On Reflexivity
Reading Michael Lynch’s old article on reflexivity I am once again moved to comment on the dreadful tendency among academics to position their methods as virtues and their epistemologies as the moral high ground. Having participated more than once (more then a hundred times) in debates where differences in methodology have been cast as a major issue of purity and righteousness in the world, one now comes to any debate on epistemology with a certain sense of dread. I may simply be due to the fact that academics see their chosen methods as necessary parts of their professional identity, and that any attack on this constitutes a questioning of their right to be seen as equals. Or it may be a question of people investing everything they believe into their techniques for legitimizing behavior, making methodology a playground for psychoanalysis. In either case, we have to stop seeing issues of epistemology, method and reflexivity as pure categories, and more as analytics of human nature.
