Researching values with qualitative methods empathy, moral boundaries and the politics of research

Researching Values with
Qualitative Methods


For Debra


Researching Values with
Qualitative Methods
Empathy, Moral Boundaries and the
Politics of Research

Antje Bednarek-Gilland
The Social Sciences Institute of the Evangelical Church in Germany


© Antje Bednarek-Gilland 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
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Antje Bednarek-Gilland has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
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Bednarek-Gilland, Antje.
Researching values with qualitative methods : empathy, moral boundaries and the politics of
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pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4724-1929-3 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-4724-1930-9 (ebook) –
ISBN 978-1-4724-1931-6 (epub) 1. Values. 2. Social sciences – Research. 3. Qualitative
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Contents
Acknowledgementsvii
Introduction1
1

Values in the Social Sciences

5

2Empathy, Verstehen and Values

31

3

Moral Values and Qualitative Research

53

4

The Political Values of the Research Community

75

Conclusion: How to do Value-Sensitive Fieldwork

97

Bibliography109
Index121


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Acknowledgements

I am indebted to a number of people who assisted me during the research
for and the writing of this book. The initial inspiration to write it grew out
of my doctoral research at the University of Aberdeen. I want to thank
Andrea Anderson, Abdallah Baguma, James Camilleri and Jenny Grieve-Laing
at Aberdeen in particular for their good friendship and for sharing their
experiences of growing up and living in Scotland with me. Over many years, this
sharing in particular has helped me to become more aware of my own values
and opinions and how they relate to my experience. Lesley Hunt at Lincoln
University (NZ) who is a wonderful and passionate qualitative methods teacher
opened my eyes to the countless possible topics which can be researched using
qualitative methods. The impetus coming from her was later reinforced by Chris
Wright at Aberdeen – thank you both. Specific support for this book project
came from Markus Mühling, whose keen and critical interest has motivated
me to sharpen some of my arguments, and from Hans Joas, whose blanket
espousal of qualitative research on values gave me a great boost of confidence.
I also want to thank Neil Jordan at Ashgate whose support of this project was
instrumental in me seeing it through.
I could not have written this book without the steady and loving support
of my friends and family. Jacqui, Roxi, Jasmin and Verena – your belief in me
and my work means more to me than I can say. My husband David Andrew
Gilland has read the entire manuscript and engaged me in critical discussions
of many of the finer points in the argument, for which I am infinitely grateful,
all the more so since my working on this book really cut into our time together.
Lastly I want to thank my PhD supervisor and friend Debra Gimlin who has
nurtured me over many years with her intelligent and kind presence. Debra
laid the seed of trust in my abilities and this gave me the courage to tackle
interesting and challenging topics such as how we might be able to study values
using qualitative methods. I dedicate the book to her. The shortcomings of and
mistakes in the manuscript are of course mine and mine alone.

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Introduction
Values are ‘back on the sociological menu’. The editors of a special issue of
Current Sociology (March 2011) on the topic of values and culture claim that
‘interest in values and moral concern is growing’ (Bachika and Schulz, 2011,
p. 107). A range of publications in the Sociology of Morality (Honneth, 2007;
Hitlin and Vaisey, 2010b; Sayer, 2005; Lamont, 1992; Lamont, 2010; Sayer, 2011)
give further evidence to this development. Partly responsible for the resurgence
of interest in the sociological study of values is that values are ‘part of the
common-sense culture in which everyone lives’ (Wuthnow, 2008, p. 339) and
that this ‘common-sense culture’ is increasingly assuming centre stage in British
and American Sociology of Culture (Inglis, 2005; Alexander, 2003). Another
reason could lie in the fact that since the 1960s, western capitalist societies
have undergone dramatic cultural shifts entailing changed value-based outlooks
of large swathes of the population which have attracted scholarly curiosity
(Klages, 1988; Inglehart, 1977). A loss of values or the ‘weakening of their
binding force’ (Joas, 2000, p. 4) has been noted and piqued interest as to their
causes (e.g. Bellah et al., 1996; Putnam, 2000). At the same time, scholars in the
sociology and philosophy of emotions have begun to inquire into the seemingly
rather close ties between values and emotions (Flam, 2002; Landweer, 2009;
Nussbaum, 2013). Speaking of values in sociology, then, puts one in pretty
good company.
But it is not so simple to speak of values as a qualitative sociologist. To the
contrary; qualitative sociologists usually have very little to say on the topic. A
few years ago, after I had just finished giving a paper on my all-but completed
PhD thesis which looked at the role of values in Conservative politics and which
was based on ethnographic fieldwork, I was told by the professor who chaired

the session: ‘If I were you, I would get rid of the term ‘values’ altogether. This
is such an outdated topic. Could you not speak about attitudes or preferences
instead?’ A few months later I passed my final oral examination and was allowed
to submit my thesis to the university library and archives without any further
corrections. Who was right: the professor who told me to get rid of values
or the examiners who had read my entire work on values and approved of
it? I wanted to believe in the second team but was quite shaken by the strong
rejection of my work at face value (no pun intended), i.e. simply because it
focused on values. I could not understand what it was with this concept which
repulsed not only this one scholar, but others too (as I discovered by and by).
Values are part of the staple diet of social scientists, after all. They are one third


