Short Abstract

Reflexivity has become a key principle of contemporary ethnographic research, yet the relationship between reflexive discourses and practices remains unsettled. Does reflexivity really challenge the unequal relations through which knowledge about Africa is produced?

Long Abstract

Understood as the researchers’ capability and willingness to reflect on their positionality throughout their research, reflexivity has become more prominent in the social sciences from the 1980s onward, with postmodernism. Who is expected to be reflexive, about what, and towards whom? The phrase "Do as I said, not as I do" captures a critical tension in contemporary ethnographic practice between the stated commitments to reflexivity and the actual methodological practices of researchers. When applied to ethnographic and ethnographically informed researches from various disciplinary backgrounds in the 21st century, this phrase addresses a pointed critique: Are scholars genuinely practicing the reflexivity they so strongly advocate for? Or are they inadvertently reproducing the very extractive and/or hierarchical research dynamics they seek to dismantle in academia? Is “reflexivity” itself a concept whose dominant formulation emerged from particular Euro-American academic traditions?

The panel brings together ethnographic and ethnographically informed research in Africa, from different disciplines, institutional settings, and geographical locations, including researchers working in sensitive, difficult, or politically and socially charged research settings. By placing discourses and practices of reflexivity in dialogue, it seeks to identify both the possibilities and limits of contemporary reflexive research. Ultimately, the panel asks what it would mean to take reflexivity seriously, not merely as something researchers say about their research, but as something that changes how research is done, with whom, under what conditions, and with what consequences.

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