Objectivity and Bias in Sociological Studies: A Rejoinder to 'Social Science Knowledge and Its Evaluation'

Does a social scientist need to renounce his ethnicity in order to be objective and unbiased? The issue of how and why scholars choose their subjects and approaches has been debated for almost a century in many disciplines, first as 'insiders-outsiders', 'in’cross-cultural studies' and in the colonial context as ‘orientalism’ and now in the post-modernist era as 'positioned writers'. A writer's ‘position’ such as his religion/sect, sex/sexual orientation, class/caste, race/nationality, language/dialect, etc., would play a significant role in whatever s/he cares to select as a subject as also in the manner of arguments. While the search for universal principles of evaluating knowledge is still on, attention to the 'political economy of knowledge' and social scientists' ‘positionality’ is as important in understanding their contribution to such knowledge. Studying intellectual traditions is an important area in sociological studies. So it should be worth studying a generally observable phenomena relating to minority intellectuals in the contemporary world: why do many such intellectuals feel the pressure to distance themselves from their origins or the community? Is it due to a process of intellectual development, self-esteem and more personal and materialistic motive?