Reflexivity+(Banks)

Reflexivity usually refers to the inclusion of the researcher’s own influence on the researched subject. It is more generally defined as a bidirectional circular relationship between two objects. Examples of reflexivity include:
 * 1) A researcher offering meta-commentary on the possible publicity her subjects might receive after the publishing of her research.
 * 2) Giddens structuration theory is described largely as a series of reflexive relationships. The agency of individuals is constrained by structures that are constructed out of the agentic action of individuals.
 * 3) Studying scientists who are engaging in a public engagement activity based on the suggestions of previous work in public engagement with science literature.
 * 4) Making a request within the text of a wiki to replace one of these enumerated sentences with better examples of reflexivity.

=The Acceptance of Reflexivity= There are many different views about the appropriateness of reflexivity. In the 1980s, the big names in the field of Social Studies of Knowledge disagreed on the appropriateness of reflexivity in their work. Collins and Pinch, found it to be a “paralyzing influence on their practice”(Ashmore, 1989). Bloor, Mulkay and Barnes were accepting of the thesis, but did little to advocate or insist on its use in SSK methodology. Latour, Woolgar, and Mulkay were much stronger advocates for reflexivity, both in their own writing, and encouraging its use by others. Collins Bloor and Barnes are the founding writers of the Strong Programme, which contend that science is predicated on a shared understanding of what science is and how it is to be performed. Law and Latour are Actor-Network theorists. Practitioners of ANT claim that the scientists and engineers under study should be given considerable deference in how the world works. They focus on the relationships between human and nonhuman actors and do not address or problematize claims to knowledge or how knowledge-producers acquire their authority to claim legitimate expertise. For ANT practitioners, the production of knowledge is less important than the associations that make such production possible. Thus, they tend to give deference to the scientists, assuming they are engaging in a similar level of deference to their own subjects.

=Relativism and reflexivity= When Bloor advocated for a symmetry between accepted or rejected hypotheses, he meant that the sorting out of true and untrue should be the focus of research, not the starting point. In so doing, he invited others to recognize the same dynamic in their own work. If particle physicists are social constructing boundaries between true and false, so are sociologists. In the edited volume //Science as Practice and Culture,// Collins and Yearley claim that ANT and similar methodologies are playing a game of “epistemological chicken” when it comes to these high levels of deference and relativity. They argue that, “the social studies of science ought to erect meta-alternation as a principle, not treat it as a failing.” “Meta-alternation” refers to the ability of the researcher to switch between different modes of altering perceptions. This means recognizing how true statements are formed, but also recognizing what must be taken for granted in order to make such claims. Collins and Yearly claim that reflexivity prevent authors from making conclusions at best, at worst it hides authoritative claims in a disguise of inclusivity:

//“’New literary forms’ are an important part of this movement, since single authorship is taken to be one conventional method of constructing certainty. Reflexive texts often use ‘multivocality’ to avoid authority. Witty authors can write as though they were more than one person so as to prevent a text from reaching a conclusion; to each argument or rhetorical gambit there is always an answer or rhetorical counterplay. Eventually the dialogue peters out without coming to any conclusion. The absence of convergent argument draws ironic attention to the devices that are normally used to make conclusions come about… in the hands of less subtle authors, multivocality is merely a pernicious way of imposing authority, by making it seem as though everyone has been allowed a say, while the author retains control over the voices of opponents.”//

Traweek, in the last chapter of the same edited volume, gives the anthropologist’s perspective on reflexivity in science studies. Traweek, in a reflexive turn, describes the process of publishing interpretive anthropology on Japanese particle physicists. She says,

“…to my knowledge, no institution and no press has seen fit to hire me, promote, me, or publish my work without first getting the opinion of extremely prominent physicists. I hasten to remind you, Dear Reader, that physicists did not ask for this authority over my stories; it has been given to them by my senior colleagues in anthropology and science studies and by university presses.”

Reflexivity is built into Traweek’s work. Her style of writing is familiar, witty and conversational as she explains how puns and irony are the tools of marginal and underrepresented groups. These writing techniques bring together meanings that are typically kept apart or assumed to be different. By bringing disparate ideas together, as she does in her own work, Traweek shows how one can make a strong argument from a relatively weak position.

=Reflexivity and Limits= In many ways, reflexivity is a kind of recursion. This can be seen in one of two ways. It can be considered a weakness because it does not bring the reader (or the author) to somewhere new. The argument can only describe a process, it cannot explain how we got there, or bring us anywhere that is new. As Collins and Yearley warn, such a looping mechanism can lead us on a long journey only to conclude nothing at all. But for Woolgar (as cited by Collins and Yearley), getting nowhere should be considered a success. To run up against such an immovable object, demands that we consider whether or not we have reached the limits of knowledge, both in a theoretical as well as in a methodological sense. Just as it is essential for physicists to know that the act of observing a photon changes its behavior, so must social scientists be aware of their own influence on their interlocutors. If we cannot reach certainty, it must be because we have reached the limits of certainty.