Reflexive Self or Reflexivity

In the study of identity, reflexivity refers to the human capability of turning the attention of consciousness back upon itself—being aware of the fact that we are aware, thinking about thinking, or more mundanely, perhaps, providing accounts of our selves. The concept of the reflexive self was developed most extensively by the British sociologist Anthony Giddens in the 1990s, though other prominent social theorists with an interest in identity, such as Margaret Archer, Zygmunt Bauman, and Ulrich Beck, have approached reflexivity in different ways. It has become an important and controversial concept in the contemporary sociology and social psychology of identity, used by Giddens and others to elucidate what are perceived to be changes in the relationship between contemporary social structures and people's intimate sense of self.

Giddens's model of selfhood consists of three components: the unconscious, practical consciousness, and self-reflexivity. The realm of the unconscious is of primary importance for the development of self—identity as it is here where relationships of basic trust are initiated. The experience of trust at an unconscious level in infancy provides the individual with a secure orientation toward the world that protects her or him from engulfment when threats to identity inevitably come. But the ontological demand (i.e., demands associated with people's being and existence in the world) for relative order and constancy in the reality of everyday life cannot be met in infancy or at the level of unconscious trust alone; the routine ability to go on in everyday life without being overwhelmed by uncertainty and anxiety is lodged at the level of practical consciousness—a stock of learned knowledge that has become second nature or taken for granted but is nonetheless potentially available to the reflexive scrutiny. Practical consciousness effectively answers existential questions in the doing of everyday life, without them having to be pored over and contemplated at the level of reflexive awareness. Different cultural contexts and traditions consecrate trust in the coherence of everyday life through any number of possible symbolic answers to the existential questions that underpin [Page 627]experience. The success of practical consciousness in defending the self against overwhelming anxiety thus appears dependent upon the viability of traditions to allow subjectivity a relatively unquestioned passage through the trials of life. The final aspect of self-identity is reflexivity, understood as a universal human capability. Any awareness of self as a self of some form or another is, by definition, a reflexive feat. Reflexive awareness is the universal vehicle through which we fully constitute and maintain the identity of a self and sustain awareness of it as a distinct and propertied entity.