Reflexive Turn Research Articles

Concerning emotions: feminist contributions to reflexive marine governance

ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with emotions in marine governance. Governance studies are currently undergoing a ‘reflexive turn’ that focuses on the ‘how’ and ‘who’ of processes and practices of governing. It is also important to ask ‘why’ modes of governing emerge as they do. Drawing on feminist theories, this paper explores the ways that societal constructions of emotions, as well as the subjectivity of emotions, suffuse decision-making. Drawing in depth on the concerns driving the development of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1986), and the roles of Arvid Pardo and Elisabeth Mann Borgese in its development, this paper shows how a global-level governance outcome was simultaneously a deeply embodied one, where emotional work, structured by socialised norms, identities, values and opinions, shaped governance. It addresses why this governance tool emerged in a specific form, and how the factors shaping it persist in ocean management today. To conclude, the paper hints towards other examples that might benefit from the reflexive approach developed while also contending that recognising the role of emotions is a useful addition to studies of marine governance, leading to more care-full, reflexive, and resilient forms of governance in the face of uncertainty.

The Franchise Devouring Itself: A Critical Analysis of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Reflexive Turn

This article proposes that a "reflexive turn," which is particularly visible in some of the MCU's new streaming series, has taken place with the beginning of the franchise's Phase Four, the first phase of the new Multiverse Saga. Taking the first seasons of She-Hulk, What If...?, WandaVision and Loki as illustrations, my analytic focus falls on the reflexive devices and the narrative structures of these four series, which together seem to have established the grounds for a recurring metafictional allegory whereby the diegetic multiverse is made analogous to the franchise's own "multiverse" of complexly interrelated narratives. Thus seen, my interpretation of each of the series pays special attention to how reflexivity has allowed the MCU to speak about itself in this transitional moment, in a way that ambivalently reflects not only about the franchise's continuing dominance within the contemporary culture industry, but also about fears and concerns that the franchise's power may not last very long if it loses its narrative coherence along the way. It is in this sense that the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems to have started devouring itself, turning into a kind of "narcissistic" and "autophagic" narrative precisely at the time when it is beginning to generate a sense of exhaustion and saturation among its fans and followers. Although the reflexive elements of these four series acknowledge this sentiment in ways that approximate self-parody and self-critique, in the end they all arrive at the cynical and/or conformist conclusion that, for better or for worse, there is no alternative to the franchise's planned continuation.

Problém reflexivity

This article presents reflexivity in its various meanings and forms as it appears in anthropology and social sciences. During the second half of the twentieth century in these fields, it became both an inspiration for various theories of the functioning of social phenomena, but also a part of anthropological methodology: in the era of the reflexive turn, it served as a critique of the situatedness of the production of anthropological knowledge, which was supposed to unmask the personal influence of the researcher on the resulting form of the texts. Although the contribution of this stage to the understanding of the meaning of the textuality of anthropological works cannot be denied, I see its “normalization” as part of anthropological methodology as problematic. If we focus more closely on the functioning mechanisms of reflexivity and self-reflection, we will come across certain paradoxes. In this paper, I focus on various criticisms of reflexivity, through which I try to approach the essence of the problem of using reflexivity. Emphasis is placed on the debate on reflexivity as a pivotal mechanism in the organization of late modern societies as described by theorists such as Giddens, Beck, Lash or Archer. These theories are confronted with the concept of “speech” as understood by constructivist approaches such as discourse analysis, which view all meanings as variable and constantly constructed by linguistic means in ordinary speech. I further show how reflexivity is unmasked by the opponents of reflexive modernization theory as a rhetorical strategy used to legitimize the status quo. This example serves as an illustration of the illusory nature of reflexivity and the possibility of its misuse.

Reflexive reciprocity under an ethics of care: Reflections from the field for refugee studies

Abstract By bringing reflexivity and reciprocity into conceptual dialogue in a discussion about the ethical framework of care in research, this article discusses how ‘reflexive reciprocity’ can be a research tool in migration studies. Taking reciprocity—the dynamics of giving and receiving—as an aspect contextually bound to the refugee experience, I propose that a relationship of giving and receiving helps undermine the inevitable power asymmetries in knowledge production. Reciprocity becomes all the more essential when researching refugee communities where narratives are prompted in a way that mirrors how refugees are elicited to give information within mechanisms of refugee governance, where they narrate their neediness, perform their vulnerability, and justify their deservingness in return for legal and humanitarian protection in traumatic processes that can be a distortion of the norms of reciprocity. This article invites researchers to address reciprocity in research, premised on the idea that an ethical framework of care should go beyond paying lip service to protect vulnerable and marginalized participants. Reflecting on my case study research with Syrian refugee women in Turkey, Ankara, I argue that reflexive reciprocity is both a tool for more rigorous data collection in a qualitative inquiry and a practical application of an ethical framework of care. In exploring instances where I could link reflexivity to action-oriented reciprocity through ‘everyday acts of caring’, I demonstrate that reflexive reciprocity can somewhat balance out the extractive nature of research and thereby contribute to the ongoing discussion about the ‘reflexive turn’ in migration studies.

