Learning cultures, reflexivity and creative subversion

Abstract

In a book originally published in 1984, Pierre Bourdieu wrote that although we need to know about the processes of arriving at social science research outcomes in order to fully appreciate them, '(t)he finished product, the opus operatum [the work and its effects], conceals the modus operandi [the particular way it was made] ...You are never taken into the back-rooms, the kitchens of science'. Bourdieu's own stance was the opposite, in seeing a thoroughgoing reflexivity as a condition of doing good, worthwhile social science research. Here 'thoroughgoing' means setting out the researcher's own social relationship to what is being studied. In this chapter, I want to suggest that something similar pertains in the case of social science teaching that is good and worthwhile. In doing so, I am not just expressing pedagogical preferences: rather I am suggesting that in the social sciences, reflexivity and criticality are constitutive and are part of what should be learnt by both students and teachers, and that the best teaching is dependent on the capacity and willingness of the teacher to help their students unpack the 'what normally goes without saying' of both the substance and the process of the social science course, module, lecture, seminar or assessment. Thus, I want to argue that it is practical, useful and even necessary to bring to bear a sociological imagination when we work out what to teach and how to teach it in the social sciences.