Abstract
‘Reflexivity’ is a book aiming to reinvigorate and bring together debates about reflexivity in the face of criticisms from new materialist thinkers such as Karen Barad and Donna Haraway. The author argues that, whilst there has been a widely accepted view that the social researcher’s personal experiences impact on intellectual craftsmanship and that some form of reflexivity is valuable, there is not a shared understanding of reflexivity as both a concept and practice. However, the author makes clear that this is not a ‘how to’ book. In fact, the book is a continuation of previous work by the main author, Karen Lumsden, on reflexivity within her criminological social research, which is situated within the context of British policing. Along with contributions from two colleagues, Lumsden provides accounts from a female perspective with the purpose of demonstrating how the intertwining of daily life experiences and academic careers both challenge and enable a researcher’s capacity to write reflexively and become academic within the social sciences. The author’s key aim is to reinvigorate debates concerning reflexivity in the social sciences based on her belief that there is a need to reimagine and redefine reflexivity in defence of criticisms of it in favour of diffraction.
Following a useful initial few chapters describing the development of the reflexive turn, the influence of feminist research and a discussion of new materialism, Lumsden presents a reflection on her experiences as a young female ethnographer researching the male-dominated culture of boy racers in Aberdeen. Lumsden describes how her gender as well as her social positioning affected the interactions she encountered and how she subsequently documented these interactions within her fieldwork. Later in the book, Lumsden goes on to reflect on the role of bias and partisanship within her interpretation of her fieldwork and ends with an important final chapter analysing her encounters with police staff in order to highlight the perceived value and legitimisation of qualitative social research along with issues of academic freedom. These chapters about the fieldwork, its interpretation and the engagement of the potential users of the research feel like the meat of the book, which are then interspersed with three chapters on ‘journeys through the professional and personal’, described as reflexivity in action. In my opinion, these three extra chapters could have been more usefully condensed in order to allow space for a greater development of the main argument.
The author has drawn on a wide temporal range of references such that the book provides a useful historical description of the development of reflexivity up to the emergence of more recent debates regarding new materialism and diffractive methodologies. There are some important points made, but there are a number of structural aspects of the book that made it difficult to read. The introduction opens with a summary of the aims and issues and, whilst it sets the book within the context of post-qualitative inquiry, new materialism and diffractive methodologies, it does so without first defining what these are. Students new to these debates would find it difficult to quickly grasp the importance of these comparisons so some definitions early on would have been more helpful.
Throughout the book, there is quite a bit of repetition that labours and re-iterates the central claim being made, without seeming to develop and strengthen an argument for it. There is also a lack of cohesion in terms of bringing together the chapters in order to support this overarching claim. There are no suggestions about how reflexivity might be reimagined or redefined, and indeed this may be beyond the authors’ intentions, but there is also insufficient use of the material presented in order to develop a convincing argument for why this redefining is necessary or use of it to create the defence that the author claims to be mounting. Ultimately, what I expected was greater attention to addressing the stated purpose of the book, that is, to defend reflexivity from the criticisms levelled at it from new materialist researchers and those keen to propose alternatives based on diffraction rather than reflection. There is some very interesting and useful material concerning the act of being reflexive in the research project of boy racers and the police but the evaluation of it seems to fall short of mounting a convincing defence.
Unfortunately, I’m left with the disappointed feeling that the book is a bit of a wasted opportunity. This does not mean that making the argument for reinvigorating debates about the value of reflexivity compared to, what is perceived as, newer diffractive methodologies is not warranted but I feel the author has under-utilised the reflexive data they describe and, as a result, the book has fallen short of mounting the defence claimed at the start. Students and researchers who are new to the more nuanced debates of diffraction versus reflexivity will find themselves reading around the book in order to be able to evaluate the author’s claim for the need to redefine or reimagine reflexivity. Some of the references that the author draws upon, particularly those by Bozalek and Zembylas (2017) and Hollin et al. (2017), are useful for thinking about the contribution that this book makes to the debate. As a result, I am convinced by the criticisms that Barad and some of her followers have utilised a rather narrow and possibly misplaced understanding of reflexivity, choosing instead to focus on reflection. However, I also feel there is added value from thinking about what diffraction is in relation to reflexivity. So, perhaps a way in which the book could usefully contribute is to a debate about the need to critically appraise what the proposal of diffraction might have to offer for reaffirming reflexivity, rather than seeking to redefine or reimagine reflexivity as a concept.
