Passionate scholarship: notes on values, knowing and method in feminist social science1

Science is not ‘value-free’; it cannot be. Science is made by scientists, and both we and our science-making are shaped by our culture. Science moves within culture, and only slowly expands the limits of its own vision. Social scientists are certainly no more able than others to pursue inquiry free of the assumptions and values of their own societies. In fact, the closer our subject matter to our own life and experience, the more we can probably expect our own beliefs about the world to enter into and shape our work — to influence the very questions we pose, our conception of how to approach those questions, and the interpretations we generate from our findings.