Researching Values with Qualitative Methods

of that much-used triad ‘values, beliefs and attitudes’ which we like to employ so
often when we describe research populations and cultures. But trying to come
to terms with others’ rejection to the sociological study of values I realised that
even after some years of working on and with values I was not able to say, on
the spot and in a convincing manner, what precisely the differences are between
values, beliefs and attitudes and why it does make a difference to speak of values.
This was the point when I became interested in and intrigued about values, in
what we mean when we use the term and what it means conceptually in the
social sciences.
Some time passed and further discussions with sociologists, philosophers
and theologians convinced me that the tension between my two formative
experiences, one positive, one negative, disguises a general problem between
the social sciences and the humanities. The world of knowledge and the
associated fields of knowledge production can roughly be separated into those
scholars who embrace the fact–value distinction and those who don’t. Many of

those who believe that facts and values can be analytically separated from one
another work in the natural sciences and in the social sciences, whereas many
of those who reject the possibility of disentanglement of facts from values
work in the arts and humanities. The social scientific study of values which is
mostly carried out in political science or political sociology measures the degree
of commitment to a preconceived value (such as gender equality, social justice,
etc.). It is premised on a positivistic, modernist framework whereby, under the
influence of specific social and material influences, certain value commitments
are formed as civilisation advances. Ronald Inglehart’s work is paradigmatic for
this (Inglehart, 1977; Inglehart, 1990; Inglehart and Norris, 2003). This kind of
values research treats values as facts which exist in correlation to certain social
and political structures. In contradistinction to this, I believed that values could
be studied not as facts but as values, meaning I did not think that they are mere
indicators of something else.
I had chosen a qualitative design for my doctoral study and wanted to see
how values are spoken of, how individuals explain to themselves and others
the origin of their values and in which ways their values relate to those of the
political organisation they are part of. Knowing that some of the explanations
we use in our daily work are ‘nothing-but’ explanations – as in ‘his being
Conservative is nothing but an expression of his class position’ or ‘her believing
in gender equality is nothing but a form of penis envy’ – and by this token are
rather reductionistic, I had set out to find out what values mean to people. I also
wanted to find out which of our explanations, at close inspection, are nothingbut explanations, and I pursued both goals with qualitative methods, in this case
with participant observation and semi-structured interviews.
This was something new, for values, even in the recent renaissance in the
sociology of values, are not studied using qualitative methods. It not being
2


introduction

done, however, does not mean that it cannot be done. I believe that we can study
values using a variety of qualitative research methods. Qualitative research
means pursuing a topic with the goal to gather as much material as possible on
the thoughts, feelings, motivations, opinions and attitudes of those who have
daily experience with it and to then attempt to reconstruct people’s meanings
with the help of the material. Such reconstructive research does not only help
us understand the specific setting and group under study, but also wider social
structures and processes.
Studies carried out over a longer period of time and in close proximity
with the research participants are usually referred to as ‘ethnographic’ or
fieldwork studies. They are common across the social sciences, particularly so
in anthropology, sociology and cultural studies. A plethora of different kinds
of material can be collected during fieldwork stays; in fact, there is little material
which cannot be collected and used in qualitative research; how much sense
collecting specific kinds of materials makes always depends on the specific
research question at hand. Due to the openness of qualitative methods, I
tend to believe that they are the best antidote we have against reductionistic
knowledge production. The richness of the material we collect would allow us
in most instances to give complex answers to the questions which concern us.
Even so, when it comes to qualitative values research, there is no established
procedure of how to do it, and I therefore struggled when I plunged into my
research on values. As it was a rewarding experience and interesting research
project anyway, I decided to think through the project conceptually so as to
understand better how qualitative values research might be done properly. This
is the question I am focusing on in this book. In my public research activities
up to now I have not had the chance to address the many instances in which
the concepts I wanted to use to make sense of my data and the procedures I
read about as being part of carrying out fieldwork evinced an obvious lack of
fit to what I experienced myself during my fieldwork on values. I never spoke

about my doubts to anyone because I was only dimly aware of having them. In
the end, I was inspired to dig deeper into values by the silenced incongruities
which I felt had marked my research experience and the odd reaction to valuesrelated research by other scholars, and this book is the final result of my mining
activities. Other qualitative researchers working on values may encounter similar
incongruities as I did in the course of my work, or struggle with some of the
issues I struggled with for example in regards to empathy, moral boundaries and
political values during the fieldwork. This book will hopefully be a helpful little
companion for these fieldworkers.
My overall argument is twofold. Firstly and almost as a prerequisite to
values studies, we as sociologists need to take emotional and moral concerns
into account in how we conceive of our tasks, theorise about our methods
and conduct fieldwork. Sociology needs to become a more ethical discipline.
3


