Tag: Social Justice

Rosalyn Negrón
Associate Professor of Anthropology, College of Liberal Arts and Core Faculty Member, TCCS

Editor’s note: Every few posts, we publish a “Special Feature” article exploring a topic that is particularly timely or in greater detail than usual. We are happy to share with you this post written by TCCS Core Faculty Member, Rosalyn Negrón.

It may be helpful to think of disciplinary integration along a continuum.

Disciplinarity – or the application of a specific disciplinary lens, with little engagement with other disciplines – is at one end.

Next, we have multi-disciplinarity, in which multiple disciplines are brought to bear on an issue but do not commingle. Think of a patient who complains of chronic headaches and is examined by a neurologist, ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist, musculoskeletal specialist, and a psychologist. Each makes their diagnoses, but they are not in conversation with each other. Even if they do share information, they each adhere to the diagnoses and treatment plan that makes sense given their expertise, the conventions of their specialty, and habitual practice.

Next along the continuum we find interdisciplinarity, which is what most people think of when they think of integrating disciplines. A note on integration: Each discipline or field comprises concepts, theories, and methods that tend to logically fit together, forming a coherent set of ways of thinking and doing among its followers.

So, when we talk about integration among disciplines, it may involve the use of key concepts and conceptualizations from one discipline in the context of another discipline. Or it could involve borrowing a method developed within one discipline in research guided by the theoretical frameworks of another.

Typically, what we mean by interdisciplinarity is that disciplines are unpacked and their component parts are brought into conversation with each other: theories, concepts, and/or methods. In some cases, particularly in the context of collaborative research, interdisciplinary integration may involve bringing together the “whole” of a discipline in the sense that each participant brings a particular worldview shaped by their disciplinary upbringing.

Returning to the medical example, interdisciplinarity is what happens if the neurologist, ENT specialist, muscle doctor and psychologist meet to discuss the headache sufferer’s symptoms and treatment plan. The neurologist shares her concern that in addition to the headaches, the patient is having difficulty with hand-eye coordination. Noting this, the muscle doctor shares that the patient has multiple contracted muscles in the upper back, which may explain the headaches and the poor coordination. This all squares with the psychologist who attributes the symptoms to chronic stress. Concurring, the eye and ear doctor suggests massage in targeted areas of the face and neck. Together they develop an integrated treatment plan that includes massage, stress management exercises, and muscle relaxants.

Perhaps I got carried away with the analogy, but the point is that interdisciplinarity involves exchange, boundary-crossing, and unification of knowledge. Whether embarked on by a lone researcher or through a team process, interdisciplinarity demands translation skills and the ability to make connections between disparate ideas.

… [I]nterdisciplinarity involves exchange, boundary-crossing, and unification of knowledge. Whether embarked on by a lone researcher or through a team process, interdisciplinarity demands translation skills and the ability to make connections between disparate ideas.

All of these are key to a transdisciplinary research approach as well. But before moving too far ahead, it’s important to note that there is some debate about whether interdisciplinarity (ID) and transdisciplinarity (TD) are really different things.

In my own teaching, I do make a distinction between ID and TD that draws on what TD writers have identified as unique aspects of TD. I’ll describe a few of these aspects here.

First, on our continuum of disciplinary integration, TD is understood to be at the end of the spectrum where the highest levels of integration happen. Thus, a fully realized TD approach would result in the creation of new ideas, new modes of thinking, new concepts, and/or new methods. Again, this applies to TD work being done by a lone researcher or team research. TD, then, is thought to be transformative and transcendent. The level of integration is such that the knowledge produced goes beyond each of the disciplines.

The level of integration [in transdisciplinary research] is such that the knowledge produced goes beyond each of the disciplines.

Notice that in the ID (interdisciplinary) medical example, the psychologist continues to be a psychologist, the neurologist continues to be a neurologist, and so on. They are all still primarily oriented towards flesh and bones interventions, though the psychologist pushes them in the direction of centering stress as key to solving the patient’s problem. Together, the treatment approach offers a more holistic solution to the patient’s headaches, but they don’t come up with anything new that transcends each of their specialties.

In a TD approach, through a highly-engaged, and often lengthy process, the specialists would work to create a space where the boundaries between their specialties could give way to yield new insights about the patient’s condition – and maybe even transform how they view themselves as practitioners. They develop a patient model that goes beyond meat and bones, to consider spirit and community, for example.

The neurologist offers the latest science on how meditation helps to rewire the brain. Creativity piqued, the muscle doctor imagines the contracted muscles caused not just by stress, but as the outcomes of repetitive motions made habitual through a rushed and automated lifestyle. He likes the neurologist’s “rewiring” metaphor and suggests that muscles too can be rewired, of sorts, and muscle awareness developed. The psychologist ponders what a cognitive behavioral therapy might look like to help the patient change habitual movements of the body and the mind. They come to find that the word “patient” orients them towards a view of the person as a static, sick, organism. They decide that instead they will use the word “being”, because as a verb it reminds them that the headache sufferer is, like any person, in a constant state of change and with dynamic potentials for healing.

Um, ok, I admit, maybe referring to a patient as a “being” is a little strange. But my point is that such a conceptualization of the patient would offer a fundamentally different view and put specialists on a path towards a truly innovative treatment plan. Notice that this approach begins to come to terms with the immense complexity of the human individual.

I wrote earlier that there were a few aspects of TD that I would take up here. The first was that TD entails a high level of integration. Two other aspects evident in the TD medical example are what Patricia Leavy calls transcendence (going beyond disciplines) and emergence (developing new ways of thinking and doing). A fourth aspect is that through transcendence of disciplinary boundaries and developing new frameworks, TD practitioners can address problems or issues of “real-world concern.” Here the medical analogy breaks down a bit, but there is a way in which the movement from flesh/bone (medical) models to community/spirit models does serve to situate the problem (headache) within the context of the everyday “life-world”, as some transdisciplinarians like to call it.

Here is where we can shift to the question, what does TD have to do with social justice?

Briefly, the links between TD and social justice research work on at least two dimensions. First, TD research is problem or issue-centered and is particularly appropriate for addressing urgent and vexing problems.

Inequality is one such sprawling and intractable problem, and the solutions to various manifestations of inequality develop not just in academic and disciplinary chambers, but in relation to and engagement with real-world people and experiences.

Therefore, TD is not merely about integrating disciplinary perspectives but also about integrating views beyond the disciplines and the academy.

 

TD engenders intense collaboration and collaboration is also at the heart of social justice work. This is a second dimension. Inherent to collaboration is the need to work across perspectives, agendas, expertise, and ethno-racial and cultural backgrounds.

What I suggest is that collaborative engagement does “double-duty” for social justice seekers. There is the interactive, participatory, collaborative problem-solving work. But there is also the internal work, the personal transformations that emerge through TD engagement. The transdisciplinary individual working towards social justice develops heightened abilities to bridge, to reconcile contradictions, to understand across difference, and to imagine new possibilities.