摘要：If the hallmark of a great paper is that whenever you return to it, it speaksdirectly and wisely to current concerns, then Egon Bittner’s ‘Objectivity andRealism in Sociology’ is a truly great paper. In a few brief but perceptive paragraphs,Bittner predicts the course of the very contemporary (and still unresolved)debate over the need for reflexivity in ethnographic field research and diagnosedthe sources of much wider ranging confusions which have arisen from treating thepolarity of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ as constituting an essential problematic forsociology. In particular, he points to the way in which the adoption of a certainattitude to ‘qualitative method’, one he calls an ‘abortive phenomenology’ (Bittner1973: 123), could well have as distorting an effect on the understanding of sociallife as does an acceptance of positivist doctrines/dogmas. This attitude will, hesuggests, culminate in laudable and brave attempts to forge new methods basedon a rejection of positivism. But, as he acutely observes
