SOCSCI 1 M33 Flashcards
It is to think about something
(external to the individual)
Reflection
It is to think about the
process of thinking itself
Reflexive (Reflexiveness or Reflexivity)
A kind of Metacognition
Second level of symbolicity
Idiom or literary language, figurative language, etc.
Refers to the view that the self is all that can
be known to exist. Even if something exists, it cannot be known, only its appearance.
Solipsism
In psychology, it refers to self-centeredness, a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, need
for admiration as characteristic of a personality type
Also lacks second level of awareness
Self-centeredness and vain self-reflection
Narcissism
In psychiatry, it refers to the inability to distinguish
self from external objects as characteristic of a mental disorder
Self-centeredness
Who said “To be a questioner in reality is to locate oneself as part of the questionable and also the source of questions”
Natanson
In the most general sense, ‘reflexive,’ ‘reflexiveness,’ and ‘reflexivity’ “describes the capacity of language and of thought — of any system of signification — “To turn or bend back upon itself, to become an object to itself, and to refer to itself”
Babcock
When we think, then, we ourselves, as we are at that moment appear as a sign
Pierce
(Semiotics)
They attain that status (of meaning) when they become a symbol
Signs (otherwise has no meaning)
“As a paradox, ‘reflexivity’ refers to consciousness of self-consciousness in which the mind by its own operation attempts to say something about its operation”
Bateson
(Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of
the Mind, 1972; Colie (Paradoxia Epidemica, 1966).
Who said performative utterances e.g. promises are reflexive acts
John Austin
Perry - follower of Austin
In phenomenology, they conceived of reflexivity as an embodied institution tied to temporality and situation; the process of rendering experience meaningful —the inevitable and necessary ‘framing ’ that everyone engages in. Reflexivity is retrospective and context-bound.
Schutz and Merleau-Ponty
Schutz (Barber, “Alfred Schutz,” 2018) and Merleau-Ponty (The Self as Embodied Subjectivity, in Fusar-Poli and Stranghellini, 2009)
“[It] is by means of reflexiveness that the whole social process is brought into the experience of the individuals involved in it.” “[R]eflexiveness, then, is the essential condition, within the social process, for the development of mind”
Reflexiveness as a whole social process
Defined reflexiveness as “the turning back of experience of the individual upon himself.”
Mead
(Mind, Self and Society 1934, p. 134).
History of Ideas — History is not only about events, people, and places; it is also about ideas
Fisher
(J. Fisher 1970).
Archaeology of knowledge — ‘Doing’ a ‘history of ideas’ is doing what he calls ‘archeology of knowledge’
Michel Foucault
(Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in
the Age of Reason, 1961).
Synonym for Merton’s interpersonal expectancy effect or “Matthew effect”
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Popper introduced the Oedipus effect in this work
Poverty of Historicism
Initiated ‘structurationism’ by postulating a dialectics between society and individual; that is, societies produce individuals and individuals produce society.
Berger and Luckmann
(The Social Construction of Reality, 1967)
The following furthered the idea initiated upon by
Berger and Luckmann:
Bhaskar
Bourdieu
Dawe
Giddens
Sayer
Touraine
Bhaskar (The Possibility of Naturalism, 1979);
Bourdieu (Outline of a Theory of Practice, 1977);
Dawe (“Theories of Social Action,” 1979);
Giddens (1976, 1981);
Sayer (Marx’s Method: Ideology, Science and Critique in ‘Capital’ 1979);
Touraine (The Self Production of Society, 1977).
Practical consciousness: Bourdieu called it – a semi-structure and Giddens – ‘institution’ (citing Radcliffe-Brown, “standardized modes of behavior”) and ‘system’ (principles, rules that govern the operations of something, e.g., social system), as situated ‘practices’ (located, placed, in context).
