Reflective Relationality in Social Investigation: Theoretical Considerations for Research Practice

Abstract

This paper offers a theoretical reflection on the epistemological and methodological reasons listing reflexivity among the main practical issues of social investigation. Inspired by the situational logic of the constructivist paradigm, the paper’s analysis is limited to the preliminary stages propaedeutic to the operativeness of research, in an attempt to argue the insurmountable condition of contingency and circularity of scientific knowledge and of the procedures themselves which need to be problematised and ‘adjusted’ to specific situations. Furthermore, starting from a number of assumptions on the implicit constituents of methodological pragmatism, the paper attempts to illustrate its peculiarities with regard to the abductive logic of construction of appropriate indicators for the issues under investigation.