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