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School of Geography and the Environment

University of Oxford
School of Geography and the Environment

 School of Geography and the Environment

Project Details

  • Duration: 2004 - 2006
  • Funded by: Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
  • Researchers: Dr Andrew BarryDr Gisa Weszkalnys
  • Partners: Prof. G. Born and Prof. M. Strathern, University of Cambridge
  • Contact: Dr Andrew Barry

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Research: Technological Natures: Research Project

Interdisciplinarity and Society: A critical comparative study.

Dr Andrew Barry, Dr Gisa Weszkalnys, Prof. Marilyn Strathern and Dr Elena Khlinovskaya Rockhill (Social Anthropology, Cambridge) and Prof. Georgina Born (Social and Political Sciences, Cambridge) with Alan Blackwell (Crucible, Cambridge) and James Leach (Social Anthropology Cambridge).

Although it has a long history in scientific research and science policy, interdisciplinarity has recently acquired a new importance to policy in the UK and abroad, and is taking new experimental forms. It is claimed that interdisciplinary research will play a vital role in fostering greater accountability of science to society and, by establishing closer relations between scientific and technical research and the needs of the economy and of users, in promoting innovation.

In the context of the new focus on interdisciplinarity, collaborations that cut across the boundaries between the natural sciences and engineering, on the one hand, and the social sciences and arts, on the other, have acquired a special significance. There is, however, a serious lack of empirical studies of such collaborations. This study aimed to remedy this lack through a critical comparative study of interdisciplinary institutions. The study had four principal elements:

  1. a series of experimental seminar and interdisciplinary design workshops;
  2. an ethnographic study of the Cambridge Genetics Knowledge Park;
  3. an internet-based survey of interdisciplinary institutions; and
  4. case studies of ten interdisciplinary institutions in three areas of interdisciplinary research: a) environmental and climate change research, b) ethnography in the IT industry, and c) art-science.

The case studies produced 170 interviews and included periods of ethnographic fieldwork, as well as analyses of published papers and observations of relevant events and conferences.

One key finding challenges previous policy and theoretical approaches, which assume that interdisciplinary fields involve the integration of two or more 'antecedent disciplines'. In our research we were able to identify three distinctive modes of interdisciplinarity:

  1. The integrative-synthesis mode: interdisciplinarity entails an integration or synthesis of insights and methods from two or more disciplines, and possibly also from non-expert forms of knowledge. Broadly, it is possible to distinguish between the kinds of synthesis produced through the development of common models, and those that attempt to forge a synthesis with other kinds of knowledge present in society.
  2. The subordination-service mode: one or more disciplines are conceived as being subordinate to, or as serving, other component disciplines. This mode points to the hierarchical relationship between disciplines that characterizes many types of interdisciplinarity.
  3. The agonistic-antagonistic mode: interdisciplinary collaborations spring from a self-conscious dialogue with, or criticism of, the limits of established disciplines or the status of academic research in general. Through this mode we highlight the often perceived imperative to contest or transcend the boundaries and assumptions of existing disciplines.

Existing accounts of interdisciplinarity overemphasise the role of interdisciplinary research in fostering new relations between scientists and society. Moreover, they underemphasise the heterogeneous nature of contemporary interdisciplinarity and the ways in which it can involve radically new ways of thinking about the nature of the objects of scientific and technical research. A second key finding of the research is that interdisciplinarity tends to be driven and justified by what we call three logics:

  1. The logic of accountability: There are a variety of ways in which interdisciplinary collaboration with the arts or social sciences are expected to enhance the accountability of the natural sciences. In practice, this can be a matter of defending the sciences by providing them with a protective layer of social scientific expertise and social engagement - deflecting more disruptive criticisms. Much of the concern with the public understanding of science takes this form. But it can involve a more radical departure from notions of scientific autonomy in which public institutions and social movements help to direct or participate in the conduct of research.
  2. The logic of innovation. A second set of justifications for interdisciplinarity is that the involvement of social scientists in research and development makes innovation more responsive to the real needs of users and consumers. This can involve efforts to draw social scientists into close collaboration with product designers and engineers, fine-tuning product design to user needs. But interdisciplinarity is also expected to have a range of long-term consequences, including broader changes in the corporate imagination, such as recognition of the importance of attending to social and cultural differences in emerging markets.
  3. The logic of ontology: our research highlights the importance of rationales for interdisciplinarity based on recognition of the limitations of existing ways of conceiving of the objects of research, whether the environment, technology, or art. In all three case studies, new understandings of the object are central to the generation of interdisciplinary research, which in this way transcends, and is irreducible to, its 'antecedent disciplines'. Ethnographers in industry and many environmental social scientists, for example, challenge traditional natural scientific and engineering understandings of the nature of technical objects and environmental processes.