Researching Values with Qualitative Methods

This is not a new point; Zygmunt Bauman called for attention to be paid to
morality in Modernity and the Holocaust (Bauman, 1989) already, and Andrew Sayer
put forward a brilliant argument for an ethical social science in his Why Things
Matter to People (Sayer, 2011). I see many connections between these demands
and the possibilities which qualitative research methods grant us. My second
argumentative point is, therefore, that qualitative values research can be one
step towards sensitising our work to ethical perspectives.
The argument of this book proceeds from theoretical to practical matters.
I commence the discussion in Chapter 1 by looking at how values have been
defined in the social sciences so far, and I then construct a definition of values
which takes into account philosophical and ethical arguments and works well
in qualitative research settings. I define values as those states of being which
matter to us and which we care about transsituatively and transsubjectively. I

explain precisely what I mean by that in the second half of Chapter 1. Having
thus set the scene conceptually, Chapters 2, 3 and 4 deal with specific issues
which I think may be perceived as stumbling blocks to studying values with
qualitative methods. These issues revolve around our understanding of the role
of empathy and Verstehen in qualitative research (Chapter 2), the influence of
moral boundaries on how we conceptualise research projects and carry out
fieldwork (Chapter 3) and the importance of political values in qualitative
research (Chapter 4). Whilst I am predominantly arguing for the possibility of
qualitative values research, the conceptual issues which I discuss in relation to
this very practice-focused programme will hopefully be found useful for novice
and seasoned fieldworkers alike, and for scholars with research interests which
are only distally related to values as such.
What I am formulating in this book is a proposal for a research programme
which, in order to meet its self-declared goal to study values using qualitative
methods, would have to clarify some other issues first. We need conceptual
clarity on important epistemological terms such as empathy, understanding/
Verstehen, rapport or partisanship, and we also need a more solid connection
between the concepts we use to describe qualitative research and the practices
we employ in the course of it. This applies generally and not only in relation to
values research. In other words, there are ways in which our current research
practice could be improved, be it through slight changes in procedures or
simply through a more cogent way of arguing for specific approaches. The
chosen method for improvement which I found useful is trying to find a way
to become aware of some of those aspects which we normally take for granted
and examine them thoroughly. This is what I do in the following pages.

4


Chapter 1

Values in the Social Sciences
Values are an integral part of our everyday lives. Most people would admit that
values are important to them and that having values is valuable in and of itself
(cf. Wuthnow, 2008). Yet at the same time, values are abstract things which it
is difficult to talk about with any degree of specificity (Hechter, 1992). Not
many people can, when prompted, instantly provide a list of the values they
themselves hold. And yet, when some of our cherished values are at stake,
we know it instantly and we rise to the challenge. Some people place central
importance on some values, e.g. moral values or political values. For some, their
values form the basis of who they are in their own eyes, for others values
subjectively don’t matter as much as does good behaviour or the ‘right attitude’.
Notwithstanding this diversity, provided we would find a way to become aware
of our values, the list each one of us would compile might not necessarily mark
us out from our peers. In vital respects, our lists would be quite similar: honesty,
openness, patience, kindness, diligence, ambition, courage, justice – these and
similar values or virtues would most likely appear on all our lists.
Values, valued character traits and moral virtues are terms which seem to
refer to the same things a lot of the time, and all of these we usually have a
hard time becoming aware of. In part, this is because in everyday life, a range
of values or things that are valuable play a role simultaneously, so it is not easy
to tell exactly which values are involved in specific situations. Furthermore,
the term ‘values’ is used in a variety of ways, so when talking about values,
regardless of substantive differences (e.g. I value honesty a bit less highly than
my neighbour because I realise that it is necessary to lie sometimes), what I
think of as values may be slightly different from what the next person considers
values to be. Values are often bunched up with evaluations and judgements, too.
The values we have impact quite strongly on how we evaluate other people’s
actions and, in fact, in how we evaluate their values. Speaking of values, then,
can be related to personal and social identity issues, to the ethical and moral

sphere, and values can relate to ideas, actions, persons and groups.
The main task of this chapter is to navigate through this multi-faceted arena
in such a way that we come out with a workable definition of what values are
and of how we might conceivably study them as qualitative fieldworkers.1 In
1  A note on terminology: I use the terms ‘qualitative researcher’ and ‘fieldworker’
interchangeably. When I speak of ‘scholars’ or ‘researchers’ I tend to also mean those