Effects of transdisciplinary research on scientific knowledge and reflexivity

Abstract Transdisciplinary research (TDR) is conceptualized as not only providing societal effects but also benefiting academia. However, recent literature on the evaluation of TDR has focused almost entirely on the societal effects of TDR. A discussion of the scientific effects of TDR is needed to do justice to the potential of this research mode. To date, little empirical research has focused on the effects of TDR on science. Our explorative study addresses this gap. The empirical basis are qualitative interviews with scientists engaged in transdisciplinary research and anchored in three sub-disciplines: environmental sociology, sustainable chemistry, and participatory health research. We identify as main effects of the transdisciplinary research mode: changes in the understanding of scientific problems, changes in the quality of scientific insights, and the promotion of a reflexive turn in science.

Researching the researcher: producing emotionally-sensed knowledge in migration research

ABSTRACT Reflexivity has been central to recent debates in migration studies, focusing on how migration scholarship can become more equitable, inclusive, and attuned to the power dynamics inherent in research processes. In this article, we advance these debates by demonstrating the role of emotions as crucial tools for knowledge production. Drawing on feminist qualitative research, we introduce our emotionally-sensed approach to account for the role of emotions across the different, yet inter-related, stages of the research process. More specifically, we operationalise the processes of constructing, generating and producing emotionally-sensed knowledge and illustrate them with examples from our ethnographic research on the impact of Brexit on EU migrants in the UK. The paper makes the case for emotionally-sensed knowledge as part of the reflexive turn in migration studies and provides strategies to more consistently incorporate researchers’ emotions in processes of knowledge production.

Sustainable suburban mobilities – planning practices and paradoxes

ABSTRACT Cities are in transition towards more sustainable mobilities, and many city cores are beyond peak car. However, the suburbs are still largely car based. Although planning principles for compact centres and transit-oriented development have been prevalent since the early nineties, there has been little progress towards more sustainable suburban mobility. This is also the case for the Greater Oslo region. To understand this implementation gap, we have investigated the adoption of the overarching principles of land use and transport planning, as represented in the regional plan for Greater Oslo. In two suburban municipalities, we have focused on key actors in local planning, who are crucial for the implementation of planning principles and strategies to achieve change. We find that the sustainability principles focusing on densification around public transport nodes and in suburban centres are supported. However, essential aspects of social sustainability in the growing suburban towns, have largely been left out. Drawing on the reflexive turn in policies and planning, we argue that this implementation deficit is an unintentional consequence of a too narrow disciplinary spatial planning approach. The implementation of sustainable planning principles requires a broader knowledge base, including the social sciences, in order to take into account peoples’ preferences and practices.

A Self-reflexive Positionality to Navigate the Invective Latency of Ethnographic Relations: Insights From Lebanon and Germany

Positionality has become increasingly important in ethnographic and autoethnographic research. The recent “reflexive turn” in migration studies has encouraged scholars to discuss the concept from different perspectives (e.g., gender, ethnicity, and class). Yet, positionality is relational: It is the result of ongoing interactions between how researchers present themselves in the field and how research participants perceive these presentations. Because self-positioning and positioning of others are mutually bound to each other, positionality reflects a continuous negotiation between actors who may be motivated by different interests. For this reason, it is necessary for researchers to analytically reflect upon the implications of these mutual positionings to more fully understand how to navigate research fields. This is especially important for sensitive research fields—like migration and forced migration—characterized by inequalities, hierarchical structures, and unequal power relations. The present article uses insights from fieldwork conducted among Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Germany between 2017 and 2019 to show how configurations of “humanitarian paternalism” and researchers’ false expectations to save the world can frame positionality as a meta-invective action. Positionality informed by self-reflexivity can help to explore the invective latency of field relations and let contradictions, discomfort, and disharmonic elements emerge. This does not mean that field relations will become more equal and that power structures and inequalities will be reduced as a result. However, being aware of these invective elements offers the opportunity to explore a level of analysis that is often overlooked and make steps toward decolonizing research methodologies and knowledge production.

