Epistemic reflexivity in sociology

Abstract

The article considers epistemic reflexivity as a specific intellectual tendency and the requirement of the methodology of scientific knowledge in the social sciences. The epistemic reflexivity as a requirement of research methodology is associated with the rejection of the classical concept of science with its opposition between the subject and the object of cognition. Three stages in the development of ideas about reflexivity in scientific knowledge are identified: prereflexive, reflexive, and «reflexive scientization». The specifics of epistemic reflexivity in sociological cognition and such forms of research reflexivity as «autobiographical reflexivity», «hermeneutic narcissism» and «denial of authorship» are considered. The necessity of reflexivity, which does not reduce to individual reflection, but takes into account social cognition as a whole, is being argued. The following forms of sociological reflexivity are considered: «objectification of the objectifying subject» by P. Bourdieu; standpoint reflexivity; phenomenological reflexivity; reflexive sociology of A. Gouldner; radical reflexivity. It is concluded that radical reflexivity is fundamentally different as an instrument that makes it possible to identify the performative function of social cognition in the context of «reflexive scientization».