What is Reflexivity? How to Identify the Reflexive
Position of the Researcher?
Reflexivity:
Before we start going to find out the reflexive points of an ethnographer in his writing, it is important to understand, how we can use reflexivity as a methodological research tool? And How to find out the reflexive points expressed in ethnographic writing?
Reflexivity was the post-modernist response to the claims of the necessity for an objective approach in the anthropological research when its objectivity, authority and authenticity was questioned!
There are various kinds of reflexivity based upon difference ways of being reflexive. So the 5 fundamental process that will determine incorporation of reflexivity are :
1. Introspection : it is a self-reflection on what is the most fundamental part of our being. It refers to a reflection of what can be the central of the researcher’s world that guide them towards their research question on core of the research topic. But one has to be conscious about they should not be embedded itself. This should be like a spring boat to interpret the life of other and not dewing deep subjectivity. A reflection of self should be there but that has to be limited.
2. Intersubjectivity : It presents the only possibility of a researcher to being into text. It refers to how unconscious relations frames relation between participant and researcher through sharing knowledge and interaction.
3. Reflexivity, a mutual collaboration: it is assumed that the people also have right to be reflexive in research work and writings. The researcher and participant both have reflexive ability, so participants can be coresearchers. But yes, there is a demerit to this, ‘the voice of the independent researcher may be subsumed or lost in the process of egalitarian positioning of the participant’.
4. Reflexivity as social critique : the critique is that there is a unbalanced power relation between researcher and participant in terms of showing reflexivity in the text.
5. Reflexivity as a discursive deconstruction : This deconstruction is done through language analysis considering that researcher and participants are continuously engaged in presenting themselves and even to those who will perceive the research language often has to become the medium through which deconstruction has possibility.
Now based on the principles, reflexivity are of 6 types, those are :
1. Subjectivist reflexivity :
Subjectivist means holding a subjective viewpoints within research itself. The idea behind this kind of reflexivity focuses in self-derived experiences, self-quest and ideas of empathy, while engaging with a research work. The methodological relevance of this kind of reflexivity is in researcher’s own thought and perception of getting conceptuality. But the limitations are that researcher can seen to be a narcist or overly indulgence, which will effect the narrative of the people.
2. Methodological Reflexivity : the self-critique should be a methodological issue rather than a diffused approach. This reflexivity has more theoretical rigour. But the limitation is that it tries to create a gap between reflexive expression and other form of research.
3. Intertextual Reflexivity : It helps in understanding the meta concepts in the literally texts that qualifies various paradigms and allows reflective innovation in writing and research. But sometimes it can be misunderstood.
4. Stand Point Reflexivity : this statement take an account of scientific position like ethnicity, class, caste etc. It helps to locate the partially and incompleteness of the text helping in creation open spaces for critiques. But a fragmented analysis of it can lead to obscure or unclear anthropological concepts and understandings.
5. Queer reflexivity : Various forms of identity and it’s relation to power, desire and knowledge is important here. In writing gives freshmen to writing, breaks the normative heterosexuality, monotony of text, deconstructs gender binary and categories in research. But in this reflexivity concrete fragmented text is not handled properly, produce misinformed discourses.
6. Feminist reflexivity : It deals with how the sexual identity of the researcher effects the knowledge, text produce and research writing. For this reason many time personal dilemmas can effect the text produced by the researcher.
Finding Reflexivity from an ethnographic writing :
God of Justice: Ritual healing and social justice in the Central Himalayas
by William S. Sax
William Sax’s book, ‘God of Justice : Ritual healing and social justice in the Central Himalayas’ is an in-depth exploration of ritual culture in the Central Himalayas that focuses on the cult of Bhairav in Chamoli District of upper Garhwal, Uttarakhand, India. The uniqueness of the cult is largely determined by its composition, which is primarily but not exclusively made up of untouchable castes. Sax thus departs from his earlier studies of Brahmins and Kshatriyas in Garhwal, and complements them with a view from outside ‘normative’ society. This also allows for addressing the central ethnological question of the place of Harijan culture and religion within Hinduism (p. 7). As the book’s numerous case studies demonstrate, untouchable religious culture in Garhwal does indeed share broad similarities with orthodox Hinduism (e.g., the parallels between local and orthodox Hindu rituals; pp. 68-69), and in some instances it even converges with that of higher castes (e.g. a Kshatriya serving as oracle to the Harijan god; pp. 103-107).
In this ethnography sax have presented a number of reflexive account in the beginning to introduce his fieldwork and also in the later parts of the writing. Some of the dominant reflexive points include the principles of Subjectivity, Methodological, Intertextual and Stand point reflexivity. These are mentioned as follows :
10 points on reflexive writing by William S. Sax in the book ‘God of Justice’:
1. From the initial statements of introducing the place and his work author has been reflexive in the sense that when he first began exploring the Central Himalayas in 1977, he saw many tine shrines dotting the countryside. But he did not really notice them as he never though much about those initially.
