As used in ethnomethodology the term reflexivity means that an object or behavior and the description of this cannot be separated one from the other, rather they have a mirror-like relationship. Reflexivity and indexicality are properties of behavior, settings and talk which make the ongoing construction of social reality necessary. Both of these properties question the objectivity of accounts, descriptions, explanations, etc. Ethnographic description of a setting is reflexive in that the description seeks to explain features of a particular setting, like village life, but the setting itself is what is employed to make sense of the description.
On Reflexivity - Philip
Carl Salzman, Concepts: reflexivity, theorists and ethnographers, positionality
The value of reflexivity has been widely accepted in anthropology during the past two
decades. The concept of ref lexivity can be seen developing in the work of theorists and
ethnographers of the 1960s and 1970s and was brought to flower among theorists and
ethnographers of the 1980s and 1990s.
Varieties of Sociological Reflexivity - A View from Ethnomethodology - The thesis is concerned with delimiting two varieties of reflexivity, which I have called 'essential' reflexivity and 'stipulative' reflexivity. 'Essential' reflexivity is an incarnate feature of members accounts and their mutually elaborative relation to the circumstances they describe. 'Stipulative' reflexivity treats of members accounts as a resource among many others in the determination of a knowledge claim as a construction. Chapter two discusses the manner in which Garfinkel advocates 'essential' reflexivity as a feature of accounts which is uninteresting to members. However, it is important to note that reflexivity is an essential component of accounts and the circumstances they describe. 'Stipulative' reflexivity' employs a correspondence theory that may privilege analytic accounts of the world.
Against Reflexivity as an Academic Virtue and Source of Privileged Knowledge
- Lynch Theory Culture Society. 2000.
Nativist Cosmopolitans: Institutional Reflexivity and the Decline of
Double-Consciousness in American Nationalist Thought - Kaufmann E.
Abstract: Debate in the field of historical sociology
on the subject of American citizenship and nationality tends to support one of
two theories. This paper suggests that the nineteenth century popularity of
dualistic statements of American nationhood, and the eclipse of such conceptions
in the twentieth, is a complex sociological phenomenon that can only fully be
explained by taking into account the development of institutional reflexivity in
the United States.
Religious reflexivity and transmissive frequency
Abstract: The extent to which religious rituals foster a reflexive stance is influenced by
transmissive frequency. Highly repetitive rituals may be reproduced on the basis of
largely implicit procedural knowledge, somewhat constraining spontaneous exegetical
reflection. Rare, climactic
rituals are reproduced via explicit procedural schemas, fostering a rich but gradual
process of exegetical reflection.
Left of Ethnomethodology: The Rise and Decline of Radical Reflexivity -
Melvin Pollner.
Abstract: The growing recognition of ethnomethodology has come at the expense of one of
its most original and promising initiatives, radical reflexivity. I describe the emergence and fall of radical reflexivity within
ethnomethodology, the processes contributing to its diminishing role, and the implications
of the decline. Because radical reflexivity breaches the taken-for-granted practices of
disciplines purporting to describe reality, it is a vital resource for ethnomethodology
and sociology generally.
Reflexivity and Narratives in Action Research: A Discursive Approach,
Monica Colombo.
Abstract: The paper offers an analysis of how narratives may be reflexively used at different stages of the research process as a tool to access the interpretative frameworks that actors use to construct their accounts of events and to make sense of their action.
A case study is briefly presented where reflexivity is used both to clarify how accounts are constructed and to allow different forms of knowledge to be developed by participants. Reflexivity is intended here as being inherently connected to action and as a part of the sense-making process in which both participants and the researcher are engaged.