Researching Values with Qualitative Methods

the first part of the chapter I proceed with a brief overview of the history of
the concept of values which will summarise how values can be and have been
thought about by social scientists up to this point. A point of especial interest
is the origin of our values which I will look at in some more detail. Concluding
that experience plays a vital role in the formation of values, I then move on to
develop an understanding of what kinds of experiences it is that we value and
why that this so. This will take us into the ‘world of concern’. I then propose
that values are the things that matter to people (1) in specific situations as well
as transsituatively and (2) personally as well as socially, or transsubjectively.
In the second part of the chapter I discuss qualitative research methods in
relation to values. I start the discussion here with a reflection on the notion
of value-freedom and the role of values in qualitative research as it tends to
be practiced today. I am mostly focusing on sociological qualitative research
in the UK as this is the field I know best, albeit many of the points I raise will
also apply to research practice in other parts of the English-speaking world.
My starting point here is the question what it is we might mean by Verstehen,
which is a crucial concept in qualitative research. I then argue that the main
problem we as qualitative researchers have with values is that we embrace the
notion that full understanding is only possible on the basis of enormous value
congruence between the researcher and the researched. This makes it difficult

to study values as such, and in the open-minded manner required of qualitative
research in particular.
The Concept of Values in Sociology

Trying to understand what values are inevitably leads into the philosophical
discourse on the topic. Values are predominantly a topic of ethics, i.e. of that
branch of philosophy which inquires into good or bad action, and of axiology
which is the philosophical discipline which explicitly deals with questions
of values.2 Philosophers, generally speaking, ‘seek to justify and criticise the
judgments we make when faced with moral issues. They debate with one
another, at different levels, about the question: what is the right way to reach
correct or objective or the best-justified moral judgments’ (Lukes, 2010, p. 549).

who work empirically but I don’t specify this in every instance. ‘Qualitative research’ to
me tends to be ethnographic research involving fieldwork of longer duration which is
why I like the term ‘fieldworker’.
2  From Greek, ‘axios’ = ‘worthy’, ‘logos’ = ‘science’.
6


Values in the Social Sciences

Depending on how open these kinds of debates are to actual action and social
facts, they are more or less adaptable for sociological debates.3
The origin of the concept of value

The core idea of the concept of values has always been this: that they relate to
‘the good’. In philosophy, ‘the good’ denotes goodness itself as a transcendental
quality of things, i.e. a quality which does not lie in or emanate from the material
qualities of the thing under investigation. It is therefore called a ‘transcendental’.

‘The good’ is one of three transcendentals, the remaining two being ‘the true’
and ‘the beautiful’.
In pre-Enlightenment philosophy, the good was part of all being without,
however, becoming depleted in being as such. It could not be ‘used up’, as
it were, as there is always an excess of goodness which could not even be
comprehended by humans. In this conception the good coincides with the other
two transcendentals in God’s creation. This connection can best be understood
in this sentence: Being is divinely given, beautiful and true, and because God
intends it to be this way it is also good. The way things ought to be, so this premodern conception goes, can be known simply from observing and learning
what things are like right now. This is what is meant when philosophers say that
an Ought derives from an Is. Ontology and epistemology are conflated in this
philosophical tradition.
Following the Enlightenment, disillusionment with religion and its
concomitant championing of rationality in science, the ontological and
epistemological unity between the true, the good and the beautiful began to
dissolve. The new path to knowledge lay in scientific experiments and their
empirical observation. As for an empiricist it is quite clear that not all being
is good, the connection between the good and being in particular came under
heavy attack. By the middle of the nineteenth century, it had crumbled away
entirely. Being was then thought the subject matter of ontology (‘theory of
being’), and its exclusive ‘data’ were observable facts. Yet considering society
and social processes, the idea of the uncircumventable origin and purpose,
or ‘telos’ in Greek, of all being which had previously been so strong was not
surrendered completely straight away. Instead, the divine source (God) was
replaced by another source which seemed to be able to provide transcendental
order as if by an ‘invisible hand’, and this other source was the market.

3  I can recommend two texts which I found very helpful since they bridge the
chasm between philosophy and sociology: Andrew Sayer’s Why Things Matter to People
(2011) and, for a briefer and more focused introduction pertaining to values, Davydova

and Sharrock (2003) on the fact/value distinction in the social sciences.
7


Researching Values with Qualitative Methods

In the nineteenth century, the term ‘market’ was used in a more encompassing
manner than we use it today and referred to the various interchanges and
ordered relationships between people. It was generally thought at the time that
markets provide order, and since order has always been connected with the
idea of beauty and therefore truth markets were thought to be good (Vobruba,
2009, pp. 23–4). In other words, the connection between Is (how things were)
and Ought (how they should be) was maintained in market relationships. The
term ‘value’, appropriated from the new discipline of economics in the early
nineteenth century, came to express this novel, non-empirical connection to the
good. Things were no longer ‘good’, they were ‘of value’ or possessed a specific
value to someone. The concept of values, then, emerged right at the transition
from pre-modernity to modernity.
From the perspective of modern science, the good was by and by perceived
as removed and unempirical, as making its presence felt in irrational judgements
and irrelevant personal evaluations (Schnädelbach, 1983, pp. 219–22). Two
consequences of this dissociation between being and the good were: the insight
that values are held by individuals each in their own way, i.e. the subjectivisation
of values (Joas, 2000), and the fact–value distinction which is at the root of
the modern conception of social science. Values are thereby considered as
both distinct and distinguishable from facts and opposed to reason. In the
modernist version of science, this delegitimises values as factors playing a role
in science. (True) facts are the desirables scientists are after, and they are to be
discovered by scholar-explorers through the use of experiment and observation
(Jovanović, 2011). Consequently, values are to be avoided as those irrelevances

