Credits: Alan F. Repko, Lisa R. Lattuca and Veronica Moix Mansilla are three foundational theorists for the pedagogical field of interdisciplinarianism. I authored this work back in my Master’s in Interdisciplinary Studies program. It synthesizes and summarizes these theorists work.
Interdisciplinary Research and Writing
Combining multiple disciplines is not as problematic if you have two or more people from different disciplinary backgrounds. Many transdisciplinary projects are done this way. If you recall, a multidisciplinary approach lacks synthesis, a transdisciplinary approach has synthesis, but its scope is far too big to ever have been conducted by one person. For students and academics in particular, interdisciplinary approaches allow the individual to tackle problems and subjects that may be beyond the scope of a single discipline. However, the researcher will need experience in all the disciplines they employ to be able to unify them into a cohesive approach. Repko uses a triad to explain what is necessary from each of the chosen disciplines that will factor in to the integration process, “Triangulation, in an interdisciplinary sense, means achieving balance between disciplinary depth, disciplinary breadth, and interdisciplinary integration” (Repko 124). These three factors are very important for the researcher and author in terms of the quality of their interdisciplinary work.
Repko describes depth as the “first half of the interdisciplinary research process” (124). Depth in this case refers to the knowledge that the author possesses in each discipline. Repko is also quick to point out that the author needs only adequacy, “a sufficient understanding of each discipline’s cognitive map” (124). The interdisciplinarian does not have to be an expert in each discipline, or may not possess the same level of knowledge in all of their chosen disciplines. But they should have an adequate level of understanding of each discipline to be able to recognize the insights of each discipline.
The counterpart to depth is the breadth of the chosen disciplines. This refers to how similar or distant two or more disciplines may be to one another. Sociology and anthropology are very close in terms of epistemology. They tend to at least have as many commonalities as differences. Music and physics have a much greater breadth or distance. This is not to say they cannot work together, but there tends to be less similarity epistemologically between these two disciplines.
Where many students struggle in interdisciplinary work will often fall into the category of disciplinary breadth. This is not always as a result of an inability to integrate both disciplines theoretically, but sometimes due to real-world constraints that hinder the process. As a graduate student I initially tried to integrate theater and anthropology. This is not unique or new. Many anthropologists have done so in the past and continue to now. But, academically speaking, issues arose between university departments that made the process extremely difficult for me as a student. The two disciplines not only had a greater breadth as arts and social sciences, but departmentally there were logistical constraints that hindered the integration. I bring this up only as a warning to students and researchers that just because you can theoretically integrate two disciplines it does not always mean it will be practical in real-world application. Students must still navigate the rules and regulations of an academic setting, and graduates and professionals may encounter situations in which things like peer review may become problematic. This should not dissuade you in your endeavors, but you should be aware of issues like this before you begin.
From depth and breadth, the interdisciplinarian learns to integrate the disciplines into a synthesized approach to a problem or subject, or what Repko referred to as “interdisciplinary integration” in his triangle. Lattuca’s understanding of interdisciplinarity is similar, however, she divides it into two types described as that which “could be based on questions found in the intersections of disciplines as well as on questions found in the gaps among disciplines” Lattuca 115). This is in line with Repko’s theory because it essentially points to depth and breadth. One thing that I liked was that Lattuca further clarifies the issue by saying, “questions that belonged to no discipline were likely to be considered interdisciplinary, while questions that belonged to more than one discipline were likely to be considered multidisciplinary. I propose that either type of approach can be interdisciplinary depending on the question asked” (Lattuca 116). Given Geertz’ quote in the last section, and what I argued against reframing questions to fit the discipline, this is an interesting statement Latucca has made.
Instead of reframing your question to fit a discipline, let us think of how our disciplines may fit our question. This is not to say that a certain amount of question-tweaking may not be necessary. A common mistake amongst students in general, interdisciplinary or not, is the choice of subjects and problems that are often too broad to begin with. So, oftentimes a question may need to be narrowed in scope to make it doable. How we go about narrowing our focus is subject to a variety of needs and means. However, we should not think of this type of narrowing as a reframing of the question.