Habitus
Production involves capable, conscious agents who aim not only to reconstitute structure but also transform it
Bhaskar — transformational model
Giddens endorsed this on structuration theory — For Giddens, social systems are stretched across time and space. This dissolves the distinction
between:
Synchronic and Diachronic
Introduced structuration theory
Giddens
Concept referring to intentional activities whereby individuals seek to satisfy their needs and goals
Agency
Refers to inability to distinguish between external object and self
Self-centeredness
Structural properties of social systems are both the medium and outcome of practices that constitute those systems
Gidden’s duality of structures
Radical of reflection, reflexivity, or reflectiveness which also means to bend
To flex (they are derivatives of “Flex”)
‘Reflexive’ has been used since 1837 to describe
pronouns, verbs, and their significations that are “characterized by, or denote, a reflex action on the subject of the clause or sentence”
Grammar
Whereby a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa, e.g., “All hands on deck”, meaning all (hands) sailors; “Nice wheels,” meaning “car”
Synecdoche
A word or phrase that calls something to mind without mentioning it, an indirect reference, e.g., “Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door —” (from The Raven, Edgar Allan
Poe). “Allusion to Pallas to show the burst of wisdom, as Pallas is the Greek Goddess of Wisdom” (Pallas Athena); “I’m listening to the king” (Elvis Presley)
Allusion
Whereby a concept is referred to by the name of
something closely associated with that thing or concept, e.g., “Oval Office” for the US presidency, “Bollywood” for the Indian Film Industry, “wheels’ for car.
Metonymy
The attribution of human nature, characteristics on nonhuman or the representation of an abstract quality in human form, e.g., (a) non-human: in Upper Bagobo folktale, Lakivot, a civet, taking a human partner, “sun-kissed mangoes,” “more birds joined
the chorus”; (b) abstract idea: the Roman goddess Libertas, Marianne, the national personification of the French Republic and its values of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, or Liberty on USA coins.
Personification
Compares 2 things using the words “like” or “as” to draw attention to the comparison
Simile
Compares 2 things without using the words “like” or “as” to refer to refer to one thing by mentioning another, to provide clarity or identity between 2 different ideas
Metaphor
Suffix of reflect meaning “outer”
— ect
‘Reflect’ is formed by the prefix ‘re’ meaning
— Again and again
In the past, reflection was used synonymously with reflexivity. They (three philosophers) used reflection to denote the knowledge that the mind has of itself and its operations, in contrast to mere “thinking” about matters external to the mind itself.
—Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz
Locke (Uzgalis, “John Locke,” 2001), Spinoza (Nadler, “Baruch Spinoza,” 2001), Leibniz (Kulstad, “Leibniz’s Philosophy of Mind,” 1997), and others
Who used to reflexively to denote the ability to raise oneself above oneself in contrast to vain self-reflection
Fichte
Requisite to knowledge production
Depends on the approach towards knowledge or morality in the approach towards truth (Rationalism/Empiricism/Synthetic A Priori/Analytic A Priori)
Give 3 important theorists whose texts were published by others
Marx
De Saussure
Gramsci
Marx notes on stages of social development Engels used in Origin of the Family-Private property and the state 1884, De Saussure course on linguistics 1916, Gramsci prison notebooks (Concept of Hegemony) 1948
5 steps of reflexive writing
preparation, incubation, intimation, illumination, verification
Conceptualization, data gathering, and reflection
Preparation
Distancing putting research projects aside to make sense of data gathered
Incubation
Concepts begin to form and the outcome of the research project begins to emerge engaging in critique or evaluation
Intimation
Integration of info including instantaneous insights exploring testing new ideas (Eureka moments)
Illumination
Referring the ideas (solutions, answers back to research question) back to objectives or collecting feedback and refining solutions that may lead to breakthrough ideas
Verification
In everyday life, we use words without clarifying
their meanings. However, in academic activities, they are necessary and used for purposes of clarity
Distinctions
Refers to mirror image
‘reflection’
Means ‘deep thought
‘reflective’
First appeared in English in 1588; used as early as 1640 to refer to the capacity of mental operations to be “turned or directed back upon the mind itself” (Babcock 1987). ’ Has been used since 1837 to describe pronouns, verbs, and their significations that are “characterized by, or denote, a reflex action on the subject of the clause or sentence”
‘reflexive’ (adj.)
Who said: Reflect’ does not have the second
level of symbolicity, the capacity to develop symbol systems about symbol systems
Burke
(K. Burke, Language as Symbolic Action, 1966).
Refers to “a word or phrase used in non-literal
sense for rhetorical or vivid effect,” or “a word of phrase that possesses a different meaning from its literal definition. To say the least, it is the poetic,
literary, language.
Figurative language
Is confused with reflexivity. The former
denotes awareness of self and the latter consciousness of it.
Self-consciousness
In Western Philosophy, it is a given human quality.
An individual does not only think but also thinks of herself as a thinker: “to be a questioner in reality, locate oneself as part of the questionable and also as the source of questions” (Natanson)
Reflexivity
Reflexivity is understood as “a series of exchanges between subject and object, or between individual consciousness and social reality.”
