The Conceptual Practices of Power

The profession of sociology has been predicated on a universe grounded in men’s experience and relationships and still largely appropriated by men as their “territory.” An important set of procedures that serve to separate the discipline’s body of knowledge from its practitioners is known as objectivity. The ethic of objectivity and the methods used in its practice are concerned primarily with the separation of knowers from what they know and in particular with the separation of what is known from knowers’ interests, “biases,” and so forth, that are not authorized by the discipline. Sociology’s conceptual procedures, methods, and relevances organize its subject matter from a determinate position in society.…