Reflexivity
Reflexivity is the examination of how a researcher’s position, assumptions, and choices shape the production and interpretation of knowledge.
Positionality: A researcher’s social identities, experiences, and institutional location in relation to a study. Positionality names the situated standpoint reflexive analysis examines.
Epistemology: The philosophical study of knowledge, including its sources, limits, and justification. Reflexivity examines assumptions about what can count as knowledge.
Max Weber: A German sociologist who analyzed social action, authority, bureaucracy, and the role of values in scholarship. His account of value relevance helped frame debates about scholarly objectivity.
Ethnography: A research approach that studies social life through sustained engagement with people and settings. Ethnographers must account for how their presence and descriptions shape field accounts.
Power–Knowledge: The idea that power relations and the production of knowledge shape and reinforce one another. Reflexive analysis asks how researchers’ authority affects what becomes accepted knowledge.
Researcher Bias: Systematic influence of a researcher’s expectations or preferences on research design, observation, or interpretation. Reflexivity investigates how personal expectations can shape findings.
Standpoint Theory: An approach arguing that social positions shape knowledge and that marginalized positions can reveal power relations. It explains why a researcher’s social location matters to what can be known.
Pierre Bourdieu: A French sociologist whose work examined fields, capital, habitus, and the social conditions of knowledge. His social reflexivity turns analysis toward the researcher’s own position within scholarly fields.
Qualitative Research: Research that investigates meaning, experience, and social processes using non-numerical materials and interpretive methods. Reflexive practice is commonly used to clarify interpretive choices in qualitative studies.
Representation: The practices through which people, events, or groups are depicted and made intelligible. Research accounts select and frame lives, making representation a reflexive concern.