2. He then started with the stand point on how small, not grand or impressive the shrines are compared to the famous temples in the place of Central Himalayas like Badrinath and Kedarnath. He then introduced those shrines and the gods those are made for. In every step he distinguished the differences of those Gods from the Grand deities of Hinduism.
3. This book itself is an reflexive account written by the author from what he learned and he had done in his fieldwork and took to the soul of ethnology. He has quoted ‘For most ethnographers, it is axiomatic that by living with a particular group of people, adopting their diet and dress, speaking their language and participating in their way of life, one achieves a kind understanding that cannot be replicated by conducting surveys, reading novels, watching movies, measuring land holdings or calorie intake or cranial size, studying history, analyzing language, conducting experiments, or any of the other methods employed by the human sciences. Certainly these other methods are worthwhile, but most ethnographers are committed to the idea that participant observation (which I will henceforth refer to loosely as “ethnographic research” or even incorrectly as “ethnography”) has something special to contribute to the understanding of particular cultures, and thereby of human beings generally.’ – this reflex the methodological reflexivity of the author.
4. As the intertexual reflexivity author has mentiontioned about the epistemological critique of fieldwork, where is mentioned about the Derrida’s observation on ‘there is nothing outside the text’. He says that, according to this critique, we can never produce an adequate or “objective” description of social phenomena, because our descriptions and analyses are inevitably couched in language, so that we can never apprehend such phenomena directly, in a way that is unmediated by language.
5. ‘I knew many Harijans: I had interviewed them, recorded and translated their songs, and visited them in their homes. But I had never done proper ethnographic research among them, never lived with them for long periods of time, never focused on their social life and customs, never asked them in detail about their lives.’ With these statements author has been showed his stand point reflexivity.
6. ‘She and her husband told me that they needed to sponsor a lengthy ritual, but they didn’t have enough money to go and summon the guru, so I gave them a hundred rupees (Rs. 100) for their travel costs’- initially author was unable to satisfy to know about the shamanistic ritual practices. As the people were uneasy to show any lengthy ritual to the author without any cost, when the author understood that, he payed money just to take part in the ritual process, although after 2 times of spending money he was not seceded as those people betrayed with him.
7. “You must promise to do the ritual just as you normally would. Don’t change anything on my account. And if you don’t do the puja after I’ve given you all this money, then you will have to answer to your devta !” – Author was being reflexive in his methodological strategies, after failing to join their rituals again and again he asked for promise after giving them money for the ritual to be done pointing towards the fear of being cursed by their God, if they betray again.
8. After the very next day of asking promise the author had injured his ankle badly, then he also developed diarrhoea, when he became self-reflexive and mentioned about his uncomfortable journey and living in the field and also thought that their God might have cursed him that is why he is having all the issues. It was the time when the author was demotivated and diverted from his aim and purpose of going to the field.
9. The author was again being reflexive while writing about the event of collecting the data from the lower caste harijan peoples, who were hiding many practices from the author, the author was surprised to look at that the people does not show up anything to the author, they are simple, was not putting any effort to make their God to be believed. The author writes that he approached the people about their God negatively, saying that he does not believe in their God, and told them that they are not Great Gods like higher caste Hindu God and Goddesses and also told that their God does not do anything. Only then those people became reflexive and excited to show up the power of their God to the author that their God also work as the saviour of their misfortunes, they put their effort to prove that the author should believe in their God and their God also great and if he does not believe in the worshiping of their God, they will angry and might curse the author. So while writing this event William Sax represent his methodological reflexivity and how he was succeeded and satisfied with the data.
10. Last but not the least William Sax again showed up his stand point reflexive point of view while writing about his initial days of rapport establishment with the people he was studying. As the author had studied the Nanda Devi Cult among the higher caste Hindu people in the Central Himalaya for 30 years before engaging with the Shamanistic study among the lower caste harijan peoples in the same place, he had many acquittances from the higher caste Hindu community. Even his assistant Dabar Singh was also from higher caste, he was living in their house and had his daily meals. When he started engaging with the lower caste people, started entering to their houses, started eating and drinking together, these events became unfavoured by those of higher caste acquittances, and author had written about the fear of being unfavoured situations like the family with whom he was living, asked him to not enter to their kitchen as he visit the lower caste households. On that time period he was having emotional and personal discomforts on what he should do to manage both the sides and explained how he had to manage that situation.
The William S. Sax’s Book God of Justice is written as a reflexive account of the experience and knowledge received by the author in the time of fieldwork in the Chamoli District of Central Himalaya. The book flourishes the intertextual, subjectivist, methodological and stand point reflexive statements in almost every chapters and stages of his journey . The above mentioned 10 points are the major insights, where the author was being reflexive in writing about the shamanistic cult and healing practices in Central Himalayas.
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