Concept Of Reflexivity Research Articles

Working with loss: An examination of how language can be used to address the issue of loss in art therapy

Drawing upon the academic literature on the concepts of intersubjectivity, identification and reflexivity, this article will examine the ubiquity of loss and how this can influence the manner in which art therapists work with clients facing a life threatening illness or a significant bereavement. Using case work from hospice settings and referring to the aforementioned paradigms, it will illustrate how the language currently used to describe this work is insufficient in capturing the nuances and power of these interactions. This, it will be argued, can both diminish the effectiveness of the evidence base for art therapy and minimise the effect it can have on the therapist as well as the client, to the detriment of both. This article will assert that the art therapy profession is robust enough to incorporate a less ‘objectified’ vocabulary, which can both better capture what we do and differentiate us from other similar interventions. It concludes that far from inviting criticism, such an approach in fact strengthens our credentials to practise in a rapidly changing work environment.

Naming the ideological reflexively: Contesting organizational norms and practices

In this article I develop a reflexive conception of ideology that can be applied to the study of organizations. By drawing out and making explicit the researcher’s role in naming a social phenomenon as ideological, I argue that a more consistent, reflexive and critically attuned notion of the ideological can be developed. The neglect of the position of the researcher in critical conceptions of ideology stems largely from a problematic division in existing approaches between the researcher, as objective expert, and researched. As an alternative, I build on the idea of research reflexivity in organization studies to develop a notion of ideology in which the partial position of the researcher is rendered explicit. To illustrate this conception of naming the ideological, I characterize the norms and practices of Job Centres as reflecting an ideology of capitalist welfare regulation. The article presents a fresh way of conceptualizing ideology as a reflexive analytical concept which can fruitfully be brought to bear on different aspects of organizations.

Coming out in the field: A queer reflexive account of shifting researcher identity

This article contributes to the literature on reflexivity by articulating a queer reflexivity lens, which entails engaging in a reflexive questioning of the categories we use to identify people and recognizing the shifting nature of researcher and participant identities over the course of the research process. Queer reflexivity enables us to think differently about an important debate in qualitative methods concerning who can study whom. For instance, are white researchers in a position to study people of color? Are men able to study women and women’s issues? Can “straight”-identified researchers study the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer community? I argue that the question of whether or not to “match” for categories of difference in research studies is complicated by the fluid, shifting nature of identities that queer theory highlights. In order to demonstrate how qualitative organizational researchers can learn about the craft of research through the concept of queer reflexivity, I recount an auto-ethnographic “coming-out” tale in which I discuss the implications of my shifting sexual identity over the course of a research project.

Home truths about thought experiments

Thought experiments (TEs for short) have become a hot topic in philosophy of science. After platonist, empiricist and naturalist-cognitivist proposals, the present book promises to come up with a Kantian view of both actual experiments and of TEs, in which both categories are brought close together within a slightly apriorist framework, but, fortunately, still kept distinct. The Kantian inspiration shows already at the outset: Buzzoni talks about ‘‘indeterminate multiplicity of categories individually constructed by the mind and tested operationally to solve specific problems’’ (15). Still, already here one wonders how much of (Kantian) apriority is preserved in the picture, in particular since the categories are empirically tested; some weak ‘‘relative apriority’’ might survive, but this seems hardly sufficient for a ‘‘reflexive transcendental conception’’ of scientific enterprise. The operational side is more explicit: We can empirically ascertain the properties of physical bodies only insofar we connect them to concepts and to reproducible actions that make the object interact with other objects. ‘‘These actions are always guided by concepts and values, and it is only for this reason that they have cognitive significance’’ (23). The strongest side of the book is author’s historical erudition, to be felt at every page. In the first chapter, on experiments, the author reminds us of the work of German constructivists (Lorenzen, Janich—who is also the author of a brief Preface to the book) and introduces interesting and rarely cited earlier philosophers of science, like Hugo Dingler. A weakness of the text is a certain sloppiness of formulation, sometimes at crucial points. For instance, we read that ‘‘empirical properties of a body have a meaning that is determinate and in principle univocal’’ (23). The text makes it clear that the properties in question are quite ordinary ones, like hardness and fragility. But the idea that fragility has a meaning, and indeed a univocal one, obviously should not be taken literally; how it should be taken is only half clear from the text.

