The National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) Autumn School on Radical Interdisciplinarity in the Social Sciences was the ideal place to consider some of the methodological complexities of my postdoctoral research project on faithbased social initiatives in Paris, with a focus on the concept and role of Trust1. I work within an international team of social scientists at the Woolf Institute, which itself transcends disciplinary boundaries. As such, different perspectives, positions and epistemologies matter to me, a great deal.
Upon admission to the Autumn School, the interdisciplinary scope of the term ´trust´ in civil society was accepted as a subject for discussion with my peers. The aim was to open up our individual and collective perspectives on the complexity of conducting radical interdisciplinary research.
Autumn school participants had a broad ranging disciplinary background often focusing on issues in their project-led postdoctoral research that can be approached from several vantage points. Some examples include: climate change, health (including food and well-being), community interaction and urban planning. In seeking to avoid various biases, including London-as-the-centre-of-knowledge, the organisers selected a majority of female presenters and delegates based notably in Scotland, whose heritage spans the UK and Africa. Such a mix of people might have more aptitude for the difficulties of interdisciplinarity.
The definition of the word discipline itself would be a moot point2 over the course of the Autumn School. In particular its ambiguous boundaries. Questions such as ‘how does social anthropology differ from sociology?’ and ‘can a social anthropology and sociology department co-exist in the same institution?’ were exposed in the introduction by Mark Elliot and Graham Crow. Moreover, the epistemological shift in the way society views research output and therefore funding bodies too, was given significant attention. Such a complex context was lightened by the mirth created around inaccuracies in the spelling of the noun ‘interdisciplinarity’.
It appears that much “Big Issue” research, for example relating to crisis, inclusivity, and innovation3 over which the social science spends a disproportionate amount of time, has been analysed by a multi-disciplinary approach. That is to say, different disciplinary perspectives separately feeding in to a given research project. But this is not the fusional nature of truly interdisciplinary work, which, by virtue of its co-production between scholars (which can be trans-disciplinary) should be created in tandem with actors outside of academia and requires all parties involved to have some basic understanding of the other’s discipline. This includes their methodological toolkit and some form of empathy or a begrudging appreciation of it for the fulfillment of a greater public good.
From the multitude of personal and professorial testimonies, it transpired that communication, language, and respect, are tantamount to the good functioning of an interdisciplinary research project. Anne Murcott was refreshingly honest in her examples concerning the near impossibility of interdisciplinary dialogue (tracing projects from 1960s through to 1990s). She was not most sanguine about the prospect of such work yielding results of adequate quality. Among her explanations for this were the difficulties of organizing people when their constructed disciplinary identities repelled them. Nevertheless, despite these apparently intractable difficulties, the Food project that she directed would be at the forefront of interdisciplinarity4. Food is an example of a juncture point for social and natural science; the lines between which are more blurred than we might think.
Relatedly, the “West of Scotland effect” on mortality rates, explained Mhairi MacKenzie5, is a social problem that has been most apt in capturing the input and intermingling of an interdisciplinary committee. Intriguingly, it appears that the “political attack” to which a broad cross-section of Glaswegian society has been subject from the navel gazing centre of “British” politics put the radical into Professor Mackenzie’s project as it is a cause around which many different disciplines can cohere.
Interdisciplinarity is both a serious source of tension and a potential site of some scientific creativity. In order to bring about such creativity – which the more practical sessions by Laura Meagher and Anne Bruce allowed us to work through – the most important advice for scholars, practitioners, and civil society bodies engaging in research together lies in the maintaining of a common language, objectives, rigorous sharing and open-minded debate and discussion.
As mentioned at the beginning, ´trust´ as a group discussion theme opened up a space to discuss the challenges that researchers – and by extension like-minded communities – have, to confront the doxa of powerful groups that define disciplinary lines and their epistemologies, whilst actively partaking of them. Radical interdisciplinarity thus requires a state of mind in which one opens up; it is about realizing the extent of one’s question and the acknowledgement of the limits of one’s individual input. Together we found that in order for ´trust´ to be pertinent it must be tightly coordinated, polyphonic and inclusive as an interdisciplinary project and a broader social strategy: a most onerous balancing act indeed.
Notes
1 For more information see: http://www.woolf.cam.ac.uk/news/detail.asp?ItemID=729
2 among pre-course reading was this (http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/783/) insightful paper on the difficulties of defining a discipline
3 As defined by the European Union axes for 2020 research: ec.europa.eu/research/social-sciences/index.cfm?pg=funding
4 For more up-to-date work see: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-handbook-of-food-research-9781847889164/
5 For a more in-depth description of Prof Mackenzie’s work see the freely accessible Glasgow University on-line workshop overview: http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_42072_en.pdf