Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

specific embedded in discussions regarding reflexive, practice-oriented, and critical
and complexity perspectives on research. From a complex responsive process-perspective
reflexivity in research is an important and distinctive feature.
Taking reflexivity as a point of departure for research is not without consequences.
Within social sciences reflexive research represents a breach with modernistic scientific
presumptions of objective observation, and planning and control. These are
presumptions which are derived from the natural sciences (Alvesson and Sköldberg,
2009). To gain some idea about the profundity of this breach I present excursions
about the backgrounds this breach, more specific about the so called reflexive, practice,
critical and complexity turns.
Textbox 2: A reflexive turn
From the 1970s a strong criticism evolved on the techno-rational, scientific and
consumptive invasion and domination of people’s life-world. A strong perception
was that people’s life became more and more designed according to the rules
and interests of big commercial companies, health organizations and by governmental
interference. Intertwined with this domination Eurocentric and masculine
hegemony also became discussed. With hindsight one can say that to cope
with post-war effects of modernization, social scientists started to reflect upon
or maybe even attempted to rescue people’s life-world (Deetz, 1992). Generally
speaking these rescue attempts can be qualified as the renaissance of the particular
or local (Toulmin, 1990) or a micro-social turn (Brinkmann, 2012). Scientists
articulated resistance against the colonization of the life-world (Habermas,
1981a, b), the rise of the surveillance-state (Foucault, 1975), alongside a plea for
the beauty of small-scale economy (Schumacher, 1973). Post-war modernization
was disclosed in its insalubrious consequences in daily life.
The reflexive turn articulates a search in social sciences for an alternate language
to express and to understand what is experienced in life. Reflexive research is
against the grain of research which pretends to be objective or value-free, as if
the researcher (or the interests he represents) would have no influence on what
is researched and how. As if there is no researcher at all. From a reflexive point of
view this seeming independency of the researcher is criticized. “The more one
tries to remove or to curtail the voice of the author, the more authorial he or she
becomes in determining how something is portrayed, and the more dishonest
the inevitable representation of the ‘other’.” (O'Reilly, 2009: 172). From a reflexive
point of view by recognizing the unavoidability of personal bias “... our everyday
lives are a unique context for discovering who we are and what is at stake in
human living in the twenty-first century.” (Brinkmann, 2012: 4).
The reflexive turn can be interpreted as a very broad perspective on a wide
range of discussions on what should be done different in social sciences. For
Alvesson & Sköldberg (2009) reflexive methodologies include approaches
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