The study has three key implications for policy:

  1. It is not possible to evaluate many interdisciplinary institutions simply by bringing together experts from each of the different disciplines that have contributed to the development of the interdisciplinary field. There are two difficulties with this approach. It can lead to inappropriate assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of interdisciplinary research, due to the reliance on existing disciplinary criteria of evaluation. But it is also likely to entail a lack of recognition of the existence of a developing body of expertise specific to the emerging interdisciplinary field, and a failure to employ that expertise in evaluation.
  2. The study provides evidence that there is a need for sustained support of interdisciplinary research in terms of both scale and duration, allowing the new field to develop and enrich its common languages and to mature. Where there is evidence of incipient fruitful interdisciplinarity, policies should take into account the need for support of sufficient scale and duration to enable processes of enrichment and maturing to occur.
  3. The study points to problems arising from the difference between the timescale of research and cycles of evaluation and assessment. In evaluating interdisciplinary research initiatives, we suggest the need to take into account long tails of research, fertile periods of lesser productivity and non-standard outputs.

The project forms part of phase 2 of the ESRC Science in Society programme.

Output

Published Book:
  • Strathern, M. (2004a) Commons and Borderlands: Working Papers on Interdisciplinarity. Wantage: Sean Kingston.
Published Papers:
  • Barry, A. (2007) The meeting of disciplines. In, J. Clarke (ed.) Britain Today, Swindon: ESRC.
  • Barry, A., Born, G., and G. Weszkalnys (2008) Logics of Interdisciplinarity. Economy and Society, 37(1): 20-49.
  • Leach, J. (2005) "Being in-between": Art-science collaborations in a technological culture. Social Analysis, 49: 141-160.
  • Strathern, M. (2004b) Laudable aims and problematic consequences: Or the "flow" of knowledge is not neutral. Economy and Society, 33(4): 550-561.
  • Strathern, M. (2004c) Social property: An interdisciplinary experiment. PoLAR (Political and Legal Anthropology Review), 27: 33-50.
  • Strathern, M. (2004d) Knowledge on its travels. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 31(2): 1-14.
  • Strathern, M. (2004e) Robust knowledge and fragile futures. In, A. Ong and S. Collier (eds.) Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. New York: Blackwell.
  • Strathern, M. (2005a) Experiments in interdisciplinarity. Social Anthropology, 13(1): 75-90.
  • Strathern, M. (2005b) Anthropology and interdisciplinarity. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 4: 125-135.
  • Strathern, M. (2005c) Useful knowledge. Isaiah Berlin Lecture 2005, British Academy. Proceedings of the British Academy, 139: 73-109.
  • Strathern, M. (2006) A community of critics? Thoughts on new knowledge. Huxley Memorial Lecture, Royal Anthropological Institute, London. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 12: 191-209.
Working Papers and Reports:
  • Barry, A. and Born, G. (2007a) Introduction: Forms and logics of interdisciplinarity. Interdisciplinarity and Society Colloquium, Oxford, February 2007
  • Barry, A. and Born, G. (2007b) Market and ontology: Ethnography in industry. Interdisciplinarity and Society Colloquium, Oxford, February 2007.
  • Barry, A. and Born, G. (2007c) Interdisciplinary Research and Evaluation. Briefing paper for Prof. I. Diamond and Mr. I. Jones, ESRC, 5pp, February 2007.
  • Blackwell, A. (2006) Designing knowledge: An interdisciplinary experiment in research infrastructure for shared description. Technical Report 664, University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, 2006.
  • Blackwell, A. and Leach, J. (2004-5) Internal reports on IDWs I - IV.
  • Born, G. and Weszkalnys, G. (2007) Irreducible heterogeneities and interdisciplines in formation, or the possibility of art-science. Interdisciplinarity and Society Colloquium, Oxford, February 2007.
  • Khlinovskaya Rockhill, E. and Strathern, M. (2006) An Ethnographic Study of the Cambridge Genetics Knowledge Park, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, 118pp, (confidential).
  • Strathern, M. (2006b) CGKP: Unexpected consequences. ms, 18pp.
  • Strathern, M. and Khlinovskaya Rockhill, E. (2007) Cascade effect: Unexpected consequences and unanticipated outcomes. Interdisciplinarity and Society Colloquium, Oxford, February 2007.
