In late 2009 thirty researchers from fifteen different
countries gathered in Porto, Portugal, for a discussion-oriented
workshop entitled “Paths towards
reflexive sociology: Ethnography matters”. Although
with very different social, academic and theoretical
backgrounds, and with quite distinct research focuses
and approaches, all participants shared an obvious interest
in questioning their own practice, its social and
political implications, the constraints set down by rigidly
structured academic and professional universes,
the social effects of their presence amoung the groups
under study, and the theoretical, methodological and
practical challenges brought on by a constantly changing
social world. The aim was not so much to promote
a scholarly debate on the “epistemology of social
sciences” or on the “differences” between “positive”
and “reflexive” science (Burawoy, 1998), than it was to
create an opportunity for the sharing of the practical
and many times unheeded ways trough which social
researchers produce and perfect their “craft”.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Monteiro, Bruno

Queirós, João

English

Institutional Repository of the Fernando Pessoa University

ANTROPOlógicas
2015, nº 13, xx-yy
Paving the paths towards reflexive  
social research: a symposium
João Queirós
Instituto de Sociologia 
Universidade do Porto
Portugal
Bruno Monteiro
Instituto de Sociologia 
Universidade do Porto
Portugal
Introduction
In late 2009 thirty researchers from fifteen diffe-
rent countries gathered in Porto, Portugal, for a dis-
cussion-oriented workshop entitled “Paths towards 
reflexive sociology: Ethnography matters”. Although 
with very different social, academic and theoretical 
backgrounds, and with quite distinct research focuses 
and approaches, all participants shared an obvious in-
terest in questioning their own practice, its social and 
political implications, the constraints set down by ri-
gidly structured academic and professional universes, 
the social effects of their presence amoung the groups 
under study, and the theoretical, methodological and 
practical challenges brought on by a constantly chan-
ging social world. The aim was not so much to promo-
te a scholarly debate on the “epistemology of social 
sciences” or on the “differences” between “positive” 
and “reflexive” science (Burawoy, 1998), than it was to 
create an opportunity for the sharing of the practical 
and many times unheeded ways trough which social 
researchers produce and perfect their “craft”.
Although more than three years have passed, seve-
ral participants of the late 2009 forum have continued 
to dialogue, wiling to further pave the paths towards 
reflexive social research, by refusing the usually taken 
for granted “state of grace” of the academia, by reflec-
ting upon their work and their place inside and outsi-
de the scientific sphere, by questioning concepts and 
intellectual routines, and especially by continuously 
submitting to the trials of fieldwork. The articles in 
this symposium are an echo of such dialogue. Des-
pite being very different in their approach and tone, 
all papers seem to make a reflexive use of the debates 
and findings of the social sciences in order to question 
the research experiences they refer to, and by doing 
so they end up exposing that “reflex reflexivity” that’s 
intrinsic to a real craft (Bourdieu, 1999).    
1. Questioning intellectual 
routines, advancing the craft
Drawing his inspiration from Arthur Stinchcombe’s 
revision of Weber’s ideal type of bureaucracy, Burawoy 
(1998, p. 12) divides sociological work into bureaucratic 
and craft forms: “Bureaucratic sociology works with a 
detailed, planned division of labor, governed by pro-
cedures that insulate scientists from their objects of 
investigation. Craft sociology is guided by a cognitive 
map, or theory, which shapes even as it is reshaped by 
interaction of participant and observer”.
A common feature of all articles included in this 
symposium is clearly their critique – if not explicit, 
at least implicit – of what Burawoy calls the “bureau-
cratic form” of social research. The text by Wiebke 
Keim, which tries to recover and articulate the main 
themes present in each of the other articles that com-
pose the symposium, highlights in adequate terms 
what is perhaps their most relevant common concern 
– the questioning, through the exploration of concre-
te research experiences, of the social relations that are 
inevitably established between researchers and other 
actors – may them be members of the “researched” 
groups, other researchers and research teams, repre-
sentatives from the academia or other institutions, or 
participants in research results dissemination forums. 
We leave to the reading of Keim’s text further spe-
cifications on this matter. Notwithstanding, there’s so-
mething else on these articles that deserves additional 
reference, since it represents a challenge to the very 
frequently unquestioned conceptual dichotomies and 
routines of thought that structure – and limit – our vi-
sions of the social world and the ways we believe are 
“appropriate” to its study. In fact, as we suggest be-
low, all texts in this symposium question one or more 
of the “canonic” epistemological or conceptual oppo-
sitions that have framed theoretical and methodolo-
gical debates in the social sciences throughout time – 
and by doing so we believe they help to increase the 
opportunities for creativity, originality and innovation 
in social research.
4It was Simmel (2001, p. 239) that first highlighted the 
“tendency to symmetry” as a relevant feature of the 
“sociological aesthetics”, that is, that tendency shown 
by the writing and reading protocols of social sciences 
to organize arguments and concepts in opposing pairs. 
Deriving from an “economy of thought” mechanism 
(Simmel, 1999), these symmetric images, which give 
us an impression of simplicity and harmony – two fea-
tures commonly associated with “heuristic” scientific 
reasoning – are, in fact, many times, the result of the 
inadvertent application of purely conventional means. 
What has to be done – what the articles in this sympo-
sium do – is to search, through the methodical ques-
