ABSTRACT

The Reflexive Initiative is an authoritative intervention in the practice and tradition of reflexive social theory. It demonstrates the importance of the reflexive imperative, not only in the investigation of everyday life but across a wide range of human sciences and philosophical perspectives. Forty years after the publication of On the Beginning of Social Inquiry, the chapters in this collection range from re-appraisals of earlier essays on topics such as ‘reunions’, ‘rethinking art’ and ‘expats’ to contributions emphasising the opening of radical dialogues with other reflexive traditions and perspectives. These include psychoanalysis, Lacan, Hegel, Rene Girard, Daseinanalysis, dialectical method, critical feminism, and the dialogical tradition.

In this dialogical spirit, the book contributes to the continuing project of analytic theorizing associated with the work of Alan Blum and Peter McHugh, and the recent turn to more ‘existential’ topics and politically engaged forms of reflexive research. It will be of particular use to students working in interpretive traditions of sociology, Critical theory, Postmodern thought and debates associated with reflexivity and dialectics in other disciplines and research programmes.

part I|16 pages

Editors' introduction

part II|78 pages

History and contexts of analytic theory

chapter 2|76 pages

Dialectic, indebtedness, ambivalence, and the pursuit of analytic speech

Revisiting On the Beginning of Social Inquiry

part III|72 pages

Topics in analysis

chapter 3|14 pages

Analysis and sincerity

Warding off relativism

chapter 4|16 pages

Reunions

Standing and turning relationships

chapter 5|13 pages

Rethinking art

A borderline case

chapter 6|16 pages

Expats

chapter 7|11 pages

The complaint

An analysis

part IV|94 pages

Dialogical and dialectical engagements

chapter 8|15 pages

Dasein/Analysis

Blum and McHugh between ethnomethodological heresy and the continental tradition

chapter 9|18 pages

The Analysis school and feminism

Intersection, explanation, and a challenge

chapter 10|13 pages

Collaboration and the birth of comedy

From the symbolic to the real in the development of analysis

chapter 12|12 pages

Analytic desire and everyday life

The practice of theory in On the Beginning of Social Inquiry

part V|28 pages

Origins and prospects