Ethnographic closeness: methodological reflections on the interplay of engagement and detachment in immersive ethnographic research.

With the reflexive turn in the social sciences, emotional engagement is an inevitable and crucial part of data-gathering and analysis. However, there is a glaring gap in methodological discussions to this end. Presenting ethnographic research into end of life with people living at home in England with heart failure, we argue for a methodological blend of engagement and detachment that shifts throughout the research process, and that sensory experience is a core part of engagement. We offer ethnographic examples which present and explore some alternatives to emotional engagement and objective detachment: (1) moving with participants to facilitate engagement during fieldwork through shared sensory experience; (2) detachment as a different way of relating when exiting the field and drawing participant relationships to a close; and (3) ethnographic closeness as the interplay of engagement and detachment in participant debriefing and data analysis. Based on well-established anthropological concepts, and taking both engagement and detachment as embodied and relational, we develop a notion of ethnographic closeness in which detachment is a necessary part. Our detailed methodological discussion thus offers theoretically grounded possibilities and alternatives for approaching and managing the core tension of 'how close is too close?' in ethnographic practice. Further contributions supporting researchers in navigating ethnographic research are needed.

Revisiting symbolic power and elite language education in China: a critical narrative ethnography of the English education major at a top language university in Shanghai

ABSTRACT Despite the promise of English language teaching and the use of English as a medium of instruction, concerns have been growing about the decline in the number of English majors as well as structural problems in elite language education reflected in the rural-urban divide and resulting educational gaps in China. The English education major at a top language-intensive university could serve as a key site for this investigation. However, existing literature has significantly overlooked this important area. This study explored the life course stages of Chinese students who were originally from rural areas or socioeconomically underrepresented regions/districts and majoring in English education at a top language-intensive university located in Shanghai. By adopting a critical narrative ethnographic approach, the authors wrote field notes and conducted in-depth interviews with 18 study participants. The findings showed that mothers’ involvement significantly influenced students’ motivation to learn English, college admission, and academic major choice. However, students also developed personal perceptions about career prospects while in college. By applying the Bourdieusian approach to language and symbolic power, this study interpreted participants’ developmental process of linguistic habitus and capital, regardless of their socioeconomic status. This study further interpreted their management of accumulated linguistic capital, while critiquing existing structural problems of the elite language education system, along with the English major crisis in the Chinese higher education system. As critical narrative ethnographers, the authors presented their reflexive turns on symbolic power and the future of English education in a Sino-Anglo context.

Beneath the Laarve: Masking during the Basel Carnival of Fasnacht (Faasnacht)

Describing the historical development of the mask ( Laarve) 2 within the carnival tradition of the Basel Fasnacht ( Faasnacht, Switzerland) during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this article offers a case study of the so-called reflexive turn in late modern (‘post-traditional’) societies. Drawing on the concept of ritual reflexivity, we argue that the gradual development of the Fasnacht masks into oversized constructions covering the ritualist's whole head ( Laarve) went hand in hand with the development of various other ritual mechanisms aimed at facilitating within the ritual framework a meditative, inward-oriented stance ( enstasis). 3 This is especially interesting as carnivals tend to be associated with precisely the opposite dynamics: transcending social norms through the celebration of excess and inebriation which, in its extreme forms, may lead to ekstasis (or at least a headache). The described ritual elements are interpreted as a series of mirroring mechanisms nested within one another. The ritual handling of the Laarve by the ritualists (its donning and taking off at regular intervals) is then understood simultaneously as a facilitator and a marker fuelling and isolating individual phases of an otherwise non-discrete reflexive process. Based on first-hand accounts of ritualists’ experiences of mask-wearing, we will show how Basel Fasnacht walks a tightrope between ‘modelling’ and ‘mirroring’ societal, communal and idiosyncratic levels of meaning-making.

Expanding the Reflexive Turn in Migration Studies: Refugee Protection, Regularization, and Naturalization in Latin America

In this paper, we argue in favor of expanding the reflexive turn in Migration Studies, which has neglected migratory phenomena in the Global South, to political migration research on Latin America. The existing literature has pointed to exceptional generosity in the region’s immigration legislation, especially regarding refugee protection, migrant regularization, and naturalization. In parallel, policy implementation gaps and restrictive shifts persist in these areas. Departing from our research on these issues over the past 15 years, we critically discuss implementation, research gaps, and data accessibility in the abovementioned areas. Focusing on Venezuelan displacement, we further point out critical questions for future research from a reflexive perspective.

