Strategies for Queering Quantitative Social Science Research

Heteronormativity is rampant in the quantitative social sciences, including the political sciences. At the root is the fact that quantitative research has a claim on objectivity more than any other method of research – qualitative or theoretical. Even though most scientists are aware that full objectivity cannot be achieved, the attempt to create as much distance as possible between researcher and research subject by using standardized statistical research methods implicitly carries heavy claims on objectivity. Since most research continues to be conducted from a white, middle-class heterosexual male perspective, their view, questions, methods, and categories are clad in this claim to objectivity. The distance to the subject, which supposedly lends legitimacy and universality to the research, will always be from the researcher to the subject, which is examined, named, and defined as other from the researcher. As such, quantitative social science, in particular, has been central to the perpetuation of science from one perspective and thereby has been reproducing and strengthening the marginalization of diverse perspectives in the social sciences. Can the quantitative social sciences then contribute to queering the field if it is so integral to cementing heteronormativity? In this contribution, I propose ways in which this reconciliation can take place. The relationship between quantitative social science and queer theory is a complicated one, fraught with past and present conflict. This contribution invites a conversation about ways to repair this relationship and move forward in mutual trust toward queering the quantitative social sciences.