American International Journal of Social Science

Reflexivity in Practice: Social Research for Planning
Eleonora Venneri

Abstract
The paper aims to offer a reflection on the pragmatic and transactional nature of social research for planning. This is a condition for the initiation and participatory activation of reflective programmatic processes and, as such, respectful of the complexity and extreme social and cultural variability of policy implementation contexts. As a pre-condition for the reasonableness of a ‘conscious’ practice, reflexivity is effectively related to the need for intervention policies to be inspired by ‘social relationality’ criteria which combine the traditional welfare idea with the everyday life interpersonal exchanges and relationships of people. For this purpose, social research must be inspired by criteria of temporariness, contingency and circularity of the methodologies and techniques that need to be coherent and suitable for specific situations. At this level, the reflexivity assumes meta-theoretical connotations that imply, on the one hand, an implicit recognition of the need to adapt planning to specific contexts and, on the other, a tacit acknowledgment of the continous opening of planning to reasoned dialogue with the stakeholders for evaluate intervents opportunity and merits.

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