Foreigner, migrant, or refugee? How laypeople label those who cross borders

AbstractIn this article, we seek to exercise reflexivity in migration research by looking at the symbolic boundary work that sustains laypeople’s understanding and use of specific labels. We do so through a qualitative, cultural sociological investigation of migration attitudes in Czechia. We explore the labels foreigner, migrant, and refugee, commonly used labels in Czech migration discourse. In short, we argue that research participants rely on different grounds for boundary work, informed by available cultural repertoires, when characterizing foreigners, migrants, and refugees. While boundary work related to the label foreigner calls upon criteria of citizenship and perceived cultural closeness, the boundary work concerning the other two labels—migrant and refugee—involves the moral criteria of deservingness. Our study addresses three major shortcomings in migration studies. First, the opinions of laypeople influence public policies and approaches to migration, yet in-depth qualitative studies of migration attitudes are scarce. Second, even though migration attitudes shape the character of the receiving context for people who cross borders, how laypeople engage with labels remains understudied. Finally, we heed the call for a ‘reflexive turn’ in migration studies, arguing that researchers must remain reflexive, not only about labels they use, but also how such labels are understood and used by research participants.

Judgment, Doubt, and Self-Doubt: A Reflexive Turn from the Borderland of Lampedusa

Abstract As borders kill under the premises of saving lives and distributing order, border regimes emerge in everyday life as sites of uncertainty, fragility, and doubt. The paper explores the spaces of uncertainty that pervade everyday life at the borderlands of Europe with a particular focus on the island of Lampedusa (Italy), and it deploys doubt as an analytical tool to produce a reflexive turn in border studies. From an autoethnographic perspective, it calls for a re-evaluation of the directions we take as scholars when we think and write about borders. By exploring the potential of selfreflection as a path for knowledge of the "other", the paper suggests a shift in gaze which builds on judgment and self-dialogue as forms of responsibility.

Injecting the Essayistic into the Curatorial

Inspired by the work of artists Walid Raad and Ho Rui An, this article reflects on the role performative practices could potentially play in what is termed these days in the field of exhibition making as ‘the curatorial’. Whereas ‘curating’ refers to the professional practice of making exhibitions according to a set of practical skills, the ‘curatorial’ refers, as curator Maria Lind argued, to connections between artworks and other material, the space, the specific time of presentation. This (self-) reflexive turn towards the conditions of exhibiting aim to question institutional logic and curatorial agency. Against this background, curators often refer to the etymological roots of curating – the Latin word ‘curare’ of ‘taking care’ – to underscore a self-critical stance towards the role they play in the process of arranging spaces of display. However, one can often discern a gap between, on the one hand, the curatorial pledge towards the politics of display and, on the other hand, and the result of such an enterprise we see as visitors of an exhibition. As an invitation to reflect more carefully on how the exhibits could be enacted, dramatized or performed this text surveys the work of Waild Raad and Ho Rui An who enacted their own exhibition through performance. By thinking Raad’s and Ho’s performance through the lens of the essay form, this text aspires to provoke a critical reflection on how the ritualization of viewing as it was installed in the nineteenth century continues to dominate our experience of visiting an exhibition.

Disturbing Disruptions and Aspirational Participation as an Academic Anthropologist: Reflections on COVID‐19, Neoliberalism, and Climate Change

SUMMARY In this article, I outline my aspirational participation as an academic anthropologist in the three arenas wherein my worth, and hence expendability, is measured: teaching, scholarship, and service. I reflect on the personal, social, and ecological impacts of my anthropological fieldwork and development over the last two decades in light of the life‐altering effects of COVID‐19. While reflexive turns continue to guide the accountability of researchers to ourselves and our interlocutors in writing and research processes, further consideration of how and where we show up in our teaching and at professional meetings will help to address how neoliberalism has shaped our discipline, leading to a greater realization of anthropology’s transformative potential to address social justice and ecological concerns. I suggest that rather than lamenting the pause provided by COVID‐19 and longing for anthropology and academia as it was, or as we imagined it to be, this disruption might give us pause to draw from our reflexive tradition. The world has been remade, providing anthropologists with additional tools to address our elitism and ecological footprint, including the destruction wrought by our contribution to climate change on some of the same communities for whom we advocate.

