Conversations About Reflexivity

by Archer; Margaret S.

• ISBN13: 9780415558525
• ISBN10: 0415558522
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-02-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

'Reflexivity' is defined as the regular exercise of the mental ability, shared by all normal people, to consider themselves in relation to their (social) contexts and vice versa. Hence it is crucial in mediating between what actors themselves are most concerned to achieve in society and the social constraints and enablements that they confront as they try to realize their concerns. Their reflexive 'internal conversations' are the means through which they deliberate about what course of action to take. Focusing fully on this phenomenon, this book discusses three main questions associated with this subject in detail.

Author Biography

Margaret S. Archer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. She has published 25 books in the area of Social Theory, with particular emphasis on social ontology, emergent properties and the problem of linking structure and agency.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. vii
List of contributors	p. ix
Introduction: The reflexive re-turn	p. 1
Reflexivity and pragmatism	p. 15
Inner speech and agency	p. 17
Cartesian privacy and Peircean interiority	p. 39
Pragmatist and hermeneutic reflections on the internal conversations that we are	p. 55
Reflexivity and realism	p. 75
Human reflexivity in social realism: beyond the modern debate	p. 77
Reflexivity and the habitus	p. 108
Can reflexivity and habitus work in tandem?	p. 123
Reflexivity after modernity: from the viewpoint of relational sociology	p. 144
Modes of reflexivity	p. 165
The agency of the weak: ethos, reflexivity and life strategies of Polish workers after the end of state socialism	p. 167
Emotion, and the silenced and short-circuited self	p. 187
Self talk and self reflection: a view from the US	p. 206
Reflexivity in production and consumption	p. 221
'Reflexive consumers': a relational approach to consumption as a social practice	p. 223
Organizational use of information and communication technology and its impact on reflexivity	p. 243
Index	p. 259
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