ABSTRACT
The relational turn in social research raises many issues that might loosely be collected together under the heading of “reflexivity.” This can have a variety of meanings, but here, following a newly articulated “tradition” in psychosocial studies, we are using it to think about how the relationality of the research process impacts upon and is in turn influenced by the relationality that is the subject of the research itself. Put more simply, we are interested in what we can discover about the research we might be engaged in through opening ourselves up to the relational context in which this research takes place. This is a question based on the idea of a mutually constitutive process between “researched” and “researcher” in which each creates the other. We suggest that attending closely to what happens between members of a research team can provide powerful insights into the substantive content of the research, helping to create a more nuanced set of understandings than might otherwise have been possible. Perhaps more provocatively, it also suggests that not attending to this process might be a way of hiding from the edgier challenges of the research – those moments when it does something to the researchers that blocks them or somehow makes things happen. Maybe to be honest investigators of the relational we have to be open to the reality that we as researchers are genuinely part of the relational nexus we are ourselves investigating, acknowledging that there is no place to stand outsidethe pull of relational involvement.