On the Question of Critical Theory Today

The task of this article is to renew the discussion about the theoretical structure which includes both analytical and normative elements. The main theoretical problem analyzed in the article is the identifi­cation of analytical and normative elements in the structure of critical social theory and the analysis of the relationship between these elements in contemporary practice theories. The article seeks to answer the ques­tion why the concept of critique in contemporary practice theories is changed by the concept of reflexivity. The article aims to emphasize the implications of this „innocent“ terminological change for contemporary critical social theories, distinguished from early Critical Theory of Frankfurt School.
 

Diálogos metaficcionales e intermediales (II) entre Agustín Fernández Mallo y Enrique Vila-Matas

The essay, dedicated to Darío Villanueva, one of the most important Spanish specialists in literary theory and comparative literature of the 20th century, explores in the first part his contribution to the research on metaliterature and metafiction in the Spanish contemporary novel of the decades of 1980-1990. His works establish the relationships of these concepts with postmodernity theories and with umberto Eco’s thesis in Il nome della rosa, Postille and other relevant essays of the Italian author. In the second part of the text, the aim is to apply these concepts of literary self-consciousness and reflexivity in the novel as a story-telling device in the work of one of the most relevant Spanish young writers of the 21st Century, Agustín Fernandez Mallo’s Nocilla Lab. In this sense, we will focus the ending sequence, written (and designed) in form of a comic book or graphic novel, in which the young author puts himself beside the more recognized Enrique Vila-Matas, as an allegoric and fictional reflection of Pierre Bourdieu’s theories about the literary field.

Psicologia da saúde crítica no contexto hospitalar

O texto apresenta uma discussão sobre a Psicologia da saúde no contexto hospitalar a partir de uma perspectiva histórica e ética, mostrando como o desenvolvimento desse campo foi caracterizado pelo surgimento de duas perspectivas: a Psicologia da saúde tradicional e a Psicologia da saúde crítica. O modelo de quatro abordagens à Psicologia da saúde é apresentado e reformulado com a inclusão do conceito de Psicologia sanitária, e a prática em Psicologia da saúde é discutida à luz do conceito de reflexividade. Por fim, alguns questionamentos derivados da Psicologia da saúde crítica são feitos à prática do psicólogo no contexto hospitalar.

Arts-based methods in leadership development: Affording aesthetic workspaces, reflexivity and memories with momentum

There is a growing cry for ways of approaching management and leadership development that embrace the complex, dynamic, chaotic and highly subjective, interactional environments of contemporary organisational contexts. One response has been the use of arts-based methods for management and leadership education. Although a community of research has grown around these practices, there remains a lack of empirically grounded work focusing on the underlying, situated, experiential learning processes of such methods. Working from the concept of experiential learning as knowledge creation through the transformation of experience, I develop a three-stage theoretical model that explores experiential learning processes of arts-based methodologies. This study is based on an inductive, grounded theory approach in analyzing descriptive essays written by Executive MBA students on their experiences of a choral conducting masterclass. The model describes how arts-based learning environments afford aesthetic workspaces where participants engaged in aesthetic reflexivity to create memories with momentum to inform their future leadership practice. This model builds an interdisciplinary bridge to the theory of affordances and the concepts of aesthetic workspaces and aesthetic reflexivity found within cultural sociology, a discourse with a focus on the reflexive use of the arts for self-configuration, regulation and development.

On reflection: is reflexivity necessarily beneficial in intercultural education?1

This article explores how the concept of reflexivity is used in intercultural education. Reflexivity is often presented as a key learning goal in acquiring intercultural competence (ICC). Yet, reflexivity can be defined in different ways, and take different forms across time and space, depending on the concepts of selfhood that prevail and how notions of difference are constructed. First, I discuss how the dominant usages of reflexivity in intercultural education reflect and reproduce a Cartesian view of the self that shapes how ICC is conceptualized and taught. I discuss three assumptions that this view produces: that the self is accessible and transcendable, that reflexivity is universal across space and time, and that the self can act as its own remedial change agent or ‘inner consultant.’ I argue that because reflexivity is understood in many different ways, attention to definition is crucial, both in designing learning objectives in intercultural education and in devising ways to attain them. Greater attention is also needed in intercultural education to the ways in which selfhood, and hence also reflexivity and constructions of difference, differ across space and time.

