Self-Reflexivity

The notion of self-reflexivity is a relatively prominent one in contemporary social science (and especially sociological) debate, not least because a self-reflexive or self-conscious attitude and disposition toward everyday life is posited by a number of theorists to be a defining characteristic of the late-modern condition. As Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash explain it, “the more societies are modernized, the more agents (subjects) acquire the ability to reflect on the social conditions of their existence and to change them accordingly” (1994, 174). Thus, it is widely posited that in contemporary life-worlds, agents are positioned with increasing capacities to [Page 1259]reflect on and take up a knowing, critical, and even playful stance toward a range of issues, including those relating to identity, intimacy, the body, health, and consumption; indeed, agents may even do so in relation to previously thoroughly naturalized and apparently rigid categories of difference and differentiation, including those relating to class and gender. Roy Boyne, for example, has commented that “structural contexts such as class, ethnicity, gender, age, medical status, are now routinely and reflexively incorporated into conceptions of self-identity” (2002, 119). Class cultures, for example, are now marked by reflexive attitudes: “rueful, ironic, envious, reflectively proud” (119). As this quote from Boyne implies, increased capacities toward reflexivity in late modernity relate to shifts in the relationship between structure and agency and to a reconfiguration of the social field. More particularly, increases in reflexive capacities relate to a decline in the significance of sociostructural forms of determination or, as it is sometimes termed, to a de-traditionalization of the social field. According to Scott Lash, the decline in the powers of social structure, as well as those of authority and tradition, allows for a progressive freeing or unleashing of agency from structure; that is, it provides the conditions that enable critical reflection on prevailing social arrangements, conventions, norms, and expectations.