which contaminate the purity of the scientific endeavour.
In the social sciences, Max Weber in particular is credited (albeit falsely) with
having created the expectation that value-freedom is an especial characteristic
of scientificity, and this reading of Weber, promulgated by Talcott Parsons
among others (Spates, 1983), is partially to be held accountable for the dearth
of sociological scholarship on values. But not only sociologists dropped the
subject for a long time; there are philosophers, too, who regard every mentioning
of values with the suspicion that an ideological agenda of some kind is being
pushed (e.g. Schnädelbach, 1983) or who believe that speaking of values is a
sign of misguided thinking because what we actually mean or should mean
when we say ‘values’ are our preferences, attitudes or desires.
This points us to an interesting question: Leaving aside scholars’ quibbles
about the meaning of the term ‘values’ for a moment, what do lay people mean
when they speak of values? For sociologists who use qualitative methods
to study values, this question might easily lead to people’s lay subjectivity,
suggesting that we might ask people about their values, interpret what they say
and build up an understanding of what they are in this way. In order for this
to work, however, we still need to have a rough understanding of what we are
8


Values in the Social Sciences

looking for in what people tell us. The notion that values are connected to the
good or to ideas of what is desirable has been used by anthropologists around
Talcott Parsons (e.g. Kluckhohn, 1951) and by Parsons himself (Parsons and
Shils, 1951). It is one of the things which we might now look for in what people
are saying. Our guiding question then might be ‘what constitutes the good for
people?’ Another question which I think tends to be very helpful when I try to
understand something is ‘where and how did it start?’ Where do values come

from, or how do we come to hold the values we hold?
The social origin of values4

It should be clear, first of all, that we don’t create values ourselves. Notions
of what is considered good, be it in terms of moral character or how we act
towards our fellow humans, i.e. ethics, usually precede us in our culture at large.
Indeed, we could go as far as saying that ‘I can have the feeling that “X is good”
only if have the feeling simultaneously that the other man [sic] should feel
and think in the same way’ (Boudon, 2013, p. 10). In other words, values are
inherently relational or social constructs. Asking how values arise is therefore
always the question for how a specific individual came by their values rather
than how values generally come into being.
In the following section I want to first focus on what I believe are the most
common threads in how we tend to theorise the origin of values. Violently
condensing several theories I summarise the axiomatic beliefs they share
as follows:
• that values are adopted because they fulfil a useful psycho-social function
• that values are passively inculcated during primary socialisation
• that once inculcated, value orientations cannot change.

As I will point out, values are commonly spoken of as being determined and
fixed by certain factors and circumstances. The vital impact which experiential
life has on the formation of new values and the transformation of old ones

4  The diversity of explanations concerning the origin of values is truly fascinating,
and for those who would like to read more on this I can recommend two key texts.
Hans Joas’ The Genesis of Values (2000) provides a superb overview of a wide array of
both classical as well as contemporary theories. Joas, who is a neopragmatist, offers a
theory of values which accords action a central place. Raymond Boudon, in his Origin
of Values (2013), focuses on the often misunderstood role of rational thought in how

we adopt values. This is helpful as Boudon deconstructs the philosophical grounding
of the fact–value distinction.
9


Researching Values with Qualitative Methods

is rarely taken into account. This is a shortcoming which I will subsequently
address and develop further.
Values are adopted because they fulfil a useful psycho-social function. The basic
conception for all sociological or quasi-sociological theories of values is that we
are social beings who are embedded in social groups on whose acceptance we
depend to no small degree. Some conceptions present the genesis of values as
a response to group life. There are two versions of this, and a common thrust
in both is that similarities in how people live result in the same values because
people are subject to the same psychological influences.
In the first version we have the values we have because we belong to a
specific group or class. Values are tied to material and cultural factors which
group members are equally exposed to and seemingly respond to in a similar
fashion (Abramson and Inglehart, 1995; Inglehart and Norris, 2003). For
everyone in these groups/classes having the same set of values fulfils the same
psycho-social function (e.g. of appeasement or in terms of justifying modes
of existence). The lower classes rejecting decorum, propriety and achievement
values, for instance, can be viewed as a response to their socio-economic
position. What they are actually rejecting are the values of the upper classes
whose status and wealth they envy, and the oppositional values they embrace
allow them to express their anger towards the upper classes (Nietzsche, 2013
[1887]). The values we have bind us to the group we belong to, and although we
might identify a transcendental source to our values (e.g. God), by believing in
and fighting for our values we ultimately preserve the social conditions we are

