Between Description and Evaluation: How Sociologists Do Normativity

Galen Watts, University of Waterloo
Sebastian Raza, University of Cambridge

Abbott (2018) and Abend (2023) argue that sociologists have insufficiently reflected upon the normative stakes of their empirical research—and that such reflection is long overdue. In agreement, in this paper we strive to clarify how empirical sociologists do normativity in the process of describing and explaining the social world. We do so, first, by distinguishing between what we refer to as modalities of normative thinking. Drawing from political philosophy we distinguish between the good and the right (Rawls 1988). “The good” refers to normative questions relating to the good life, and is necessarily relative to an agent—it is about what is (or should be) beneficial, satisfactory or meaningful for someone. Evaluations of this kind are active whenever empirical sociologists describe the social world, implicitly or explicitly, as stifling or supporting the realization of some perceived component of human flourishing (e.g., subjective well-being, autonomy, health, economic security, self-worth, dignity, etc.). By contrast, questions of “right” relate to what is just or fair rather than good. In fact, a crucial component of the right as a normative modality is its neutrality with respect to specific conceptions of human flourishing; what matters, then, is less the substance of the social outcome than the procedure through which it is achieved. Evaluations of this kind are active whenever sociologists describe some aspect of the social world, implicitly or explicitly, as unfair, unequal, discriminatory, exclusive, or inequitable. Next, we survey a wide array of sociological scholarship (e.g., sociology of culture, education, health, work, family, etc.) in order to bring to light how these normative modalities take shape in the routine application and use of the sociological concepts agency, social structures, and social processes. Our goal, in turn, is to lessen the “ever-increasing disparity” (Abbott 2016, 346) between theoretical and normative reflection in Anglo-American sociology.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 115. Scholarly Orthopraxy/Orthodoxy: Re/Constructing Norms and Canons