tioning of the uses of concepts, formulas and criteria, 
an explicit conscience over the limits and implications 
of the reiterated unreflective use of these dichotomies. 
Actually, what the study of the intellectual circums-
tances that lead, in a apparently irresistible manner, 
to a systematic use of the well-known oppositions 
between “subjective” and “objective”, “idealism” 
and “realism”, “immanence” and “transcendence”, 
“agency” and “structure”, “psychologism” and “ma-
terialism” tends to suggest is that these dichotomized 
models of perception and appreciation of social reality 
simply translate denominations, divisions and hierar-
chies that are arbitrary because they aren’t necessary 
but from a scholarly point of view. A work of sociologi-
cal objectivation pointed at the historically constituted 
structures of thought and action that prevail within 
the intellectual community – part of a “science of the 
academic unconscious”, as Bourdieu (2000) would call 
it – would probably reveal how the prolonged immer-
sion in the universe of solicitations and constraints 
typical of the academic field forges a series of habits 
and intellectual routines that are inevitably adjusted 
to those solicitations and constraints. It’s difficult for 
scientists to become aware of the implications and 
even of the actual presence and incidence of these 
habits and routines; their obviousness makes them im-
perceptible, especially because they appear diluted in 
forms of attention and work protocols that are taken 
for granted. Unless mutual assessment mechanisms 
and practices of epistemological self-analysis are sys-
tematically put forward, these habits and routines will 
probably remain unquestioned.
Among other significant elements, what the articles 
in this symposium offer us is a set of examples of this 
decisive questioning process. Through the exploration 
of very different research paths, all three articles at the 
core of this symposium contribute to the reconsidera-
tion of some of the most crystalized epistemological 
and conceptual dichotomies in the social sciences.
By posing the problem of the role those “under 
research” represent in actual research processes, the 
article by Raúl Cabrera e Ana Meckesheimer aims 
at deconstructing the traditional divide between the 
“subject” and the “object” of research, or between “ob-
server” and “participant”, allowing for a progressively 
more horizontal relation between the two elements of 
the process to be conceived and eventually attained. 
The idea of transforming the “instability” researchers 
experience when they face dynamic and challenging 
social sets located outside the protected environment 
of the academia in an “epistemological window” for 
constructing a “shared experience” of social research 
and social practice is a call for a revision of the concep-
tual and practical opposition and hierarchies between 
the “Researcher” and those who are “researched” and 
for the questioning of other inevitably interrelated 
pairs such as “objectivity” and “subjectivity” or “neu-
trality” and “compromise”.
This is a debate which is also present, although in 
a different perspective, in the article by Paula Mota 
Santos e Roberto Alzetta. Here, the questioning of the 
impacts of the use of film in social research highlights 
the process of knowledge construction as a social pro-
cess, a shared and negotiated process depending on 
the will of every group involved to believe and partici-
pate in the “game” – and not only on the mobilization 
of “adequate” and “rigorous” technical protocols –, 
and by doing so it challenges both the positivist trust 
in the “truth” potential supposedly contained in the 
use of scientific “method” against the “mystifications” 
of common knowledge and also the postmodernist be-
lieve in the “spontaneity” and “truthfulness” of every-
day life, which would contrast with the “artificiality” 
of science and scientific protocols.
The questioning of the nature of scientific knowle-
dge is also at the center of the paper by Emmanuelle 
Savignac. The participation of social scientists in the 
mass media is the pretext for a debate around the 
opposition between “science” and “opinion”, “objec-
tivity” and “subjectivity”, and the role and public rele-
vance of scientists.
Although very different in the questions they raise 
and the approach they propose, the three articles – and 
the symposium here presented –, seem to show, by re-
constructing and reflexively discussing the vicissitu-
des of actual practices, that the “craft” of social research 
transcends the philosophical antinomies and disputes 
the scholarly point of view, by its own logic of produc-
tion and reproduction, creates.    
References
Bourdieu, Pierre (1999), “Understanding”. In Pierre 
Bourdieu et al.. The Weight of the World. Social Suffering 
in Contemporary Society, Stanford, Stanford University 
Press, pp. 607-626.
Bourdieu, Pierre (2000), L’inconscient d’école. Actes de la 
recherche en sciences sociales, 135, pp. 3-5.
Burawoy, Michael (1998), Critical Sociology: A Dialogue 
between Two Sciences. Contemporary Sociology, 27 (1), pp. 
12-20.
Simmel, Georg (1999). “El concepto y la tragedia de la 
cultura”. In Georg Simmel. Cultura femenina y otros 
ensayos. Barcelona, Alba Editorial.  
5Acknowledgements
This symposium couldn’t have been organized 
without the support of the Institute of Sociology of 
the University of Porto, which funded the workshop 
where the contributions here presented were first de-
livered. The workshop took place in Porto, at the Fa-
culty of Humanities, the 10th and 11th December 2009. 
We would personally like to thank the Board of the 
Faculty for having accommodated the workshop and 
again express our gratitude to all participants at the 
event and, of course, to all staff members who helped 
us organize it. Since then, we have organized several 
events with different themes and objectives, but the 
epistemological concerns of the 2009 event remain a 
strong reference. 
A final word of thanks goes to the Editorial Team 
of Antropológicas, for having accepted to consider the 
publication of this symposium.


Paving the paths towards reflexive social research: a symposium

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