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From Ashmore, M., 2015. Reflexivity in Science and Technology Studies. In: James D.
Wright (editor-in-chief), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral
Sciences, 2nd edition, Vol 20. Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 93–97.
ISBN: 9780080970868
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved.
Elsevier
 Author's personal copy

Reflexivity in Science and Technology Studies

Malcolm Ashmore, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, UK; and Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia
Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract

This article looks at the history, varieties, influences on, and criticisms of reflexivity in science and technology studies (STS). It
deals with the epistemic, aesthetic, practical, and political aspects of reflexivity in this context. First, the meanings of
‘reflexivity,’ as this term has been understood in STS, are set out. A brief history of the varieties of reflexive concerns in this
field is presented, from Bloor’s explicit, yet limited, endorsement, to the full-blooded treatments of ‘the reflexivists’ (Mulkay,
Woolgar, Ashmore) and beyond. Criticisms of reflexive writing from within STS (especially from Collins and Latour) are dealt
with and responded to. A consideration of the internal role and status of reflexive work in STS and an assessment of the
current state and future prospects of reflexivity are undertaken.

Introduction collapsing the external/internal, outsider/insider, on/in rela-

“Considerations of reflexivity have salience in diverse intel-
lectual practices and traditions: literature, philosophical logic,
the visual arts, cybernetics, as well as social theory and soci-
ology. Indeed, it is an issue with potential relevance for all
modes of representational and performative practice. In the
most general terms, considered as a feature or style of inquiry,
reflexivity is a concept that expresses a concern to turn ‘subject’
into ‘object,’ to turn the activity of inquiry into a topic for
(its own) inquiry. To ‘be reflexive’ is to bring the process of
doing an activity into the purview of that activity as a feature of
it. Thus, it implies a certain self-consciousness, and a certain
paradoxical, even Zen-like, mode of operation: bootstrapping;
attempting to see the flashlight that illuminates the scene as
a part of the scene it illuminates; taking account of this
moment as one writes of ‘this moment.’ This article details the
ways in which reflexivity has featured in science and tech-
nology studies (STS), and speculates on the current and future
status of reflexive study in STS.
Alternative Introduction
This heading is not to declare, exactly, that there is anything
‘wrong’ with that first introductory paragraph. It does the job,
and it does it correctly; that is, in accord with the ‘Instruc-
tions for Manuscript Preparation’ for this encyclopedia. It is
just that in doing ‘just that,’ it is unable to acknowledge the
conditions under which it does so. Thus, it leaves all those
things out of (its) account; which is normal, and normally
unobjectionable. Perhaps no other article in this encyclopedia
makes any reference to such things, preferring instead,
perfectly ‘obviously,’ to concentrate on the primary task of
speaking authoritatively (and, importantly, briefly) about its
topic. Thus, the conditions of production of these particular
texts are constructed as irrelevancies for, and obstacles to, the
proper work. Social science inquiry that focuses on condi-
tions of production has always acted (intentionally or not) to
‘make trouble’ of this kind: Marxist economics for capitalism;
sociology of education for teaching; STS for science and
technology. Reflexivity adds a twist to this dynamic: in
tion, the source of trouble, being as much ‘here’ as it is
‘there,’ is no longer clearly located or easily attacked. This,
then, is the primary role for reflexive inquiry: to make things
difficult; to enrich the process of inquiry; to go round and
round in circles; to fill out the picture; to frustrate all action;
to act authentically and without self-contradiction; to change
the subject.
Reflexivity as a Problem
In STS, the impetus for explicitly reflexive studies has been
felt most strongly in the important subfield of STS known as
the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK). Here, the
reflexive tie between its subject (knowledge about scientific
knowledge) and its object (scientific knowledge) is very
marked. That is, SSK exhibits a strong ‘X of X’ structure.
Because of this, and because SSK’s epistemology is explicitly
relativist, reflexivity in SSK has a ‘bite’ akin to classic philo-
sophical skepticism.
