Book review: Reflexivity: The Essential Guide, Tim May and Beth Perry, Sage Publications, London (2017), ix and 234 pp., £26.99 paperback, ISBN: 978-14462-9517-5

Abstract

First paragraph: In Reflexivity: The Essential Guide, Tim May and Beth Perry seek to present reflexive processes in their rich complexity by moving beyond suggestions for methodological interventions. Throughout, a multidisciplinary approach is attempted, charting the rise of reflexivity and its subsequent methodological entanglements through the decades it has been theorised and applied in social scientific research. By averting the gaze of potential readers who seek the fallacy of a ‘quick fix’ – an injection of uncomplicated, well-considered debate imploring them to undertake research reflexively – May and Perry instead push readers to consider the origins of self-knowledge. Consequently, they hope to encourage readers' ‘active intermediation as the embodiment of a set of reflexive practices’ (p.7) from individual acts driving ‘self transformation’ (p.3) to actions placing oneself in relation to others. Building upon their philosophically-minded volume exploring University-reflexivity relations (May and Perry, 2011), the nature of reflexivity as an iterative and spatially-extensive undertaking is emphasised, aligning their arguments with both established and emergent social scientific work highlighting the necessary comprehensiveness of reflexivity (see England, 1994; Wainwright et al., 2018). Numerous segments are contextualised politically and economically, with a diversity of voices from the philosophical and social scientific canon influencing debates, whilst informative boxes punctuate the dense prose to offer clarity through a multiplicity of readings and more tangible contextualisations.