Creating a (More) Reflexive Canadian Disability Studies: Our Team’s Account

This article reviews a reflexive process undertaken by an interdisciplinary team of researchers working on a study about chronic illness in the academic workplace funded by a Canadian granting agency. The authors discuss the concept of reflexivity, offer reasons for why reflexivity is especially important for research teams working in disability studies, and broadly call on Canadian disability scholars to be reflexive. They contend that the personal is indeed political and that this needs to be fleshed out. Given that there is much silence surrounding the practice of reflexivity by disability studies scholars, the authors identify and discuss four challenges to putting the call for a reflexive Canadian disability studies into practice: both personal and structural. The discussion of challenges is speculative, yet grounded in the authors’ personal experience of reflexive engagement and knowledge of the discipline of disability studies. It is hoped that this speculation can be overcome by fact in the coming years as Canadian disability scholars increasingly opt to incorporate reflexive processes into their research practices and make them transparent by finding ‘space’ to tell others about them.

ENVISIONING JOURNALISM PRACTICE AS RESEARCH

As pressure grows on journalism academics to publish scholarly outputs and attract external research income, many express frustration over the uncertain status of journalism practice in relation to the requirement for making a contribution to knowledge (Harcup, 2011). Simultaneously, work in education theory has highlighted contextual shifts in arts and humanities education that signify a pressing need for journalism studies as well as other disciplines to define their position regarding practice within research. Recent reflections on practice and research within journalism education (Niblock, 2007) suggest the discipline is seeking forms of scholarship that cohere better with its industry-facing character. This paper seeks to originate both a methodological framework and an epistemological perspective that acknowledges practitioner perspectives as accumulated knowledge. Drawing on concepts of reflexivity and habitus, it will negotiate and evaluate a range of potential models of practice as research, and discuss their implications for furthering the profile of journalism scholarship.

Noise-induced intermittency of a reflexive model with symmetry-induced equilibrium manifold

We discuss a route to intermittency based on the concept of reflexivity, namely on the interaction between observer and stochastic reality. A simple model mirroring the essential aspects of this interaction is shown to generate perennial out of equilibrium condition, intermittency and 1/f-noise. In the absence of noise the model yields a symmetry-induced equilibrium manifold with two stable states. Noise makes this equilibrium manifold unstable, with an escape rate becoming lower and lower upon time increase, thereby generating an inverse power law distribution of waiting times. The distribution of the times of permanence in the basin of attraction of the equilibrium manifold are analytically predicted through the adoption of a first-passage time technique. Finally we discuss the possible extension of our approach to deal with the intermittency of complex systems in different fields.

In praise of religious reflexivity: reflections from fieldwork

This article aims to enrich the methodological discourse on the practice of reflexivity, by presenting the concepts of religious reflexivity and theological reductionism as analytical devices with which to explore the relationship of researchers with their human research subjects. It illustrates reflexive engagement with interpersonal religious aspects from the fieldwork on an evangelical pilgrimage to Israel. Based on examples from the fieldwork, the article explores the epistemological importance and limitations of deciphering and presenting the researchers’ role in their subjects’ theological worldview.

A Reflexive Lens: Exploring Dilemmas of Qualitative Methodology Through the Concept of Reflexivity

Reflexivity has emerged as a central and critical concept in the methodology of qualitative social research. However, the concept of reflexivity is defined and taken up in a wide variety of ways, and the assumptions underlying each incarnation have particular implications for research outcomes. This paper argues that these various conceptualizations of reflexivity offer the qualitative researcher a critical lens through which to analyze key methodological dilemmas. Exploring the concept of reflexivity in its various forms provides an entry-point for understanding key dilemmas in the epistemology of qualitative methodology, qualitative research relationships, and the evaluation of qualitative research. These dilemmas present important challenges in terms of the complex issues of power, knowledge production and subjectivity. This paper thus demonstrates that a reflexive exploration of methodological dilemmas can provide a starting point for assessing the consequences and transformative potential of our qualitative research.

