Integrating social sciences and humanities in interdisciplinary research

Pedersen, David Budtz

doi:10.1057/palcomms.2016.36

Cited by 73 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Although interdisciplinary research can be valuable, the author acknowledges this type of research poses a unique set of challenges including the possibility of theoretical misunderstandings, problematic syntheses, insignificant gains, and the need for shifts in thinking (Pedersen, 2016). In addition, there are conflicting positions on the metaphorical, analogical, and practical usage of complexity, chaos, and attractors (Ayers, 1997;Carver & Scheier, 1999;Mackenzie, 2005;Sawyer, 2005;Vallacher & Nowak, 2007).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward Conceptualizing Race and Racial Identity Development Within an Attractor Landscape

Hill

2017

SAGE Open

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Concepts, theories, and findings of race and racial identity development were reviewed and conceptualized into a single model based on principles of complexity and chaos. This article proposes race can be understood as a complex adaptive system and conceptualized as an attractor landscape. In this model, trajectories represent racial identity development or progression through an attractor landscape comprised of racial categories. Although this works well as a conceptual model, the modeling of racial identity development within an attractor landscape is affected by practical constraints related to data collection and many of the same limitations of existing racial identity development theories. The proposed model also creates additional challenges because of its interdisciplinary nature.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward Conceptualizing Race and Racial Identity Development Within an Attractor Landscape

Hill

2017

SAGE Open

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“…The challenge facing agricultural economics departments is that it can no longer be organized along a core economic discipline, but needs to contend with a peripheral discipline-agribusiness-that does not support the department's core economic mission. Resolving this internal conflict is an important problem not only for departments that house multiple disciplines, but also to ID research (Bammer, 2017;Brandstädter and Sonntag, 2016;Clark and Wallace, 2015;Jacob, 2015;Maxwell and Benneworth, 2018;Mooney et al, 2013;Pedersen, 2016). This is because while disciplines form the foundation of ID approaches (Repko and Szostak, 2017), the advancement of "normal science" promotes a shared commitment that rejects the insights of peripheral disciplines (Becher and Trowler, 2001;Kuhn, 1962;Maxwell and Benneworth, 2018) and thus undermines the very integration sought by ID research.…”

Section: )mentioning

confidence: 99%

Overcoming disciplinary divides in higher education: the case of agricultural economics

Litzenberg

2019

Palgrave Commun

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As global problems have become ever more complex, the production and organization of knowledge in society is increasingly based on the sharing, integration and collaboration of diverse experiences. For instance, global 'grand challenges', such as world hunger, poverty, climate change, and sustainability often require an interdisciplinary (ID) approach, in which integrating the insights of different disciplines provides a more comprehensive solution than can be offered by any given discipline. Universities or higher educational institutions face increasing pressures to engage in such interdisciplinary collaboration. This interdisciplinarity, however, raises particular organizational challenges to departments in higher educational institutions. In particular, while departments have been traditionally organized around a disciplinary core, interdisciplinarity has placed increasing pressures on departments, such as agricultural economics, to integrate insights from disciplines that do not advance a department's disciplinary core. Few ID researchers have addressed the issue of how this internal conflict can be resolved in a departmental setting. Resolving this internal conflict is important to developing a greater interdisciplinarity among the disciplines of departmental units where a greater variety of disciplinary insights can be drawn upon to solve complex social problems. Here, we call for a unique organizational structure that can resolve this internal conflict. In using agricultural economics departments as a case study, we appeal to a concept of a "gatekeeper" whose role is to institute "loosely coupled" connections that can reconcile a department's internal conflicts. This "gatekeeper" can advance the "normal science" of a department's core and peripheral disciplines, while at the same time support a 'common ground' that appeals to these disciplines' common interests. A key conclusion is that "gatekeepers" can sustain the integration of disciplinary insights necessary for the advancement of interdisciplinarity in higher educational institutions.

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“…Knowing more, albeit in unspecified quantities, becomes the solution for a range of day-to-day problems in the context of cross-disciplinary obstacles and problems experienced by researchers as they work with specialists from other fields. From researchers in one field being misunderstood by others so that they become an 'appendix' to projects [57], performing 'service roles' , e.g. social scientists being asked to 'stuff envelopes' to 'being the general person for anything to do with people' [15], to the overestimation of what one knows or can know about other fields [49,61,3], to the side-lining of conceptual and theoretical contributions different disciplines can make [49,3] the variety of problems that unfold in the 'doing' of cross-disciplinary work as a result of what is 'not known' seems to tantalisingly lead to the conclusion that knowing more about something relating to other fields might be the solution.…”

Section: 'Knowing More'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Connective knowledge: what we need to know about other fields to ‘envision’ cross-disciplinary collaboration

Priaulx

Weinel

2018

Eur J Futures Res

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This paper centralises the question of what academics in higher education settings need to know about other fields to stimulate cross-disciplinary collaborative work. The concept of 'knowledge', while recognised as important within cross-disciplinary studies, has failed to be properly problematized. Little attention has been paid to what cross-disciplinary knowledge actors should possess, the purposes that knowledge might serve and few pause to consider the concept of collaboration itself, as an inherent source of situated learning. The result is recommendations about what researchers should 'know' that cannot be operationalised in practice. Highlighting a distinction between 'Of-Knowledge', entailing a detailed understanding of a field, and 'About-Knowledge', a rudimentary form of knowledge about fields, we explore two key points of the cross-disciplinary collaborative lifecycle to evaluate the needs, purposes, limits and possibilities of knowing. Noting that cross-disciplinary learning is a long process, and for which no pre-packaged 'knowledge' emerges to address the kinds of cognitive deficits that researchers typically identify, we argue that collaboration itself provides a non-substitutable venue for crossdisciplinary learning. In contrast, focusing on the point of 'envisioning' where specialisms are 'scoped out' and collaborative horizons 'mapped', we argue for efforts to be placed in enhancing researchers' 'About-Knowledge', a form of connective knowledge that extends researchers' basic knowledge about other fields prior to constructing collaborative projects. Critical for the aspirations of futures research, and the importance of fostering global, national, regional and local collaboration, we highlight how a little knowledge can go a long way.

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Integrating social sciences and humanities in interdisciplinary research

Cited by 73 publications

References 21 publications

Toward Conceptualizing Race and Racial Identity Development Within an Attractor Landscape

Toward Conceptualizing Race and Racial Identity Development Within an Attractor Landscape

Overcoming disciplinary divides in higher education: the case of agricultural economics

Connective knowledge: what we need to know about other fields to ‘envision’ cross-disciplinary collaboration

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