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Just as the concept "paradigm" energized the human sciences in spite of its many definitions and uses, so now does the concept "reflexive" seem to be of increasing salience, again with many definitions and uses. It is argued that reflexivity, as a fundamental human quality underlies various attempts to understand and intervene in human relationships. By juxtaposing paradigms, reflexivity, and therapeutic progression it is possible to set out several types of reflexivity, some relatively self-contained and others at the edge of our possible "knowledges."
KEY WORDS: reflexivity; paradigm; metaphor; organization; transdisciplinary; intervention.
INTRODUCTION
Quite recently, the human sciences have been infused with a new sense of flexibility and uncertainty concerning knowledge and learning in our field. Coming in from many disciplines and specialties, there is inevitably some confusion as to the basis of this new sensibility and similarly as regards its applications. A key term in this change is "reflexivity," and yet the word is used in so many different senses that it often sustains confusion rather than clarifying any underlying issues.
Being committed to the concept of reflexivity, and bearing some responsibility for introducing it into certain areas, I will try to make clear its power as a guide and criterion in human affairs while delineating what I see as certain kinds of misuse which trivialize or neuter the idea.
In concentrating on some recent theoretical developments and practices I have been involved in as teacher or practitioner, I may seem to neglect the larger history of epistemological exploration in philosophy, phenomenology, the sociology of knowledge, and, more recently, the sociology of science (which also touched upon anthropology) (Mannheim, 1936; Merton, 1973; Mulkay, 1990; Woolgar, 1988). I acknowledge that a reflexive sensibility gradually emerges from all these struggles to understand how we may lay claim to know something worth acting upon.
Having moved through various specialties and disciplines, it appears to me that debates within disciplines and specialties often run in parallel, insulated from each other by the necessities of professional boundary closure. It is useful to gather together these threads of argument by searching for a basic theme, not fully present in any particular line of argument but which articulates relationships between the separate endeavors. Such a theme, I contend, is...