Coping With Life: A Typology of Personal Reflexivity

ABSTRACT

Personal reflexivity is understood as a social competence that makes life in society possible. All individuals reflect upon themselves, taking their social circumstances into consideration, though they do not necessarily do it in the same way. The formation, exercise, and causal efficacy of reflexivity depend on the social processes and contexts involved. This article focuses precisely on the differential component of the exercise of reflexivity. A typology of reflexivity profiles, consisting of five categories, is presented and discussed: self-referential, pragmatic, functional, resistant, and resilient. This typological analysis is the result of sociological research centered on the social mechanisms of personal reflexivity. By means of biographical interviews, the goal was to understand how people think about themselves, what meanings they ascribe to their past choices, how they interpret their present situation, and what future projections they create according to their social circumstances, contexts, and relationships.

KEYWORDS:

• Reflexivity
• agency
• structure
• dispositions
• biography

Notes

1. The use of the notion of competence accounts for the processual and dynamic nature of reflexivity, as a personal capacity, developed in specific social spheres, that can be activated in action contexts.

2. Irina, the respondent from Ukraine, is an exception, as she attended higher education, though she did not complete her degree. However, this expresses mainly educational differences between Portugal and Ukraine and does not reflect better living circumstances or more skilled jobs.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ana Caetano

Ana Caetano is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-IUL). Her research focuses on reflexivity, biographies, and the relation between structure and agency. She is currently working on the experience of biographical crisis. She has recently published articles on these subjects, namely, in Sociology (2015, with Magda Nico, “Untying Conceptual Knots: The Analytical Limits of the Concepts of De-Standardisation and Reflexivity”), European Journal of Social Theory (2015, “Defining Personal Reflexivity: A Critical Reading of Archer’s Approach”), and International Journal of Social Research Methodology (2015, “Personal Reflexivity and Biography: Methodological Challenges and Strategies”).