Meta-reflexivity is the dominant mode of internal deliberation intimately associated with nascent morphogenesis. During the transitional period, which straddles the start of the new millennium, this mode of internal conversation is poised to overtake the practice of autonomous reflexivity induced by modernity and complementary to both its situational logic of competition and the institutional hegemony of market and state. Such is the thesis advanced in the present chapter and illustrated with reference to the life histories of subjects interviewed. To defend it involves a convincing demonstration of how meta-reflexivity is fostered by the situational logic of opportunity and that responses to it are positive towards the further unbinding of morphogenesis and negative towards buttressing the institutional complex of modernity.

Such a defence has to reveal the processes responsible because otherwise the thesis would remain merely a Weberian claim about elective affinity. Thus, as in each of the four empirically based chapters of the present book, it is necessary to identify the distinctive natal relationships that constitute the generative mechanism of this particular reflexive mode even though their effects can and often will be overridden by countervailing influences. It is inadequate – because empiricist – simply to show that meta-reflexives constituted the largest proportion of the student intake examined, representing 38.9 per cent at point of entry, even if any claim could be made that these particular entrants are representative of their age cohort – as is obviously not the case.