Evaluation and Reflexivity: The Practice of Sociology in the "Third Modernity"

Abstract

In order to understand the relationship between sociology and evaluation, the different historical contexts in which they arise are based on a periodization of societal evolution since the outset of modernity in three main phases. Placing the foundation of sociology at the beginning of what we proposed to call the "second modernity," we examine the importance of reflexive mechanisms and evaluation processes for the discipline. Finally, the implications of sociology's involvement in evaluation processes - as well as self-evaluation - are discussed from a discipline policy point of view. It is argued that reflexivity is a principle from which sociology can not abdicate if it wants to maintain the essential of its vocation and make an original contribution to the evaluation procedures.