Death Caused by Cardioinhibitory Reflex

The danger of neck compression without restriction of the arterial flow remains unresolved in forensic medicine. There is an ongoing debate concerning life endangerment due to the cardioinhibitory reflex. The aim of this study was to determine what forensic medical experts believe and how they deal with this reflex. An anonymous electronic questionnaire was sent to 1429 forensic medical experts all over the world. We asked them about their opinion on the cardioinhibitory reflex, its role in causing death, and what their diagnostic criteria were.A total of 182 questionnaires were returned. The experts who answered were from 32 different countries. Our survey showed that 80.2% of experts believe that the cardioinhibitory reflex can theoretically cause death. In the practical application opinions diverge though. Apparently, the practical application mainly depends on the habit of the individual expert. We observed no consensus on the diagnostic criteria to be used. Given the potentially frequent use of the concept of the cardioinhibitory reflex in forensic practice and its judicial impact it would be important to reach a consensus.

Legitimacy of Global Accounting Standards: A New Analytical Framework

This paper is a conceptual examination of global expansion of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and perceives its expansion as gaining legitimacy in the global financial regulatory field. From this stance, this paper assumes a pragmatic definition of legitimacy, which originally had many definitions that had become ‘motivation for acceptance among multi-stakeholders,’ and sets up a Legitimacy model that constitutionally analyzes legitimacy of global accounting standards. Drawing upon institutional theory, this study intends to provide a new perspective to accounting literature. The Legitimacy model constitutionally analyzes legitimacy of the global accounting regulatory system, which we can assume is a multilayer network, and separates legitimacy of IFRS and IASB, which have not necessarily been separated in previous studies. By employing the concept of reflexivity, this model clarifies the mechanism in which both the legitimacies of accounting standards and of the standard setters interact to convey legitimacy of global accounting standards as a system. The main contributions of this paper are analyzing accounting standards as global standards and/or a global institution and providing a new analytical framework to legitimacy of global accounting standards.

A Preliminary Consideration of Socio-Informatic Significance of the Concept of Reflexivity(<Special Section Article>Socio-Informatics)

A Preliminary Consideration of Socio-Informatic Significance of the Concept of Reflexivity(<Special Section Article>Socio-Informatics)

Research vs. Me-search: Thinking More of Thee and Less of Me When Working Within the Context of Culture

The ascendance of cultural sport psychology as a concentrated focus of academic inquiry is timely, and emergent investigations therein represent welcome areas of scholarship. The invitation embedded in this forthcoming discussion to sport psychology researchers and practitioners to stretch beyond their comfort zones is being extended with a request to consider pursuing sport psychology research and practice with a “more of thee and less of me” mindset. The North Star goals articulated herein are to stimulate avant-garde and imaginative thinking by expanding the concepts of reflective practice and reflexivity, thereby creating a portal through which to see how perceived stumbling blocks to overcoming traditional approaches to the study of sport psychology can be transformed into stepping stones. Six premises provide the context within which this discussion is presented. Collectively, these premises support and raise caution about the scientific method and suggest that the time has come to rethink commonly held beliefs about color-blindness, melting pot formulations, and alleged-to-be-absent historical and contemporary cultural influences on in-the-moment interpersonal interactions. A context-sensitive across-cultures communication model is offered as a way of synthesizing the premises and creating a portal through which to enter into new domains of investigative inquiry. Implications for the future of sport psychology relative to research, practice, training, and consultation will be offered for consideration.

Exploring tentative lives

Much social work practice with adolescents involved in activities known to be risky, such as experimentation with substances or petty crime, seems to have been influenced by the conventional input-output model which assumes an unreflected relationship between the present manifestation of risk and adverse future outcomes. This model relies on an uncertain scientific basis and does not really allow for the adolescents’ own reflexivity. This article aims at contributing to the shaping of more reflexive concepts for social work in this area, and is based on material derived from a focus group made up of 17 adolescents from Central Norway, aged 16-18 years old. The major foci of analysis were: i) how the adolescents positioned themselves with regard to conflicting notions of respectability, ii) which constructions of meaning might be attached to this positioning and iii) how the positioning might inform social work practice.

A Concept in Application: How the Scientific Reflex Came to be Employed against Nazi Propaganda

The article analyzes Sergej Chakhotin’s transfer of the concept of reflex from Russian physiology to German propaganda. Chakhotin had been working at Ivan Pavlov’s laboratory in St. Petersburg in the 1910s. The experiences he had there with reflex conditioning, the boom of psychotechnics, and the application of psychological practices for aesthetic purposes were his basis for the invention of a socialist propaganda program against the Nazi regime. It is shown how the concept of reflex changed as it meandered through different disciplines.