ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with considering a common sense approach to reflexivity. Reflexivity is, in many ways, quite a problematic word. Similar words such as “reflex” and “reflexive” are closely associated to it; but, then, so are “reflection”, “reflective” and “reflect”. It is impossible to understand the significance of reflexivity, and just what it is and how it might operate, without setting it within an intellectual tradition of knowledge and knowing – basically, science. The chapter sets out the background to reflexivity in terms of historical developments in philosophy, which have highlighted dichotomies between theory and practice, knowledge and knowers, human and natural sciences, language and the world, subject and object, etc. It considers the way that reflexivity impacted in anthropology. Yet, knowledge and methodology without some degree of reflexivity are questionable for the authority they assume. Latour makes distinction between meta-reflexivity and infra-reflexivity.
