Reflexivity
Reflexivity
- Author
- Margaret Archer Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
- DOI
- 10.1177/205684601373
abstract After reviewing Peirce’s replacement of ‘introspection’ by the ‘inner conversation’, the role of extended reflexivity is reviewed in Beck, Giddens and Lash and compared with Bourdieu’s view about its limited nature, and with recent attempts to defend a ‘reflexive habitus’. Conversely, this article argues that reflexivity mediates between the objective structural and cultural contexts confronting agents, who activate their properties as constraints and enablements as they pursue reflexively defined ‘projects’ based on their concerns. The increased scope, range and changing mode with which reflexivity is practised are linked to pre-modernity, modernity and trans-modernity.