anthropological reflexivity

is (in its null form) the self-critique, the personal quest, playing on the subjective, the experiential, and the idea of empathy.

Before examining the reflexivity stakes in each of these fields, I want to outline a basic or null form of reflexivity with which the term is usually associated. The null form of reflexivity is the self-critique, the personal quest, playing on the subjective, the experiential, and the idea of empathy. It is this sort of reflexivity that most often evokes nervous responses or dismissals of reflexivity as dead-end self-indulgence, narcissism, and so on (as in Sahlins's joke, above). But we must be prepared to take this kind of reflexivity more seriously. (395)

is not so much a methodological matter as an ideological one that, in turn, masks anxiety about a broader, but less conceivable postmodernism.

I have noted that 'reflexivity' is the label used in common currency to stand for possible but as-yet unrealized alternatives in the production of ethnography. For me, then, reflexivity is not so much a methodological matter as an ideological one that, in turn, masks anxiety about a broader, but less conceivable postmodernism. (392)

 exposes the epistemological and ethical grounds of anthropological knowledge to full critical discussion and opened the way for hermeneutics to become a major influence on anthropological theory and research practice.

In anthropology, elaborate subjectivist accounts of fieldwork experience became the primary means of destabilizing the notion that fieldwork could be a method on a par with, say, surveys. Such reflexivity, previously limited to confessional framings of functionalist ethnography, exposed the epistemological and ethical grounds of anthropological knowledge to full critical discussion and opened the way for hermeneutics to become a major influence on anthropological theory and research practice.

is an approach which opens up the possibility for the so-called polyphonic text or the completely collaborative project. More often than not, however, it merely reinforces the perspective and voice of the lone, introspective fieldworker without challenging the paradigm of ethnographic research at all - to the contrary.

But here is where the main contribution of this kind of reflexivity has remained, and once its critical function became well absorbed, it lost its power and fell prey to those who would nervously dismiss reflexivity altogether. At most, such reflexivity opens up the possibility for the so-called polyphonic text or the completely collaborative project, but more often than not, it merely reinforces the perspective and voice of the lone, introspective fieldworker without challenging the paradigm of ethnographic research at all-to the contrary. (395-6)

is the label used in common currency to stand for possible but as-yet unrealized alternatives in the production of ethnography.

anthropological reflexivity, n.Definitions

anthropological reflexivity