Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of reflexivity in ethnographic and sociological research. In the first part, "the methodological horror" of reflexivity is discussed from an epistemological point of view. On the one side, its inescapibility is focused; on the other side the shortcomings of the various strategies that sociologists put forth to avoid it are underlined. In the second part, the paper maintains the necessity to resort to reflexivity in order to write experimental/not traditional ethnographic accounts. Different kinds of texts (confessional, self-observational, fieldwork notes, introspective autoethnography) are thus linked to four forms of reflexivity (surprising, self-critic, demystifying and radical). A final invitation is addressed to sociologists to include themselves into the ethnographic account.