The Reflexive Initiative: On the Grounds and Prospects of Analytic Theorizing (Routledge Advances in Sociology)

__The Reflexive Initiative__ is an authoritative intervention in the practice and tradition of reflexive social theory. It demonstrates the importance of the reflexive imperative, not only in the investigation of everyday life but across a wide range of human sciences and philosophical perspectives. Forty years after the publication of On the Beginning of Social Inquiry, the chapters in this collection range from re-appraisals of earlier essays on topics such as ‘reunions’, ‘rethinking art’ and ‘expats’ to contributions emphasising the opening of radical dialogues with other reflexive traditions and perspectives. These include psychoanalysis, Lacan, Hegel, Rene Girard, Daseinanalysis, dialectical method, critical feminism, and the dialogical tradition. In this dialogical spirit, the book contributes to the continuing project of analytic theorizing associated with the work of Alan Blum and Peter McHugh, and the recent turn to more ‘existential’ topics and politically engaged forms of reflexive research. It will be of particular use to students working in interpretive traditions of sociology, Critical theory, Postmodern thought and debates associated with reflexivity and dialectics in other disciplines and research programmes. Cover 1 Half Title 4 Title Page 6 Copyright Page 7 Dedication 8 Table of Contents 10 List of contributors 12 Part I Editors’ introduction 14 1 The origins and prospects of analytic theorizing 16 Part II History and contexts of analytic theory 30 2 Dialectic, indebtedness, ambivalence, and the pursuit of analytic speech: revisiting On The Beginning Of Social Inquiry 32 Part III Topics in analysis 108 3 Analysis and sincerity: warding off relativism 110 4 Reunions: standing and turning relationships 124 5 Rethinking art: a borderline case 140 6 Expats 153 7 The complaint: an analysis 169 Part IV Dialogical and dialectical engagements 180 8 Dasein/Analysis: Blum and McHugh between ethnomethodological heresy and the continental tradition 182 9 The Analysis school and feminism: intersection, explanation, and a challenge 197 10 Collaboration and the birth of comedy: from the symbolic to the real in the development of analysis 215 11 Resistance in collective and collaborative problem solving 228 12 Analytic desire and everyday life: the practice of theory in On The Beginning Of Social Inquiry 242 13 Dialectic, reflexivity, and good troublesome company 254 Part V Origins and prospects 274 14 On the unending beginning of social inquiry 276 Index of names 302