Reflexivity in sociological theory and social action

The present paper constitutes a theoretical overview of the well-established, yet highly contested, concept of reflexivity as one of the main buzzwords in sociology throughout the last two centuries. Its central aim is to comprehensively describe and critically discuss the changing historical relationships between reflexivity, sociological knowledge and everyday social life. In a rather detailed way, it carefully discerns the complex scientific meaning-making of reflexivity, from phenomenology and ethnomethodology to contemporary critical theory and the sociology of science, and extensively elaborates on its various interconnections to social action. Within this analytic framework, reflexivity is particularly associated with issues of consciousness and meaning, as well as with systematic theoretical efforts of effectively transcending old subject-object or action-structure dualistic dichotomies.