Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Appendices - 2. A Methodological Note on Facts and Valuations in Social Science - 4. The Points of View Adopted in This Book
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
Appendix 2. Note on Facts and Valuations 1063
of the investigation to make fossible judgments in terms of alternative valuations and
policies.
The purely technical and instrumental character of the preliminary set of value
premises must be borne in mind constantly. The valuations of situations and trends,
institutions and policies reached in terms of the instrumental value premises also are
only preliminary.
But we must not deceive ourselves on this point: the selection of the Instrumental norm
has material significance. The whole direction of our theoretical research actually
becomes determined by this norm. We have given one particular set of valuations a
strategically^ favorable position in the study. This is not a characteristic of our study in
particular but of all research working under the same limits of research resources. It is
not a bias, as the direction of research has been determined under conscious control and
by help of explicit valuations. But measured by the standards of our ideal for research
and keeping In mind all other possible sets of value premises, it is a one-sidedness in
approach, and we should be fully aware of it. In the present volume time and space
have, further, prevented the subsequent complementation of our results by applying
alternative sets of value premises, except at a few points.®
Under these circumstances the utmost importance must be attached to the choice of the
instrumental norm. In Chapter l, Section 13, we have given the reasons why we have
organized this book around a set of valuations which we have called the “American
Creed.”
6. The Value^Loaded Terms, This very set of dynamic valuations contained in the
American Creed has actually, to a great extent and despite compromises with the inherited
static valuations of social science, determined the object and direction of previous
research on the Negro problem. We are thus keeping to the tradition, only attempting
to clarify what we are doing. The scientific work on the Negro in politics has been
centered upon disfranchisement. This means that the interest has been defined out of
the notion that the extraordinary thing to be studied is the fact that often in America
the Negro is not given the right to suffrage as other citizens. In the same vein the work
on the Negro’s legal status has been focused upon the specific disabilities of the Negro
under the law. Negro education has likewise been studied under the main viewpoint of
discrimination. The same is true of the research on the Negro as a breadwinner. Negro
standards of living have been compared with those of the whites. His share in social
welfare policy has been measured by the standards of equality. Discrimination has been
the key word for most studies on the Negro problem. This very term—and all its
synonyms and specifications—^and the theoretical approach which it signifies are derived
out of the precepts of the American Creed.
It has often been observed that these terms, and a great many other terms of more
general import for social research, as, for instance, class and caste, are all value-loaded.
Many scientists attempt to avoid what they rightly (as they are not specifying the value
premises involved) conceive of as biases by choosing new terms for the same things
which do not carry such apparent connotations of valuation. This attempt is in our
view misdirected. Biases are not so easily eradicated. And in this case they signify
though in a concealed and therefore uncontrollable way—^valuations necessary for the
setting of scientific problems. “Without valuations,” Professor Louis WIrth writes,
* See, for example, Chapter 23, Section 6.
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
