This article offers a critique of the self-observation of the social sciences practiced in the philosophy of the social sciences and the critique of epistemological orientations. This kind of reflection involves the curious construction of wholes under labels, which are the result of a process of “distillation” or “abstraction” of a “position” somewhat removed from actual research practices and from the concrete claims and findings that researchers produce, share, and debate. In this context, I call for more sociological forms of reflexivity, informed by empirical research on practices in the natural sciences and by sociomaterial approaches in science and technology studies and cultural sociology. I illustrate the use of sociological self-observation for improving sociological research with two examples: I discuss patterns in how comparisons are used in relation to how comparisons could be used, and I discuss how cases are selected in relation to how they could be selected.

本文对社会科学哲学中实践的社会科学自我观察和认识论取向的批评进行了批判。这种思考涉及标签下整体的奇异构造，这是“蒸馏”或“提取”某个“位置”的过程的结果，该过程有些偏离了实际的研究实践以及研究人员产生的具体主张和发现，分享和辩论。在这种情况下，我呼吁采用更多的社会学形式的自反性，这要归功于对自然科学实践的实证研究以及科学技术研究和文化社会学中的社会材料方法。我通过两个例子说明了社会学自我观察在改善社会学研究中的作用：