Babcock (Babcock 1987)
These definitions recall Socrates’ view of thought not only as _________________ but also the conception of the self as reciprocal, dialogical”
“internal dialogue” — Reflective/Reflexive (Babcock 1987).
Following Pierce, other thinkers argue that all
systems of signification are inherently and necessarily reflexive. “
(meaning-making)
“Every enunciation involves a kind of lateral statement about language, about itself, and includes a kind of self–designation within its very structure”
(Jameson, The Prison House of Language, 1972, p. 202).
Some in Social Science associate reflexivity with:
Giddens and Bordieu
This shows that the idea occurs in such concepts as Thomas and Thomas’ the ‘Thomas Theorem,’
Merton’s ‘Self-fulfilling Prophesy’ and ‘Matthew Effect,’ Popper’s ‘The Oedipus Effect,’ and so forth.
History of reflexivity
States that: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (p. 572).
Thomas in The Child in America (1928). The idea of Thomas and Thomas about the subjectivity of the situation has come to be known the Thomas
Theorem,
That is, facts do not have an existence
independent from the individual who observes and interprets them (A Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed.).
Thomas Theorem
also called the ‘interpersonal expectancy effect’ describes a phenomenon whereby one’s
expectation of how another person would behave brings about the expected result.
Self-fulfilling prophecy — In “Contested memory:
Notes on Robert K. Merton’s ‘Thomas Theorem and the Matthew Effect’” (1999), Smith states that Merton’s concept of ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ is based on the ‘Thomas Theorem’.
The so-called ‘effect’ is derived from the quote: “For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”
Matthew effect neologism — refers to
“giving credit to [already] famous people” (Merton, “The Matthew Effect”, 1968, p. 2; On Social Structure and Science, 1996).
The adage “The rich get richer and the poor poorer” is an articulation of the principle. The principle applies other fields, too, e.g., economics, literature, science and technology, etc.
Matthew 13: 11-12; Luke 8;18,
19:26; Mark 4:25).
Reflexivity poses problems in the natural and social sciences. In science, if expectations can affect outcomes, then it is difficult to test a hypothesis. For Nagel, the problem is bigger in the social sciences than in the natural sciences
(The Oedipus Effect) — For Popper and also Nagel
(The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation, 1961),
In (The Poverty of Historicism, 1957) postulated the Oedipus effect, which tries to explain the
effect of a prediction on the predicted event.
Karl Popper
“In psychology and the social sciences, This is the effect of a prediction on the predicted event, the prediction either causing or preventing the event that it predicts, or more generally the influence of an item of information on the situation to which the information refers.”
Oedipus effect
(a) it rejects structural-determinist and voluntarist approaches to the analysis of social life, and (2) it replaces both with a dialectical synthesis in which social structures are seen as produced by human agency and yet are the medium through which this production takes place (Giddens, duality of structure). Production involves capable, conscious agents who aim not only to reconstitute structure but also transform it (Bhaskar, transformational model).
The first component of structuration
It is necessary to devise a set of concepts that which mediate between structure and agency, as follows: Bourdieu – a semi-structure called ‘habitus;’ and Giddens – ‘institution’ (citing Radcliffe-Brown, “standardized modes of behavior”) and ‘system’ (principles, rules that govern the operations of something, e.g., social system), as situated ‘practices’ (located, placed, in context).
Second component of structuration
The study of action involves the analysis of practical
consciousness – the tacit knowledge that the actor applies skillfully in acting but which the actor is not able to formulate discursively
Third component of structuration
Time and space are central components in all social interaction that provide links with the social structure. Changing structural interrelationships produce the places where actions are temporarily and spatially occurred. For Giddens, social systems are stretched across time and space. This (a) dissolves the distinction between synchronic and diachronic explanation, and (b) simultaneously undermines functionalist analyses which concentrate upon the conditions necessary for social reproduction to be sustained. The former endorses ahistorical analysis which is lacking in historical perspective and context, and the latter underscores the subversive, revolutionary nature of agency (mine).
Fourth component of structuration
This (a) dissolves the distinction between synchronic and diachronic explanation
The former endorses ahistorical analysis which is
lacking in historical perspective and context
(b) simultaneously undermines functionalist analyses which concentrate upon the conditions necessary for social reproduction to be sustained.
The latter underscores the subversive, revolutionary nature of agency (mine).