currently living in (Durkheim, 2012 [1912]). This is, in fact, the main function
of values (Parsons and Shils, 1951).
In the second version the focus is on individual actors who are depicted as
desiring their values to be congruent with the values of their main reference
group because it fulfils a desire for cognitive orderliness (Kluckhohn, 1951;
Parsons and Shils, 1951). This tendency grows the stronger the more they aim
to climb up the hierarchy existing within specific fields within the reference
group for which it is necessary to display the values of the group as one’s
own (Bourdieu, 1984; Bourdieu, 1996; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1979). The basic
assumption here is that conformity to group values is prized. Value systems, as
they are reproduced perpetually, are therefore largely stable and calculable, and
any kind of unintended (i.e. unpredicted or unpredictable) consequences are
considered ‘malfunctions’.
Values are passively inculcated during primary socialisation. As children grow up,
they by and by are socialised to behave like members of their society, and
adopting specific values is part of that. The family setting is the foremost place
in which primary socialisation takes place. It is characterised to a large degree
by routine and habitual processes, so we cannot pinpoint particularly significant
parental actions when it comes to imparting values. Myriad reprimands,
10


Values in the Social Sciences

expressed expectations, acts of coaxing, praising and behaving lovingly or
coldly towards the child form part of the primary socialising influences in the
family. Primary socialisation truly is ‘performed within the family from the
earliest days of life’ (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 59), its influence being imperceptibly
inscribed in the offspring generation. Regardless of our own intentions on the
topic, our parents’ values make an imprint on our own values. When reflected

upon at a later point, e.g. in adolescence, our values are experienced as natural,
objective givens.
This notion of the origin of values occurring passively is very widespread.
In it, values are simply part of the cultural capital that children internalize from
their parents (Gecas, 2008, p. 347) ‘without that process appearing in what we
term consciousness’ (Mead, 1934, p. 193). Saying that values are ‘adopted’ is
therefore technically wrong: rather, they are assimilated passively without the
individual having any choice in the matter (Joas, 2000, p. 5). It is not the case
that a value-object is first perceived, then reflected upon, the concomitant valuefeeling emerging in the process.5 Instead, it is always already there.
Once inculcated, value orientations cannot change. As primary socialisation is a
form of ‘imperceptible learning’ that is ‘total’ in its effect on the individual, its
influence cannot be overruled (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 59). The values we adopt as
we grow up form lasting dispositions which we cannot rid ourselves of even if
we wanted to because, say, some of the values are, upon reflection, detrimental
to reaching some of the goals we set for ourselves. Embracing the value of
openness without discernment, for instance, can be a career obstacle in highly
competitive environments in which colleagues use information against one
another. In this particular setting, we might by and by learn to be less chatty
and trusting but we ultimately would not value openness any less in principle –
because value commitments don’t change. The process of value acquisition
through socialisation is therefore often described as irreversible.6 A person
who has been nurtured to glorify acts of violence, for example, cannot be
‘re-socialised’ except through extensive and costly therapy; entire societies, e.g.
conflict societies, however, cannot be re-socialised. Values are not under our
control. This conviction also underpins most of the research that, directly or
indirectly, illuminates the intersection between culture and values (e.g. Klatch,
1999; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1979; Bourdieu, 1984).

5  This argument could partially be sustained with reference to anthropological
research. Like the majority of animals we know, ‘humans probably have a propensity

to learn preferentially from their parents, and so moral precepts are passed down the
generations’ (Hinde, 2007, p. 22). But this doesn’t exhaust everything there is to say
about the origin of values.
6  Particularly so by critical theorists.
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Researching Values with Qualitative Methods

We know that values are lasting and comparatively firm (and quite abstract)
dispositions; this is what distinguishes them from (mere) attitudes which refer
to specific objects or persons and are thus subject to fluctuations much more
than values are (Maio et al., 2003). However, this does not mean that we need
to be worried about there not being a chance for ‘re-socialisation’, i.e. of
change of values. After all, it is not the case that values, much like a script,
force the individual to certain actions. This is where we need to distinguish
values from norms. Norms usually formulate prescriptions, as in ‘thou shalt
not covet thy neighbour’s wife’. As social sanctions follow from violating
norms, this normative commandment does represent a script whereas the value
of faithfulness does not.7 Faithfulness is a lot more general and abstract than
‘thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife’ and, although being a principle
which might guide one in certain situations, it does not suggest explicit actions.
Because values are important for us at a higher level of generality they don’t
come with instructions for use. It often appears as if this was the main reason
why behavioural scientists experience high degrees of frustration when trying
to theoretically model the role of values in social life.
It is important to recognise that feeling states and values are closely connected,
and it is equally important to note that there is a biological foundation to having
values. We might call this a ‘species sense of values’, as the philosopher Max
Scheler did (Joas, 2000), or we might simply observe that we are beings who are

capable of valuing and evaluating (Sayer, 2011). These notions are fundamental
building blocks for my own definition of values which I lay out more fully
below. What irks me in the above summary of how values arise is that the
anthropological convictions which undergird so many theories of values don’t
take heed of the fact that:
• Not many things we do stem from conscious calculations, be it a cost-

benefit calculation or one of a different kind, undertaken for our
psychological benefit or other reasons.8
• At the same time, we are not exclusively passive recipients of cultural
influences, values being one of them.