The problem of making our own disciplines fit the question should be a factor we consider as we pose the question. If you have no education or knowledge of music outside of listening to it on the radio, ethnomusicology is not something you should tackle unless you are willing to put the years of training and education in both music and anthropology necessary to even begin posing a question of that sort. Instead, let your disciplinary knowledge inspire your questions. There are many ways in which this can work. In many cases our questions often arise from knowledge we gain in our disciplinary endeavors. But knowledge also arises from a lack of knowledge we may see in our disciplines.
In Rhetoric and Writing and English departments we often discuss the issue of pre-writing. This is essentially the work we do before we begin writing that paper up that sums up all our research. There is a lot of debate about what actually constitutes pre-writing, but most would agree that somewhere in all of it will be your research. Of course, the first thing you must do is come up with a topic. This is true in academics as well as the real-world. Sometimes that topic is a question, sometimes it is a subject of interest to you, but in either case it is a starting point to begin your work.
Michael Carter talks about problems that arise in writing for a discipline, which at this point we should be thinking of as discourse communities since we are talking about the writing process, which also address issues that foster a need for interdisciplinarity. One of the problems many students, and I would argue faculty as well, face is that there is a sort of cognitive psychological or epistemological belief that a discipline is all encompassing in the knowledge that is required to work within that discipline, “Because the organizing principle of knowledge in the disciplines is typically perceived as conceptual knowledge, faculty and students tend to understand learning in a discipline as a process of obtaining, at least in short-term memory, the particular knowledge base of the discipline” (Carter 387). This is great when you are in an academic setting. It’s much easier to draw lines between knowledge and separate it out amongst the various disciplines. However, in the real world, where lines become thinner or disappear altogether, this can be problematic. In actuality it is a problem in the academic setting because the chief purpose of the university is to prepare students for work outside of the university.
The big problem here is what Carter points out as “knowledge and knowing, that is, disciplines as repositories and delivery systems for relatively static content knowledge versus disciplines as active ways of knowing” (Carter 387). As a result, Carter is a proponent of readdressing issues that instructors face in WID (Writing in the Disciplines) programs, and the need for a more interdisciplinary approach, or what he refers to as “reconceptualizing the disciplines in terms of metagenres and metadisciplines” (Carter 410). For students, breaking free of the sub-conscious constraints of singular disciplinary knowledge can be difficult. Simply put, it becomes difficult to think outside the box, to begin knowing.
The Other “-disciplinaries”
The term multidisciplinarity refers to the act of combining two disciplines without integrating the knowledge of all the disciplines into a synthesis or overall understanding of the subject. Imagine a course about Africa, in which one week a history professor came and lectured to the class about Africa’s history, and the following week an anthropologist came and lectured about their cultures, and after that an economics professor comes and teaches about economics of Africa. In the end we have learned about a variety of subjects pertaining to Africa, but we have in no way synthesized this knowledge into an overarching theme or theory. We just know a lot of stuff about Africa. “Merely bringing insights from different disciplines together in some way but failing to engage in the hard work of integration is multidisciplinary studies” (Repko 13). In regards to this statement, we must recognize that simply using knowledge from another discipline is not necessarily an interdisciplinary approach. Interdisciplinary work will require a synthesizing or integration of the disciplinary knowledge.
Lattuca takes a slightly different approach in defining this difference with four typologies, the first of which she calls informed disciplinarity. I believe this better explains disciplinary work that involves knowledge or material outside of the core of a specific discipline, or what I would term extradisciplinary. In Lattuca’s informed disciplinarity typology she states that “In research, disciplinary questions may be informed by concepts or theories from another discipline or may rely upon methods from other disciplines, but these disciplinary contributions are made in the service of a disciplinary question” (Lattuca 82). This is a more realistic example of what generally takes place in disciplinary research that a single discipline alone cannot answer all of the questions involved. If we are in a class about the social constraints faced by people in in New Mexico, and the class was being taught as a sociology course that brings in several lecturers outside of sociology, we may use that information to shore up sociological theory about the subject. For example, it would be difficult to employ Marxist theory, a sociological theory, without having some understanding of the economic stresses that take place in New Mexico. Such economic information may have no relevance if we don’t also take their history into consideration. We may ultimately use all of the extradisciplinary information we gain throughout the course, but our end result as sociology students, in this case, will still be a sociological work grounded primarily within the realm of sociology. Simply put, just because we use material outside of our discipline does not necessarily make the work interdisciplinary. Rather, it is what Lattuca refers to as informed disciplinarity.