Extremely crudely, and for illustrative purposes only, SSK’s
relativism with respect to scientific knowledge can be, and
indeed has been, taken as equivalent to a statement of this
kind: “Scientific knowledge does not constitute truth because it
is socially constructed.” Read this way, SSK then becomes
vulnerable to the standard antirelativist critique, the argument
from self-refutation: “If this statement is asserted as a (scien-
tific) truth, then it suffers from performative self-contradiction,
and thus refutes itself” (see, for example, Hollis and Lukes,
1982). Note that the self-refutation argument uses reflexivity:
it is through the process of turning its target onto itself that the
demonstration of self-refutation is effected.
This is indeed one of the commonest modes in which
reflexivity operates: as a weapon in the agonistic game of crit-
icism. Thus, for those threatened with attack-by-reflexivity, it
becomes a source of vulnerability to be abjured and defended
against. Reflexivity becomes a ‘problem’ to be ‘managed.’ The
various ways in which practitioners of SSK have done this, have
made up one of the preoccupations of ‘reflexivist’ studies
(see Section Relativist Consistency, Radical Reflexivity: The
Reflexivists).

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International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, Second Edition, 2015, 93–97
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94 Reflexivity in Science and Technology Studies
Logical Consistency: Bloor’s Strong Program
David Bloor’s Knowledge and Social Imagery (1991) is one of
the earliest texts to set out the elements of what has become
known as SSK. It contains an endorsement of reflexivity as the
fourth and last of the ‘tenets’ for the “strong program in the
sociology of knowledge”: “In principle [the strong program’s]
patterns of explanation would have to be applicable to
sociology itself. Like the requirement of symmetry, this is
a response to the need to seek general explanations. It is an
obvious requirement of principle because otherwise sociology
would be a standing refutation of its own theories” (Bloor,
1991: p. 7).
Here, Bloor’s positive support for reflexivity is a matter of
logical consistency and a creative way of managing the self-
refutation charge. Rather than deny the reflexive applicability
of the strong program, Bloor emphasizes it, secure in his
understanding that the socially constructed character of all
knowledge, including his own, does not count against its val-
idity. Bloor’s reflexivity, however, remains at this ‘in principle’
level. His negative attitude toward any empirical instantiation
of his reflexive programmatics is documented in a text that
claims to be precisely that (Ashmore, 1989). Thus for Bloor
(as well as for his former ‘Edinburgh school’ colleague Barry
Barnes (1974), Epilogue), reflexivity is an argument used to
defend a position; it is certainly not a practice.
Harry Collins: Special Relativism and the Ban on Reflexivity
Not so for, for example, Harry Collins (1985), perhaps the
most influential writer through the heyday of SSK (c.1975–
90). Collins’s doctrine of ‘special relativism’ separates the
natural world from the social world and the distinctive tasks
and ‘natural attitudes’ of the natural scientist from those of the
social scientist. The sociologist of scientific knowledge should
treat the natural world as socially constructed, while treating
the social world as ‘real’ and a source of sound data. However,
this sense of ‘realism’ is taken from a reading of how natural
scientists act toward their realm of inquiry, namely, the natural
world. In effect, what Collins is doing here is to deny, for
purposes of the conduct of research, the practical relevance of
the purported reflexive similarity between subject and object in
SSK. The result is the short-circuiting of attempts to apply
Collins’ conclusions about, for example, the replication of
experiments to those conclusions themselves (nevertheless, see
Mulkay, 1985: Chapters 4 and 5; Ashmore, 1989: Chapter 4).
In short, Collins’ ‘management strategy’ for reflexivity is to
ban it altogether. This radical solution to the problem of
reflexivity has laid Collins open to charges of inconsistency
from both wings of the ‘realist–relativist’ continuum. The rec-
ommended moves for repairing this perceived inconsistency
differ, however, with the ‘realist’ suggesting he abandon his
problematic relativism about nature, and the ‘more-radical-
relativist’ proposing the dropping of his social realism
(see Technology, Social Construction of).
Relativist Consistency, Radical Reflexivity: The Reflexivists
In the late 1980s, a small number of ‘full-blown’ reflexive texts
were published (Ashmore, 1989; Mulkay, 1985; Woolgar,
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, Second Edition, 2015, 93–97
1988). This group of writers became known as ‘reflexivists.’
Ashmore’s The Reflexive Thesis is an SSK study of SSK,
a general exploration of reflexivity, and an experiment in
‘new literary forms.’ Mulkay’s The Word and the World is
a series of ‘explorations in the form of sociological analysis’
that draws upon analyses of biochemists’ discourse.