Colonizing the rains: Disentangling more-than-human technopolitics of drought protection in the archive

Preoccupations for the widening gap between irrigated and rainfed areas are central to debates addressing the agrarian crisis in semi-arid India. Yet policies are driven by a catch-up mentality that points towards an irrigated model of agriculture, demarcating rainfed areas as spaces of rural marginality. To unpack the historical causes behind this ‘irrigation at all costs’ mindset, the paper traces how the rainfed/irrigated gap became constituted through policies of drought-protection during British colonial time. Focussing on the Bombay Deccan after the establishment of the British Raj, it frames drought-protection as a more-than-human technopolitics to explore the performative power of technopolitical practices to bring water worlds into being.Through a critical reading of the colonial archive, we trace the ontological work of drought-protection as a practice that rearranged existing human-water relations to materialize a reality of water ‘as irrigation’. Grounded on linear and predictable flows, this irrigated ontology divided the landscape along an irrigated-as-protected and rainfed-as-unprotected logic. Encountering a world that followed geographies of water ‘as precipitation’ however created sites of contestation blurring the partition envisioned by engineering plans. Rather than the imposition of hydrological power from above, colonizing the rains represents a contested project whereby certain water worlds became present and real while others discarded and less real. Contributing to scholarship shaking the ontological ground underneath water management regimes, we suggest a reflexive turn for these practices, as they must confront their power to materialize (water) realities and the possibility to enact a decolonial technopolitics beyond water’s liquid form.

Autobiography in Anthropology

The year 2022 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Helen Callaway and Judith Okely’s edited anthology Anthropology and Autobiography. During that generational span, which roughly mirrors the life history of this journal, the book has had far-reaching influences, anchoring a legacy that few such conference collections can imagine for themselves. Indeed, the volume has become a classic reference work for scholars in all walks of the social sciences and humanities when it comes to considering a range of interrelated themes: the reflexive turn; personal encounters in the field; the literary influence of the biographical on ethnography; anthropology’s ancestries/histories (Lohmann 2008; Pina-Cabral and Bowman 2020); and so on. Another aspect of this endeavour is looking at ‘anthropology at home’ (Jackson 1987), with all the implications that this brings for research (Peirano 1998), including the notion of ‘auto-anthropology’ (Rapport 2014: 24–35).

Reflexivity and food systems research

This commentary is the result of an imperfect fit of much of the content below for a collection on sustainability and food. Ultimately I choose to remove this as it went through the review process, realizing it was a likely a round-(w)hole–square-peg type of situation. It was perhaps a bit tongue in cheek or “obtuse” for a more “scientific” way of considering the issue of food systems sustainability. In one of the disciplines from which I write, anthropology, the reflexive turn—refuting the outright positivism of neutral and objective studies, which make claims to a knowable and absolute truth—has become a part of the intellectual landscape for generations. This has led to more scientific studies wherein anthropologists are generally more honest about the extent and limitations of their research and writing. The ethnographic texts that implied omniscient and omnipresent accounts of the cultural group have generally faded from favor toward more partial accounts that are (1) reflexive in their thorough descriptions of the methods employed, and (2) those which disclose, to a greater or lesser extent, one’s positioning. These lessons have not generally permeated larger-level discussions of global food systems. Below, I take up the idea of positioning, highlighting tensions that don’t quite make the cut of being labeled or disclosed as a potential “conflict of interest” in academic publications, but nevertheless have implications in terms of how research is conducted, written up, and ultimately becomes accepted knowl­edge in particular disciplinary and professional accounts.

ДЛЯ ЧЕГО НУЖНЫ ИСТОРИКИ? ЗАМЕТКИ О ВОЗМОЖНОСТЯХ И ПРЕДЕЛАХ ДИСЦИПЛИНАРНОЙ ИСТОРИИ

The image of history that emerged during the age of modernity has become a problem both in intellectual culture and in the everyday life of the 21st century. Our turbulent world and numerous texts convince us that history is no longer what it used to be. Nevertheless, historians work primarily within the settings of normative history, which foundations were shaped in the 19th century. Researchers have long discussed the changes taking place. However, along with a critique of the established protocols of historical research in line with the reflexive turn in knowledge (“epistemological and historiographical at a time” as François Hartog argues), another historical optic and a new ethos of history are now being sought and formed in the transdisciplinary space. In this theoretical discourse, the understanding of disciplinary history and its future relates to the state of knowledge in a broad sense. The article discusses several aspects of this vast topic based on the texts of historians, philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists: the status of history in the contemporary world and its relationship with the past; temporal issues of historical culture; and the new ethos of history and the historian’s identity. Among the numerous challenges faced by humanity at the dawn of the third millennium, the following two stand out: transdisciplinarity and the Anthropocene.