By respect to multidisciplinary or informed disciplinary work, there is also what is called transdisciplinary studies. In a transdisciplinary work the key factor is that we do see a synthesis of the knowledge from different disciplines. However, the breadth and scope of a transdisciplinary project is often far too great to be accomplished by one person. For example, there is organization called the International Nanotechnology and Society Network (INSN). This organization consists of members from a variety of disciplines ranging from the social sciences, the natural sciences, engineering, political science, economics, and more. The purpose of the INSN is to address the effect future nanotechnology will have on society, “a coalition of organizations and individuals involved in advancing knowledge, promoting institutional innovation, engaging policy processes, and improving decisions related to the societal impacts of nanotechnologies and other areas of innovation that nanotechnology may help to enable” (nanoandsociaety.com). They are drawing upon a variety of disciplines to work together, integration, in an attempt to synthesize knowledge on a very large topic. “INSN fosters connections between the social sciences and natural science and engineering activities related to nanotechnology, with a particular focus on institutional innovation that can improve anticipatory governance, regulatory response, and the just distribution of potential benefits” (nanoandsociety.com).
As Lattuca explains “Transdisciplinary is the application of theories, concepts, or methods across disciplines with the intent of developing an overarching synthesis” (Lattuca 83). Repko actually cites Lattuca’s definition and further explains that “Transdisciplinarity, like interdisciplinarity, is descriptive of collaborative research and problem solving that, unlike interdisciplinarity, crosses both disciplinary boundaries and sectors of society by including stakeholders in the public and private domains” (Repko 15). Both seem to agree that not only is transdisciplinary research larger in scale, usually involving more than a few disciplinarians, but that it also may crossover into areas of society that are different in how projects may be approached. In terms of addressing an issue such as the nanotechnology and society example, this is a very huge subject. Measuring the impact that nanotechnology will have on society will require knowledge from a wide array of perspectives. Far more knowledge than any one person will be capable of producing. Thus the INSN relies on numerous members from various disciplines, schools, organizations and research fields to all contribute knowledge to a very complex subject.
In terms of synthesis, this is a primary factor in what will determine the interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity of a work that distinguishes it from multidisciplinary work. Our dictionaries will define synthesis basically as the ability to combine ideas or concepts into a working theory. Repko also uses the word “integration” and often we will see where this is interchangeable with synthesis in discussing interdisciplinary work. Repko posits that “While integration is not the goal of interdisciplinary work, it is the means to attain it” (Repko 124). What Repko is pointing out here is that synthesis should not be our goal in the work, “How can I combine anthropology and political science to address the issue?” The goal is not so that we can combine disciplines for the sake of the research, but that we can integrate disciplinary understanding into a new way of exploring the subject at hand that fosters a new or better understanding of it. Synthesizing disciplinary methods is an integral part of what constitutes interdisciplinary work, however we should always consider our motivations for interdisciplinary work as it pertains to this.
Mansilla supports this argument as well in saying “we have defined ‘interdisciplianry understanding’ as the capacity to integrate knowledge and modes of thinking drawn from two or more disciplines to produce a cognitive advancement – for example, explaining a phenomenon, solving a problem, creating a product, or raising a new question – in ways that would have been unlikely through single disciplinary means” (Mansilla 16). In the INSN example, their goal should be to answer questions the effects of nanotechnology on society using their chosen disciplinary approaches. Synthesis and integration should be the reflection of how well they managed to combine those disciplinary approaches into a working theory or set of theories, “In this formulation, the integration of disciplinary perspectives is a means to an end, not an end in itself” (Mansilla 16). It should also serve to explain why the issue of nanotechnology’s effect on society is difficult, if not impossible, to explore with a single disciplinary approach. We will discuss synthesis and integration more when we talk about how we work interdisciplinarily.
Transdisciplinary approaches share a lot in common with interdisciplinary approaches in that in an interdisciplinary approach we also strive for synthesis. The difference between the two is that an interdisciplinary approach is usually smaller scaled than our transdisciplinary example, and it is an approach usually being conducted by a single person, or in some projects a small group of people with similar goals. The engineer in the INSN example is not the authority when speaking to cultural aspects of the research, and by respect an anthropologist is not going to be responsible for technological knowledge. But, between the two they may be able to develop a an analysis or an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the subject.
Interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity relies on working between both or all disciplines, thus the name inter-(between) disciplinarity. An interdisciplinarian is one who is seeking to answer a “question, solving a problem, or addressing a topic that is too broad or complex to be dealt with adequately by a single discipline” (Repko 12).
There is an issue that arises in the modern university in which two things are happening in terms of departmental and disciplinary studies. The first is the sort of hyper-specialization that is taking place in the university as a result of the need for more and more specialized professionals in the workplace. Whether this is beneficial or detrimental is not something I wish to address in this paper. Clifford Geertz wrote a fairly scathing piece lamenting this sort of hyper-specialization in Blurred Genres. In it he called for “recognition on all sides that that the lines grouping scholars together into intellectual communities, or (what is the same thing) sorting them into different ones, are these days running at some highly eccentric angles” (Geertz 169). The other issue that arises partly from the first, and partly from independent contexts, is that through specialization the available resources for knowledge have also narrowed. By “resources for knowledge” I mean primarily teachers and professors. No one discipline can ever cover every subject that may fall within its boundaries. On top of this, university departments are staffed with professors who are specialized to some degree. Though these individuals may be able to teach a very general understanding of a subject that is required under the curriculum, no one professor is an absolute expert in all things concerning their discipline.
And there is always theory and knowledge that lies outside of a single discipline or crosses over into many disciplines. Feminist philosophy is a prime example of this. Though it may seem rooted in philosophy, feminism has been influenced and affected by so many disciplines ranging from anthropology and sociology to education and criminal justice or law to ever be a single disciplinary set of theories. If as a student you are interested in feminism, it will be very difficult to pick a major that will address this issue in its entirety. Gender Studies or feminist studies departments may exist in the university you attend, but it is almost a guarantee that these will be interdisciplinary departments that rely on professors and curriculum from a variety of disciplinary resources.
The need for interdisciplinary approaches is as vast as there are disciplines to choose from. In terms of academia, there is a growing need for interdisciplinary work for a variety of reasons. Some are practical responses to a changing world. What is the best discipline to explore feminism? This is unanswerable without further context. As a whole philosophy might be able to cover the philosophical aspects of feminism, but can it cover the practical application of feminist theory? Sociology or anthropology may be able to cover the practical application of feminist theory to real-world events, but can it do so without the philosophical background necessary to do so?
In my own case, I was using a feminist approach to explore cultural phenomenon in film and television. In a project I sought to answer the question “What are women’s changing roles in film and television, and is this a new form of sexual objectification?” To answer this question I needed to account for a variety of factors. I needed to watch a lot of current movies and television, and to understand the context of these I needed a strong disciplinary understanding of film studies or mass communications. I also needed a strong philosophical understanding of feminism, as well as psychological knowledge of scopophilia or the voyeuristic nature of watching film and television. Then I needed a strong understanding of social science theory, in my case it was anthropology, but I also had an intimate level of knowledge in sociology as well, to understand the social ramifications of both how women are viewed and treated in our society, and how this was reflected in our arts. In this example I was exploring a subject that no one discipline alone could have. In doing so I employed about four different disciplines, some to greater degrees than others. In the end, I integrated them all into a cohesive working theory that synthesized all of the disciplinary knowledge into a whole greater than its parts.
In a piece written by MJ Grant, Rebecca Mölleman, Ingvill Morlandstö, Simone Christian Münz and Cornelia Nuxoll, Music and Conflict: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, the authors explored “areas of scientific research, particularly in the social sciences, that could prove useful for understanding the role of music in conflict situations” (Grant et al 184). In this piece they show how the disciplines of anthropology and music can be used to examine music that is propagandist in nature and either incites or seeks to quell racial tensions. In my own studies I have encountered a number of interdisciplinary students who study ethnomusicology, in which they employ anthropology and music to explore the cultural aspects and phenomenon of a culture’s music, as well as learning to play, and sometimes even construct, the culture’s particular musical instruments. A personal friend of mine is quite the expert on drum beats as a cultural language, and how different beats and rhythms constitute different meanings in music. This would not be understandable by someone who is just a musician learning to mimic these beats and rhythms, nor by an anthropologist with no musical ability.
