The Reflexive Initiative is an authoritative intervention in the practice and tradition of reflexive social theory. It demonstrates the importance of the reflexive imperative, not only in the investigation of everyday life but across a wide range of human sciences and philosophical perspectives. Forty years after the publication of On the Beginning of Social Inquiry, the chapters in this collection range from re-appraisals of earlier essays on topics such as reunions, rethinking art and expats to contributions emphasising the opening of radical dialogues with other reflexive traditions and...

Facts may seem to be independent, but in this study Stanley Raffle looks at them as expressions of commitment. Medical records, he believes, furnish a principal example of the actively oriented character of the factual commitment, and he draws on his experience of research among the records of a large modern hospital to demonstrate this. He describes how records are produced and reorganized as records, and discusses the grounds which provide for all the features of the records. He looks at the act of observation in many apparently and concretely different places, and analyses the...