On Reflections and Reflexiveness: Positioning the Self, Enframing the Other?

STS scholars are increasingly engaged with science and technology practitioners, scientists, engineers and the like. The actual dynamics of these engagements differ from one project, framework or school to the next. However, to be reflexive, such engagements exercises need to deal at some point with the ambiguous ethical relationships between engager and engaged. In an attempt to disambiguate some of these interactive ties, we begin by considering the respective agendas of involved participants. To do so, we draw upon Despret’s perspectives about experiments on animals and the paradoxical relationships they give rise to. We identify the implied injunctions among STS scholars not only to "be reflexive" but also to reflect back onto practitioners their own worldviews. We then consider some of the ethical tensions, ambiguities and paradoxes between and emerging out of reflexive engagements of the self and of the other. Particularly, we explore to what extent reflexive engagements constitute ends in themselves or means to other ends. We ground this analysis in empirical evidence from an engagement study conducted in a large-scale R&D center in Flanders, Belgium.