Artikel

De besmettelijkheid van het odium: over respectabele en minder respectabele onderwerpen van wetenschappelijk onderzoek

---

Abstract

The contagiousness of odium : on respectable and less respectable subjects of scientific research - The linguistic relativity hypothesis states that the degree and the manner in which a phenomenon is socially debatable is limited by the collective evaluation of this phenomenon : the more negative the collective attitude towards a phenomenon, the more restrictions there will be on its thematization. The scientific community, too, does not escape the pressure of this sociological pattern : it succeeds only to a limited degree in making the cultural values, that dominate extra-scientific community life, a subordinate guide to its research options. Therefore, it is not surprising that scientific reflection on socially stigmatized subjects requires the individual researcher to overcome a certain inhibition. For the odium that weighs on these research subjects is contagious in that it infects the person who is doing such research. The form which individual resistance to it adopts is self censorhip : the researcher will consciously or unconsciously avoid an infected subject so as not to become infected himself by its thematization, with the odium that burdens such a subject. Basically, however, the scientific relevance criteria do not concern the subject as such but the questions which are formulated about that subject. What is considered socially the most futile subject may be meaningfully studied by the scientist if the study determines in which way the phenomenon in question is connected to what contextual data and how, in this connection, this phenomenon finds the reason for its existence of for its manner of existence. And a subject will be studied the more meaningfully as the contextual connection, which is delineated around it, is greater and thus also embraces other phenomena than what is strictly empirically studied. As an example, it is demonstrated how the study of something ’banal' like tattooing can indeed function as a lever for a knowledge production that far transcends the material object of study.

How to Cite:

Vandekerckhove, L., (1994) “De besmettelijkheid van het odium: over respectabele en minder respectabele onderwerpen van wetenschappelijk onderzoek”, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Wetenschappen 39(2), 127–141. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tvsw.95168