Woolgar’s Knowledge and Reflexivity is a collection of papers
from a small group of regular contributors (including
Ashmore, Mulkay, and Woolgar) to the Discourse and
Reflexivity Workshops held in the United Kingdom in the
early 1980s. What links all these texts together, apart from
their authors’ close socio-cognitive relations to one another,
is the common attempt to treat reflexivity less as a problem and
more as an opportunity; an opportunity, even, for celebration.
What happens when one stops evading reflexivity, when one
looks ‘the monster’ in the eye, when one gives it a place at the
heart of the research process? Self-destruction? Massive irrele-
vance? Third apocalyptic simile?
Bruno Latour’s contribution to Knowledge and Reflexivity
(Latour, 1988) is an exception. Latour argues that the ‘meta-
reflexive’ writing strategies of the reflexivists provide
a solution to a false problem: namely, the imagined naiveté
of readers who believe too much and too easily. On the
contrary, the real problem that (scientific, factual) writers
have, is to be believed, or indeed, read at all. Latour further
claims that the reflexivists are searching, despite their own
gestures at weakening their own authorial privilege, for
a final meta-level that leaves no remainder and from which
vantage point, everything can be taken into (their) account. As
an antidote to such impossible ambitions, Latour recommends
a strategy of ‘infra-reflexivity’: just to tell stories, drawing upon
the richness and variety of all the ‘ordinary’ resources available.
Latour’s Aramis (1992, 1996) – despite its appearance as an
experiment in ‘new literary forms’ – is, perhaps, an example.
Criticisms: Pitfalls and Pratfalls
Reflexivity gets you nowhere. It is not a useful thing to do and
its results cannot be used. It is impractical. As an activity, it
immobilizes you. It leads to idle navel-gazing and foolish self-
absorption. It is ‘all pots and pans and no pudding’ (Bloor,
cited in Ashmore, 1989: p. 20). Logically, it leads to the abyss
of the infinite regress or the never-ending search for the
perfect meta-level. Reflexivity is politically and morally
irresponsible games playing, fiddling while Rome burns. It
has no soul (to bare) and no wisdom (to distribute), just an
overdose of clever–clever irony. It disables criticism by taking
that role on for itself; in its attempt to play all the roles of
the academic community at once, and all by itself, it betrays
itself as deeply, and ironically, antisocial. Indeed, it appears
to seek nothing from its readers but a kind of ‘aesthetic’
admiration marked by a knowing, smug, and boyish
amusement.
However, for the larger STS community, reflexivity has had
positive functions and effects. The reflexivist fulfills the
important role of the jester at the court of STS. Moreover, the
presence of reflexive work as part of the ‘canon’ of STS, acts as
a corrective to a kind of methodological overconfidence
resulting from the recent success of the field. Reflexivity
 Author's personal copy
reminds us that the fundamental epistemic questions and
quandaries that originally animated SSK are permanent
features of the practice of ‘inquiry into inquiry’ epitomized by
STS scholarship. The text that aspires to ‘transparency,’ that is,
blithely unconcerned with the conditions of its own produc-
tion, is now, at the very least, ‘visible,’ a member of a marked,
rather than unmarked category.
The Current Situation”
Careful or instructed readers will notice that all of the above
(starting in the first section, and running through the end of
this section’s heading) is ‘in quotes,’ which indicates that the
quotation includes almost all of this article, up to ‘this’ point,
as it appeared in the 2001 edition of this encyclopedia
(Ashmore, 2001). So what, then, now, is the current ‘Current
Situation’ – though not, unfortunately, the (post-publication,
2015 and beyond) current, but the compositional Now of
late 2012?
New ‘New Literary Forms’?
Though this author, clearly, is still given to playing minor
textual games, are these still being played in STS in the post-
reflexivist era? Though hardly prominent, and certainly not
trumpeted as new ‘new literary forms,’ experimental texts do
still appear. Latour’s Aramis (1992, 1996) (see Section Relativist
Consistency, Radical Reflexivity: The Reflexivists) is more
a detective story than a conventional technography of the
eponymous, failed, rapid-transport system that is its topic;
a story that even features the Aramis system accounting for its
own death. Mol’s The Body Multiple (2002) sustains a double
text throughout: on top, her ethnography of the disease of
atherosclerosis, and on the bottom her relation of her
‘relation to the literature’ – see also Ashmore (2005) which
attempts a pale salute to Mol’s achievement.
