Structural reflexivity poses a framework for working past the 'stasis' of dialogue that has come to characterize anthropology/archaeology recently, particularly with the fashioning of 'multivocality' or 'multiculturalism' as goals of 'inclusive research'. These programs for research have been, in archaeology, well founded upon the recognition of other manners of engaging with past material concomitant with the de-stabilization of (neo)positivist-informed science as the sole epistemological framework for understanding 'the past'. However, I would argue [link] that in archaeology (see [link] for 'native's voice' in anthropology) such multivocal aspirations have been hurredly forced upon a recalcitrant (for fears of relativity bound up in indiviualized interpretation) discipline by the Native American Graves Repatriation Act of 1990 (there were other global precedents, but no other litigation challenged arch. practice on such a practical and epistemological scale - see [link] for more background). The resultant: arch. practitioners have little theorized a 'multivocal' program beyond tagging the most fundamental difficulty - which covers the literature in a 'stalmate' scenario. That is, a truly collaborative arch. involving the 'voicing' of non-arch.s/stakeholders in arch. practice beyond a mere echoing of disciplinarian values and beliefs entails hybridizing the philosophies of arch. with indigenous philosophies/stakeholder worlviews/etc. Joe Watkins and Larry Zimmerman both admirably stated the problematic for a 'new and different arch.'. By-and-large, such an avowal to collaborate, and even incipient 'models' for collaborative practice, reverberate in SAA conferences, socially-oriented journals, and brown-bag chats. Still, unresolved is how to go about it? Unresolved since to tackle the dilemma means vearing headlong into a debate excoriating the (until now?) core beliefs of the discipline, and opening 'black-boxed' precepts to light and voices in debate. Such an 'archaeological' pursuit - peeling back the layers of disciplinarian creedence - is both unnerving and risky.

Integrating two useful and general frameworks - already practiced in the humanities and archaeology - may offer a practical and honest tempering to the unsettling fomenting of 'subjectivity' (multiple stakeholders=multiple interpretations/pasts) and 'objectivity' (unified, positivist epistemology-methodology=single, discovered past) in recent concerns over an inclusive and representative archaeology. Simply put, a structural reflexivity extends reflective consideration to how, as archaeologists, we constitute knowledge through the myriad of articulations between things-persons-institutions-information, to differential - ie. non-archaeological (in disciplinarian sense) - engagements with the past. The intended result: to draw attention to how variegated frameworks for understanding the past are structured; and, tandemly, how these frameworks structure the manner in which 'the past' is articulated in particular and peculiar manners - which may be counterposed to an archaeological articulation. In the end, an archaeology-of-the-past will present not solely an institutionalized rendering of the past, but a more comprehensive vision of how the materiality of the past may generally be utilized to create 'archaeology' - or the study/concern of the past.

Now there will be some confusion (and knee-jerking) given that structural and reflexivity are conjoined to present what some might be inclined to characterize as 'Po-Mo' or the further (over)extension of 'interpretive' or 'post-processual' archaeology. Labels/epithets are important to tag a grouping of inter-related ideas (a short-hand), but they can easily be glammed onto in order to simplify a (contrary) position to swifly and, without much intellectual effort, discount them prior to full consideration - where the inter-relation of ideas behind short-hand 'tags' may be worked-through.

Structural presumes the materialist argument that certain key contextual factors or conditions - viz. socio-economic, political, enviromental - 'causally' relate to (in Marxist terms) 'supersturctural' phenomena. Acknowledging the role of ideology (viz. superstructure) in causally determining behaviour, such a 'vulgar materialist' relation was turned on its head and then (perhaps over-emphasized) by those such as Althusser and his 'over-determination' of the subject. The resultant of these flips of theory was the attempt to middle-line it. Accordingly, the 'structural argument' has been further nuanced with a subject-affirming schema of structure-agency. An agent generally acts non-discursively in accordance with a culturally specific 'structure'; and at times may (for Bourdieu) either unintentionally act 'disruptively' or consciously act contra the structural elements. What I believe useful still is the general notion of structure as a guard against a hyper-individualism or free-determination that might be glimpsed (on the extreme) with Satre's re-working of Husserl's phenomenology and the central role of 'intentionality' to produce his existentialist doctrines. Rather, 'structure' is retained here to complement the focus on context to understand human-nonhuman action.

And this brings up the additional point of non-humans and their, to follow Latour, integral relationship with humans. With consideration of human-nonhumans in an imbroglio/'collective', the idea of 'structuring context' (without which, the fallacy of existentialist absolute freedom rears its head) can be productively filled-out to be more analytically useful. Literally 'filled-out' with the materiality of us and the world as factors which causally relate to the unfolding of history (see sociotechnical geneology) - and not just as a removed 'materialism' upon which the stage of human history unfolds in a causal but ontologically independent manner (see post-human movement).

Finally, reflexivity is also to be taken in a general, non-programmatic way - for 'programmatic' eg.s see anthropology or archaeology. These might also by synonomous with Critical philosophy, such as was inaugurated by Kant's 'Critical Problem'. Kant turned attention to our cognitive faculties which make objects and reality knowable for us. He was not to assume (contrary to 'pre-Critical' realism) that reality is immediately and straightforwardly knowable to us directly - of course Hume and Berkeley differed in their 'Transcendental Realist' conclusions. There is always the begging-question: but how do we know. To ignore this, is to be grouped under a Pragmatist fold, where representations appear to correspond to reality as they generally work, so there is no need for introspective, delving questioning. Yet, apart from the pre-Socratic philosphies of the Sophists (eg. Callicles), Kant might legitimately be said to have initiated a thorough-going self-questioning of taken-for-granted and common-sense dogmas. So perhaps it is redundant in academia to (sadly) need to 'tag' reflexivity as a component of investigation.

For futher development, see Symmetrical Reflexivity.

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