Reflexivity+(Lyles)


 * Reflexivity** - In the study of science, the ability for a field to study to examine itself as a field of study is a keystone of a science that is trying to comment on the tools that it itself uses while commenting on the tools as they are used by other disciplines. This kind of awareness forces the study to loop back on itself to in an attempt to understand how the structure of what it is produces the understanding of what it is.

Another way to look at this is to say that reflexivity refers to the practice of actually referring to the self writing as a part of the construction of the thing being written about. For example, that there is a practice of writing at play that causes the author of this wiki entry to use certain words in english and with a particular kind of grammar as opposed to another entry that might use different grammar and come in a different language. Where the study of practice in science studies might bring attention to the actual things being done in the creation of knowledge, the attention to reflexivity asks how the study at hand is able to or is unable to see certain kinds of action.

This is a necessary move for science and technology studies if the goal is the provide some critique in terms of how to take the practice of science and technology reproduction in a different direction or towards a new path. The slice taken by Mike Fortun and Herbert Bernstien in //Muddling Through// when they say:

//“We may not know, now, what that something is. But we do know that to have a better shot at making that something, we will need scientists, engineers, and all other citizens capable of remaining the sciences along the lines we’ve outlined here: as experimental conglomerations of things, thoughts, and so much else, which literally make our world.”// (1998, p. 261)

Reflexivity then is a part of the production of agency that is located not merely in the individual subject, but in the coming together of individual (reflexive scientist/engineer/citizen), reflexive institution and practice that provide an awareness of more than just what is done, but in what non-intuitive directions the practice might be taken if so desired.


 * Authority**

Reflexivity poses a particular challenge to older forms of scientific authority because it poses a opportunity for alternative reading and critiques of that authority by showing how that authority constitutes itself. Sharon Traweek’s work in //Border Crossings: Narrative Strategies in Science Studies and among Physicists in Tsukuba Science City, Japan// attempts to give us a picture of that critique at multiple levels, first talking about the practice of doing knowledge making as an individual who is both crossing boarders and aware of where those boarders are:

//I am not completely naive. I know that in the social sciences we are usually expected to be scientists, collecting technical data by rigorous methods, making hypotheses and testing them, and communicating with colleagues in the proper forums in the proper way. I know that all this rigor and propriety and theoretical testimony ought to include as many numbers, mathematical symbols, and charts as possible; this sort of work is called quantitative, and the people who do it call everything else "qualitative," when they are being nice. In descending order of politeness, research which does not meet their own rhetorical criteria for science is called "case studies," "ethnographies," "anecdotal reports," or "journal- ism,I! none of which displays enough rigor and propriety and theoretical testimony.// (1992, pg. 432)

And also as a human being intermeshed in a system of knowledge where the agency is located at the level of institution. Traweek is still able to give us an account of a different kind of authority that has been established through the practice of making knowledge broadly instead of the actions of herself as an individual.

//Did you know that the analytic language of social and cultural anthropology developed in decidedly imperialist sites? The social times and the cultural sites where anthropologists work have also been occupied by armies, colonial administrators, and those missionaries of Western cosmologies, the peripatetic expeditions of scientists and Christians. The voice of authority, of totalization, of hegemony in the anthropology of social and cultural relations is not an accident, just as the same voice in physics and science studies is no accident, developing at home that voice of entitlement, the voice of control, that accompanies the conquest of empires far from home. We all need new words and new stories.// (1992, pg. 461//)//

The question of reflexivity can be approached from a number of directions and aim here is to give a practical example of what reflexivity looks like in effect. The various approaches to reflexivity have also been referred to as ethonomethology among other things.

Practice Power/Knowledge
 * See Also:**


 * References**

Sharon Traweek, "Border Crossings: Narrative Strategies in Science Studies and Among Physicists in Tsukuba Science CIty, Japan," pp. 429-465 in //Science as Practice and Culture//, ed. Andrew Pickering (University of Chicago Press, 1992). Malcolm Ashmore, "An Encyclopedia of Reflexivity and Knowledge," from //The Reflexive Thesis: Wrighting Sociology of Scientific Knowledge//(University of Chicago Press, 1989) Mike Fortun and Herbert J. Bernstein, //Muddling Through: Pursuing Science and Truths in the 21st Century// (Counterpoint Press, 1998)