7  This is not to say that faithfulness to one’s marital spouse is not a norm. The
general expectation is, I believe, that spouses are faithful to one another. When they are
not, however, they are no longer shunned by their community as Hester Prynne was in
Nathaniel Hawthorn’s The Scarlett Letter, and it is in this sense that I would not regard
it as a norm.
8  Boudon (2003) refutes this notion masterfully and with respect to how we can
think of rationality in a more practise-focused way.
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Values in the Social Sciences

• The material conditions pertaining during childhood do have an

influence on the kinds of values we will possess as adults but they don’t
determine them.
• There is always potential for change – of values, too – through
creative action.

The individual’s subjective point of view is missing from the above account,
value formation therefore either being reduced to a universally obtaining rational
principle (as in ‘these values serve the interest of all individuals belonging to
population x’) or a kind of osmotic process in which cultural or group values
are automatically absorbed once and for all by the passive individual-as-sponge.
Both versions describe processes from the spectator’s objective point of view
and thus ignore the experiencer’s subjective point of view. For qualitative
researchers wishing to reconstruct people’s subjectivities, this is often irksome
as there seems to be a large chunk of relevant material missing. Reading the
literature on values I, for one, often wonder: ‘What do the individual valueholders have to say on this? Would they agree with this analysis?’
I believe that, first of all, it makes sense to think of values from the point of
view of the individual actor. Individual lay people can justifiably be considered
experts on the values they hold, on how they came by them and on how and at
what times their values play especially important roles in everyday life. This is
true even though lay people cannot use the language of philosophy to describe
values in the ‘right’ way; they use the ordinary language of experience which
we all know. The task of the researcher is to collect material which elaborates
themes that are likely to involve values and evaluation. Secondly, individual
actors are statistically more likely to be ordinary, non-academic lay persons, and
it is therefore apposite to try and understand values in a way which does justice
to lay rather than intellectual normativity (Sayer, 2011). Albeit the scholarly
account often describes lay people as going about their lives unthinkingly and
largely passively, implying that there might be groups of people who function
according to completely different rules and who are, as a result, a lot more
active and reflective (scholars and intellectuals?), it predominantly is the case
that life is constituted through actions, some of which are habitual and others
which are creative and require reflection. People generally try to go about their
everyday lives successfully, which means in this context that the habits and
routines of everyday life remain intact and working. This applies universally,
i.e. to scholars and lay people alike. Creativity is ‘forced’ in situations in which

habitual action is insufficient (Joas, 1996). Such situations represent specific
action-related problems which disrupt the normal way of life.
Most of the time, and rather imperceptibly too, we simply aim to live a good
life, i.e. what we consider good under normal circumstances. We know what
is good not predominantly from cultural absorption as in the sponge model,
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Researching Values with Qualitative Methods

although absorption undoubtedly also occurs, but from first-hand experience,
past as well as present. These experiences form part of our (cognitive) memory
and they are also inscribed in our bodies as we remember which experiences
enhanced our well-being and which did not. We therefore form values rationally
and for a reason but that reason is not an abstract calculation (Boudon, 2003);
rather, it is an insight gained through experience, just like ‘someone who has
known both respect and disrespect and the hurt caused by the latter may come
to believe that being respectful matters a great deal’ (Sayer, 2011, p. 26). I could
not think that being treated respectfully is only desirable for me personally
whilst other people may well be treated abominably for no particular reason.
I would tend to think that respect is a value for everyone because it would be
better if that were the case, and the starting point to this is that I know it to be
better from my own experience. In other words, experience is the main agent in
the genesis of values (James, 1961 [1902]). From our individual perspective, ‘the
object which should be desired (valued), does not descend out of the a priori
blue nor descend as an imperative from a moral Mount Sinai’ (Dewey, 1966
[1939], p. 32). It ‘descends from’ and emerges out of experience.
This is a largely action-focused, pragmatist position. Hans Joas (2000) who
approaches the origin of values from a pragmatist perspective argues that the
kinds of situations which lend themselves to value formation usually affect

the experiencer in such a way that she learns something new about herself.
This is the first major insight Joas states on the subject. The second insight
is that experiences which give rise to values entail a matter of import which
transcends the self, i.e. which is either important to other people as well or
which transgresses the boundaries of our physical one-ness.9 Combining these
basic insights Joas proposes that ‘values arise in experiences of self-formation
and self-transcendence’ (Joas, 2000, p. 1). This definition suggests focusing
empirical inquiries into value formation on two specific kinds of experiences.
The World of Concern