Radical Reflexivity: Is It All Over Now?
A session at the 4S/EASST (Society for Social Studies of Science/
European Association for the Study of Science and Technology)
conference held in Vienna in 2000 bore the title now given to
this section. Most effectively dramatizing the question, one
paper in that session, presented as a letter to its speaker, Steve
Woolgar, from the seemingly-apocryphal ‘Brian Peabody PhD
OBE FREng’ raised the question (a question raised before,
according to the letter, by one of Woolgar’s students) ‘What
happened?’: “Looking for the standard indicators of the
success of the field, you might ask where are the new journals
of reflexivity, the international association of radical
reflexivity (IARR), the annual conferences (Reflex, 2000), the
newly established Chairs in Reflexivity and so on” (Woolgar,
2000: p. 3). Peabody/Woolgar then goes on to suggest that
reflexivists would be bound to be skeptical of the value and
desirability of such indicators, and thus, precisely because of
their absence, “. reflexivity has succeeded spectacularly.
Reflexivity is a success because it has argued itself out
of a job” (Woolgar, 2000: p. 3). Rappert (2007), which
includes a commentary on the Woolgar/Peabody ‘personal
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, Second Edition, 2015, 93–97
Reflexivity in Science and Technology Studies 95
correspondence’ of 2000, treats the ‘failure’ of the reflexivist
program as his main example of the difficulties involved in
making constructivist generalizations. (Interestingly, Rappert’s
paper, despite its negative conclusions about the program
that introduced such devices, uses an unconventional double
text – see Section New ‘New Literary Forms’?) Knuuttila
(2002) conducts a similar postmortem on STS reflexivism,
concluding that “[i]n retrospect, it seems fair to say that
radical reflexivity of STS stumbled against its own
impossibility” (paragraph 28). Pels (2000) is less apocalyptic
in his rejection of reflexivism, which he understands as
a matter of the infinite ascent of meta-levels, with no
(logical) endpoint. He recommends, both as an alternative to
this endless spiral and to the flatness of classical realism, ‘one
step up,’ no more and no less. In this, as he acknowledges, he
is close to Latour’s (1988) ‘infra-reflexivity’ (see Section
Relativist Consistency, Radical Reflexivity: The Reflexivists).
Social Science’s Ubiquitous Reflexivities
Meanwhile, elsewhere, ‘reflexive’ has, over the last 20 years or
so, become a highly desirable attribute of any ethnographic,
qualitative study throughout the social sciences (May, 1999).
What is meant by this term, though, when lauded so
positively, is rarely anything like its understanding in STS
reflexivism. Most often, a claim that an author (or text, or
work of research) is reflexive means that some notice is taken
of the involvement of the ‘subject’ in the working up of the
‘object.’ (A representative discussion is Finlay, 2002.) The
extent and character of this involvement, as Lynch’s (2000)
comprehensive typology makes clear, is highly variable, but is
often satisfied with an autobiographical gesture or two. As an
indicator of the near-ubiquity of reflexive claims in
qualitative social science, the online journal Forum:
Qualitative Research published two special issues on
‘Subjectivity and Reflexivity in Qualitative Research’ (issue
3(3) in 2002 and 4(2) in 2003) comprising a total of 32
articles. Lynch’s (2000) effort is rare enough, these days, in
mounting an argument, to quote the title, ‘Against Reflexivity
as an Academic Virtue and Source of Privileged Knowledge.’
As a precursor to mounting this argument he catalogs the
reflexivities into six major types: 1. mechanical (with three
variants); 2. substantive (two variants); 3. methodological
(four variants); 4. meta-theoretical (three variants); 5.
interpretative (two variants; 5b being the ‘radical reflexivity’
associated with STS reflexivism); 6. ethnomethodological
(just the one). Lynch’s preference is for type 6, as, being
a ubiquitous and unavoidable feature of the social world,
ethnomethodological reflexivity cannot be a matter of claims-
making, and thus the potential gaining of virtue or privilege,
at all.
