in an objective way” (Evans & King, 2006, p. 137).

Consequently, when trying to be truly objective, the researcher finds himself in a twofold dilemma. Firstly, is it possible that a researcher can look at a subject while being completely detached from it? Secondly, is it useful for a researcher to adopt the position of an outsider who is a stranger to the phenomena under observation?

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With regards to the first question, when attempting to explain social processes, the scientist is always part of the events being scrutinised. In his classic study Outsider: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, Becker (1963) reveals an important aspect of social research by simply asking: “Whose side are we on?” Becker argues that the issue is not whether a researcher is objective in their scientific work. The question is merely which side does a scientist decide to assist in their struggle for power.

Consequently, objectivity appears to be an idealisation of social research that is impossible to achieve in reality.

In taking this idea one step further, Foucault (1994) argues that it is not even in the scientist’s power to consciously make such a fundamentally moral decision as who to support. Not only is the researcher attached to and a part of the world that he scrutinises and tries to understand, but he also has a function within it. Additionally, Foucault claims that the task of the individual researcher depends on the social position that they occupy: “It is a question of how he, who speaks as a scientist, as a philosopher, is himself part of this process, in which he is to find himself, therefore, both element and actor” (Foucault, 1994, p. 140).

The issue of objectivity, therefore, does not only provoke discussions about what can be achieved when undertaking social research, but also raises an essential question: What is social science about? Whether social science is perceived as an attempt to understand the world we live in by analysing the historic context of social structures (Mills, 1959), whether social science is about understanding our place in the world (Berger & Luckmann, 1966) or, according to Marxist thought, whether social science is providing us with the knowledge to free ourselves, the researcher will not only be an active element within the events he focuses on, he will also look at those events from a particular cultural position which in itself depends on time and space. Thus, it appears questionable that the social scientist has the capacity and ability to take a distanced stance toward their work as Evans and King (2006) suggest. But is it actually desirable for a social scientist to do so? As Evans and King (2006) noticed, when trying to dissociate themselves from their research subject, the researcher becomes alienated from it. Social processes that might be identified and social behaviour that might be observed during the course of an empirical study will appear strange and unintelligible. By trying to find

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concepts that make life explicable, social scientists ask such questions as: how do we see the world and what would happen if we could see it differently? According to this idea, the social scientist makes an effort to get a philosophical understanding of the nature of the events and processes under question. When Winch tried to analyse the meaning of social science he argued: “… it is only in a situation in which it makes sense to suppose that somebody else could in principle discover the rule which I am following that I can intelligibly be said to follow a rule at all” (Winch, 1990, p. 30). In other words, if the researcher is a complete stranger towards the phenomenon under scrutiny and hence unaware of certain rules, particularly informal conventions, it is more likely that observations will be misinterpreted and it might, indeed, become impossible to make any sense of what is being observed.

In general, it remains questionable how objectivity could be achieved in social science through a detached researcher, taking into account that knowledge is always constructed depending on certain cultural norms and values (Bury, 1986). In

addition, ignoring the researcher’s identity and self by limiting the discussion about social science to ‘rigorously’ applying research methods, one risks a

‘dehumanisation’ of social science, forcing it to proceed “by standardization, marginalization, and exclusion based on the application of a rationality which itself is a construct, a product, and outcome of those very social processes which

constitute “normal social science” itself” (Linsteadl, 1994, p. 1337).

With regards to qualitative research, a concept of objectivity based on an unbiased and value free researcher who must not have any knowledge about the social processes under observation has to be abandoned. There is a conceptual dispute inherent to this discussion. Requiring a researcher to exclude their personal experiences and knowledge from their work is based on a positivist notion of a universal objective reality that can be discovered. In qualitative research this

concept is rejected. Thus, positivist standards derived from natural science appear to be incompatible with qualitative epistemologies. “To strive to attain more

credibility according to an alternative philosophical standpoint appears to be at best inappropriate and at worst, a distraction from the potential that creativity can bring” (Cutcliffe, 2000, p. 1479).

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Therefore, in the present study the concept of validity is understood in accordance with Glaser and Strauss (1967) whereby first, all generated theories have to be grounded: in other words, the theory has to evolve from the data. Second, all theories have to fit in their explanatory scope. It is thought that this way theories can be developed that comprehensively explain and predict social phenomena (Jeon, 2004).