  • Gisa Weszkalnys (2006) Mapping Interdsciplinarity: Report of the survey element of the project 'Interdisciplinarity and Society: A Critical Comparative Study' (ESRC Science in Society, 2004-06) [PDF: 200KB]
  • Weszkalnys, G. and Barry, A. (2007) Multiple environments, useful science. Interdisciplinarity and Society Colloquium, Oxford, February 2007.
Seminar Papers and Lectures:
  • Barry, A. (2005) Sociology and interdisciplinarity. Conference on Whitehead, Invention and Social Process, Goldsmiths' College, London, July 2005.
  • Barry, A. (2005) Interdisciplinarity in question. OUCE, Oxford November 2005.
  • Barry, A. (2006) Interdisciplinary research institutions. PARC, July 2006.
  • Barry, A. (2006) Interdisciplinarity and the cultural politics of research. University of Western Sydney, July 2006.
  • Barry, A. (2006) The moment of interdisciplinarity. Faculty of Social Science, UNSW, Sydney, August 2006.
  • Barry, A. (2006) Interdisciplinarity in a political setting. European Association for Social Anthropology, biannual conference, Bristol University, September 2006.
  • Barry, A. (2006) The politics of interdisciplinarity. James Martin Institute, Saïd Business School, Oxford, November 2006.
  • Barry, A. (2007) Interdisciplinary research and the environment. The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, May 2007.
  • Barry, A. (2008) Forms of Interdisciplinarity. NESTA Crucible08 conference, New Hall, Cambridge, April 2008.
  • Barry, A. and Weszkalnys, G. (2005) The object of interdisciplinarity: Some methodological questions. CSISP, Goldsmiths' College, November 2005.
  • Barry, A. and Weszkalnys, G. (2006) The new social question. Department of Geography, UCL, March 2006.
  • Blackwell, A., Leach, J. and Strathern, M. (2004) Four colloquia on Social Property and four Interdisciplinary Design Workshops, Cambridge, March-September 2004.
  • Born, G. (2006-7) The social and the aesthetic: Methodological principles in the study of cultural and knowledge production. University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, August 2006 and McGill University, March 2007.
  • Born, G. (2007) Art-science, interdisciplinarity and new knowledge forms. Department of Social Anthropology, Manchester University, April 2007.
  • Strathern, M. (2004) Creating contexts: Reduction or expansion. EC 'Encounter', European Group on the Life Sciences, Genoa, March 2004.
  • Strathern, M. (2004) Laudable aims and problematic consequences, or: The "flow" of knowledge is not neutral. ASA annual conference, 2004.
  • Strathern, M. (2004) Experiments in interdisciplinarity. Plenary paper for the Future of Anthropology in Europe conference, European Anthropological Summit (EASA), Lisbon, May 2004.
  • Strathern, M. (2004) Social property: An interdisciplinary experiment. Paper for Cornell Social Science Seminar Series on 'Law, Norms and Society', Cornell University; and as a public lecture for Princeton series on 'Biotechnology and Culture', Princeton University, 2004.
  • Strathern, M. (2005) Currencies of collaboration. Paper for PLACEB-O workshop on Global Science, International Health and the Ethics of Collaborative Practice, Cambridge University, February 2005.
  • Strathern, M. (2005) Commentator on session 'Emerging technologies', at the workshop on Technological Change and the Consumer as Citizen, Trinity Hall, Cambridge, June 2005.
  • Strathern, M. (2005) Failure to describe. Paper for the panel 'What is the Point of Description?' conference on Description and Creativity, Cambridge University, July 2005.
  • Strathern, M. (2005) Measures of usefulness: A diatribe. Keynote address for ICARE (International Centres for Applied Research in Education) conference, The Social Practice of an Educational Research Community, Manchester Metropolitan University, September 2005.
  • Strathern, M. (2005) Interdisciplinarity: Some models from the human sciences. Entre-Sciences Colloquium, National Museum of Natural History, Paris, December 2005.
  • Strathern, M. (2006) Participant, 'The Values and Methodological Distinctiveness of the Humanities'; Colloquium convenor, Arts and Humanities Education Research Group, apropos EC working party on 'Future priorities for the humanities in Europe', Cambridge, April 2006.
  • Strathern, M. (2006) Organisations and accountability across cultures. Workshop on Collaborative Relations, Personal Aims, and the Work of Institutions in Contemporary Melanesia, Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, September 2006.
  • Strathern, M. and Khlinovskaya Rockhill, E. (2005) Interdisciplinarity and the Cambridge Genetics Knowledge Park. Paper presented to the CGKP annual symposium, Hinxton, Cambridge, November 2005.