A post-structuralist concept increasingly used in industrial social geography (Storper, Barnes, Amin) to capture the ability of person to "reflect on their own reflections" and to understand the foundations of one's own knowledge and understanding of one's local environment and context. [Go to source
in its broad meaning this is used to refer to the capacity of researchers to reflect upon their actions and values during research, whether in producing data or writing accounts. More narrowly, ethnomethodologists use the term to describe a property of language, which reflects upon actions to make them appear orderly.
Perhaps better stated as reflectivity, it is the process of self-thought, of thinking about the meaning of events, of interactive situations, of the behavior of self and others in an effort to make sense of the circumstances.
A tendency, characteristic of cinematic modernism, to call attention to the fact that the film is an artifact or an illusion. Advocates of reflexivity often suggest that while mainstream cinema encourages the viewer to see the onscreen world as real, a more self-conscious cinema will expose the ways in which movie makers create this effect of reality.
the ability of a team to reflect critically on the way it tackles tasks or members relate to one another. This may involve some quite uncomfortable and socially difficult challenges amongst team members. Reflexivity may be encouraged by changes in group membership or interventions by outsiders. One argument is that reflexivity is a basic ingredient for successful complex decision-making groups.
In a social theory context, reflexivity is an act of self-reference where examination or action 'bends back on', refers to, and affects the entity instigating the action or examination.