The term ‘reflexivity’ has also become prominent in social
theory, particularly in the influential thesis of ‘reflexive
modernization’ put forward by Beck et al. (1994) – Lynch’s
(2000) type 2a: substantive/systemic – where ‘our’ modernity
is characterized as pervaded by reflexive monitoring of its
own processes in the form of cost–benefit and risk analyses,
opinion-polling, and so forth. Another well-known social-
theoretic source of reflexivity occurs in and as the work of
Bourdieu (Bourdieu, 2001, 2004, 2008; Bourdieu and
 Author's personal copy
96 Reflexivity in Science and Technology Studies
Wacquant, 1992; see Maton, 2003 for a general discussion).
Bourdieu’s ‘hyperobjectivist’ form of reflexivity (type 4c) –
entailing the scientific objectivation of the subject of
objectivation – incurs the wrath of Lynch (2000: pp. 30–31);
but then, at the end of his life, Bourdieu (2001, 2004)
directed his own wrath at ‘the new sociology of science’ (SSK/
STS), a move lovingly described by Mialet (2003). A later
posthumous work (2008) is reviewed by Gingras (2010) as
demonstrating the superiority of Bourdieu’s ‘sociological’
reflexivity over the ‘textual’ version homegrown in STS “that
rapidly led to an impasse” (Gingras, 2010: p. 619).
STS’ Topical Extensions
It has been a long time since STS was mainly SSK together with
ANT (actor network theory); indeed this couple largely ceased
to cohabit following the polemics published in Pickering
(1992). STS has become extraordinarily diverse, topically,
conceptually, institutionally, and nationally. Though the
acronym STS seems to specify a single (double) topic, that of
science and technology, its topics have now expanded into
a whole range of what Lynch (1993) has called ‘epistopics’:
law and legal deliberations, politics and policy, engineering
and design, medicine and health care, finance and markets;
and all the hybridities performed when ‘science’ and/or
‘technology’ (technoscience) meet (these and) other
institutions and practices – particularly as heterogeneous
assemblages forming around public ‘matters of concern’ as
opposed to the private laboratory-based production of
‘matters of fact’ (Latour, 2004; Latour and Weibel, 2005).
Where, if anywhere, is the place of reflexivity in this STS?
The varieties of reflexivities (see section Social Science’s
Ubiquitous Reflexivities) have made themselves felt in STS, as
they have elsewhere. A recent special issue of Science as Culture
(Cohen and Galusky, 2010) is dedicated to reflexivity
conceived as how personal narrative and experience can lead
to STS-relevant insights. A rather different sense of the term is
present in Wynne’s normative call for greater ‘institutional
reflexivity’ (Wynne, 1993); an emphasis that applies the
(positive) attribute of reflexivity, not to the STS researcher,
but to the researched; that is, to scientific institutions that
tend to suffer from a self-awareness deficit. And what of the
emphasis of the 1980s reflexivists? It can sometimes seem as
if this never existed. Collyer (2011: p. 316) argues that
“despite its potential, theorising within the sociology of
science and technology is hampered by insufficient attention
to . the concept and practice of reflexivity”! An endangered
species, evidently (see Section Radical Reflexivity: Is It All
Over Now?) but not yet quite dead, though largely confined
to a counterintuitive corner of the STS universe – that of
business schools and marketing research – courtesy of the
Final Reflexivist, Steve Woolgar’s elevation to Professor of
Marketing at Säid Business School, Oxford University
(Neyland and Simakova, 2009).
Thus.
. though the career of ‘reflexivity’ has never been healthier, it
has, in the STS context, lost much of its radicalism, bite, and
distinctiveness, much as Pollner (1991) complained, years
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, Second Edition, 2015, 93–97
ago, in the case of ethnomethodology. Whether this, Dear
Reader, is any cause for concern, is, as always, a matter in
you to decide.
See also: Actor-Network Theory; Human Sciences, History of;
Science and Technology Studies, Ethnomethodology of;
Scientific Knowledge, Sociology of; Situated Knowledge,
Feminist and Science and Technology Studies Perspectives;
Strong Program, Sociology of; Technology, Social
Construction of; Truth and Credibility in Science.
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