In the arts, playwright and director Bertolt Brecht integrated philosophy and Marxism into what became epic theatre. Augusto Boal further employed Marxist theory in theater, and as a result created Theatre of the Oppressed, which grew into a movement in South America as a means of fighting oppression and giving voice to those who were being censored or otherwise unheard. Victor Turner became one of the originators of performance theory which explored cultural aspects exhibited in performances and rituals, which was later evolved by his student Richard Schechner who works as both playwright and anthropologist. Archaeology has even been employed by Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks to explore how space is used in theater.
The arts in an academic setting often must rely on outside disciplinary knowledge for the sake of academia. Art History might be an example of this. Arguably, some students may focus primarily on the historical aspects, but I would argue that there can never be a true analysis of visual art without a deeper understanding of art itself. Otherwise you are merely assigning names and dates to pieces without really looking at the difference in style, line, form, perspective, mediums, methods, or even the shift that takes place within a single artist’s work over their career. Interdisciplinary approaches may also be employed in terms of curating museum exhibitions. In Carol Duncan’s Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship she took an interdisciplinary approach to examine what “art museums say about our own culture – what political meanings they produce and how they produce them” (Duncan 90). In this piece she analyzed how museums are structured, designed, and exhibit artwork from foreign cultures that, essentially, delivers a political message about our own culture juxtaposed to others. In a case such as this a disciplinary approach from art alone would not suffice. She is also utilizing political science or international studies, anthropology, and even elements of archaeology and/or architecture, “The very architecture of museums suggests their character as secular rituals. It was fitting that the temple façade was for two hundred years the most popular signifier for the public art museum” (Duncan 91).
Up to this point we have explored ways in which interdisciplinarity affects research. But what about ways in which interdisciplinarity can affect teaching? There are numerous papers you can find on this subject, but one really grabbed my attention because it employed two disciplines that would seem to be in drastic opposition to one another: Math and English. Byung-In Seo employed both these disciplines in an interdisciplinary approach to teaching English to high school students. This may seem strange, but in fact math exists within writing. Seo’s best example was when he was teaching Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar to his students. Why is Shakespeare so hard to read? Because there is a rhythm to Shakespeare that, nowadays, is primarily only seen when we read Shakespeare. Imagine trying to explain iambic pentameter to a student without using mathematics. But Seo took it a step further and had his students employ mathematics to determine the staging of Act 3 when Julius is stabbed by the Roman senators. First he had the students identify all of the players involved, literary analysis, and then employ mathematics when “we determined where each person would stand before, during, and after the stabbing. This process involved both geometry and measurement” (Seo 261). In doing so not only was Seo teaching the students about Shakespeare, it also reaffirmed “mathematical ideas in our English course thus provided opportunities to review concepts from their geometry class as well” (Seo 261). The same methods are also being employed in music and math, where math or music is used to reaffirm or reinforce one another.
I have provided a variety of examples that really don’t even begin to broach the incredible breadth of the possibilities for interdisciplinary work. What I hope is that these examples not only provide you with a better understanding of interdisciplinarity, but also show you reasons why such interdisciplinary work is necessary. Of all the reasons for why interdisciplinarity is necessary, I would argue that ultimately it stems from our need to answer questions and explore subjects without having to reshape our interests to fit within a single disciplinary boundary. I think Clifford Geertz put it best when he wrote,
The strict separation of theory and data, the ‘brute fact’ idea; the effort to create a formal vocabulary of analysis purged of all subjective reference, the ‘ideal language’ idea; and the claim to moral neutrality and the Olympian view, the ‘God’s truth’ idea – none of these can prosper when explanation comes to be regarded as a matter of connecting action to its sense rather than behavior to its determinants. The refiguration of social theory represents, or will if it continues, a sea change in our notion not so much of what knowledge is but what it is we want to know. Geertz 178
When what we want to know does not fit inside a single discipline, we should not in turn reframe our question to fit the discipline, but rather we should “refigure” our disciplinarity to fit the question. Knowledge should never be hindered by disciplinary boundaries.