Saying that values arise out of experience only works on the back of assuming
that, qua being humans, we care about the content of experiences. This is
something we know to be true; due to our passional natures we care about
what happens to us and to others. Experience does not only entail action on the
part of the experiencer, or ‘doings’, it also entails physical and mental suffering.
Experience is ‘an affair of facilitations and checks, of being sustained and
9  Both ecstatic moments such as Durkheim’s (2012 [1912]) ‘collective effervescence’
as well as acts of extreme violence can be counted as experiences which permeate the
boundaries of the self (Joas, 2003).
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Values in the Social Sciences

disrupted, being let alone, being helped and troubled, of good fortune and
defeat ‘ (Dewey, 2011 [1917], p. 115). Whether a situation confronts us with one
side or the other in the above binary pairs is not a matter of indifference to us.
We suffer when we are troubled and in need of help which is not forthcoming,
and we bodily and embodiedly know the sting of defeat when we expected
good fortune. This is what I mean when I say that we care about the kinds of

experiences we make due to our passional natures.
Suffering and defeat indelibly belong to our lives. Coming up against
obstacles in how we carry out action time and time again impresses upon us
our fragility and vulnerability opposite the world. Thus, we may not be able to
satisfy even our most basic needs or act on what we think would be the best
course of action in a given situation, and whenever either happens we realise
that, qua being human, we are needy and dependent creatures (Sayer, 2011,
pp. 139–42). What we consider the good cannot be attained 100 per cent of the
time, and whether or not we attain the good matters to us. It makes a qualitative
difference to our lives as we feel the absence of the good in a negative way. Our
relation to the world is therefore primarily one of concern.
Saying that values arise in specific situations and that we are concerned
about realising them could be interpreted as meaning that each and every one
of us has their own values and that values, furthermore, are best understood
when operating with the assumption that human beings are inherently
individualistic animals. This is not what I mean. First of all, if we believe
that even our innermost psychological core, our self, is socially constituted,
as George Herbert Mead (1934) argues, then most individualistic explanations
always seem strangely aberrant. It simply does not make sense to speak of our
concerns as an exclusively individual or personal matter when the very way we
cognitively conceive of our being depends on others. But we are also inherently
dependent animals in a very practical way since for most of our plans to come
to fruition we need the help of others in some shape or form. And there is yet
another way in which our concerns are not individual matters: they are selftranscendent insofar as we care for things other than ourselves, and they are
social insofar as other people, institutional boundaries and material constraints
can prevent our flourishing (Nussbaum and Sen, 1993). From the perspective
of the state, for instance, taking the wellbeing of individual persons seriously
would mean creating the structures which would allow everyone to unfold
their capabilities through being able to develop practical reason, establish
relationships with other people, obtain an education, express emotions, etc.

(Nussbaum, 2011).
When I say that we are all of us equally vulnerable and needy I don’t mean
that everyone is vulnerable in exactly the same way. Some vulnerabilities are
universal, of course; everyone is equally concerned about their bodily integrity
and wants to be ‘secure against violent assaults, including sexual assault and
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Researching Values with Qualitative Methods

domestic violence’ (Nussbaum, 2011, p. 33), and we would likewise assume that
most people are concerned about having a measure of control over their direct
environment (ibid., p. 34). Vulnerabilities are also highly subjective, however.
When I think of being vulnerable, I first of all think of it in terms of the things
which have happened to me alone, the experiences which I have not been able to
avoid, the mistakes which I unwittingly made, and the current problems I face in
achieving certain valuable ends or in confronting specific problematic situations
(cf. Landweer, 2009). Although it is true that we are generally vulnerable beings,
we have to also bear in mind that we become aware of this in specific situations
and for specific reasons in which we are not immediately able to cater for our
own needs. This realisation in and of itself is accompanied by the stinging sense
of how defenceless and powerless we often are. Our needs and whether they
are met is a constant matter of concern for us.
This ‘needs-based conception of social being’ (Sayer, 2011, p. 139) goes
somewhat toward explaining why we value and evaluate at all (in brief, because
we care); albeit that we do is an anthropological fact. It is also clear that we always
do both at once. We care about reaching certain goals which are important to
us, about being enabled and enabling others to develop in appreciable ways,
about how we are treated by others and about how we treat others ourselves.
We want to flourish and avoid suffering, and in order to know which is which

we need to evaluate. 10 Evaluation, in short, is the other side of the value coin.
It is on-going and never-ending, for everything that has meaning to us cannot
be thought of as devoid of values (Louch, 1969). From the perspective of one
who studies values it therefore does not make sense to talk about abstaining
from evaluative expressions or judgement. Neither can truly be achieved.
Emotions and values

Values directly relate to our concerns. Concern here means an interest in
bringing about states of being which we care about, which we are invested in
or have an interest in, or which we feel strongly about (Dewey, 1966 [1939];
Frankfurt, 1982; Nussbaum, 2001). Valuing is therefore always connected
with desiring that which we have through experience come to appreciate as
something that matters to us. The kind of desire that is involved is one that is
practically reasonable, meaning it relates to our embodied knowledge of what
constitutes well-being for us.
Emotions are an integral aspect of our passional being. Emotions register
at a basic dispositional level of our existence and relate to our experiences of
10  At least normally we do; Robert Dunn (2006) cautions against assuming a strict
determinism here, however, since what he calls ‘pathologies of the heart’ can always
deter us from actively pursuing our values.
16