Getting Unstuck: Interdisciplinarity as a New Discipline

Most disciplines and subdisciplines consider their particular specialization to be valuable in itself and superior to other disciplines. But compared with the huge leaps in the physical sciences, the social/behavioral sciences and humanities have made little progress. Since many of the physical science advances were the result of the merging of disciplines, perhaps interdisciplinarity should be tried. One path to connecting disciplines, subdisciplines, and micro‐macro levels is suggested by Spinoza's idea of part/whole methodology, exactly balancing concrete instances with abstract theses. Ideas by B. Pascal, A. Koestler, A. N. Whitehead, and E. O. Wilson may also be helpful. Any discipline, subdiscipline, or level can serve as a valuable stepping‐off place, but to advance further, integration with at least one other viewpoint may be necessary. Two brilliant examples are The Civilizing Process, by the sociologist Norbert Elias, and Freudian Repression, by the psychologist Michael Billig. Koestler's idea of “bi‐sociation” may prove to be particularly rewarding. The way that Virginia Woolf's depiction of role‐taking in interior monologue preceded the idea in social science is an extraordinary example. The need for integration may be the single most important issue facing social science, the humanities, and their subdisciplines. Given the scope of the social/behavioral problems faced by humanity, the sooner the better.     

Getting Unstuck: Interdisciplinarity and Aging

Continuing the dialog initiated by Scheff in the March issue of Sociological Forum, we reflect on some of the challenges involved in interdisciplinary research.     

New social intervention technologies as a challenge in social work: IFSW Europe perspective

ABSTRACT

This study aims at analyzing the degree of training, use, and practice of the new technologies among the social work professionals in their work environment and at finding out their main reluctance or reservations to a more intensive use of ICTs in the performance of their tasks. For this purpose, a structured and closed questionnaire has been sent to the chairpeople of the professional organizations’ members of the International Federation of Social Workers Europe (IFSW Europe), which also includes Turkey and Israel. The reason for this choice lies in the fact that the representatives for the professional organizations have a privileged view on the situation of the profession from a global perspective and are the key informants on the current situation surrounding the social workers. This study allows us to know, among other results, that the success of ICTs among the professionals will depend on their ability to adapt to the specific professional nature of the social worker in the intervention domain. However, the uncertainty regarding the security of the personal data treatment, regarding the increase of the non included or paid work hours, and also, regarding the increase of professional stress are key factors explaining the reluctance of some professionals to a more intensive use of ICTs.     

Interdisciplinarity and the social sciences: capital, institutions and autonomy

Recent discussions about disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in the social sciences have tended to map and critique methods, theories and approaches to knowledge production, but spend less time exploring the ways in which institutional constraints and personal trajectories produce different kinds of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. In this paper we present findings on interdisciplinarity from UK research undertaken as part of an EC project on knowledge, gender and institutions. The research involved a small survey (n = 14), in-depth interviews (n = 5), two focus groups (n = 7) and observation of social scientists in one university department between June 2006 and April 2007. We reflect on the unwillingness of social scientists to confront the conditions of our academic labour in an account of our difficulties with gaining access and respondents in this study, before moving on to consider some of the different ways in which interdisciplinarity and disciplinary commitments were related to particular forms of scientific and symbolic capital. We go on to discuss this in relation to the autonomy of academic teaching-and-research staff compared to contract researchers, and consider the implications of our findings for the future of interdisciplinarity and the social sciences.     

Argumentation integrity in intercultural education: a teaching project about a religious-ideological dialogue as challenge for school

In this article, we describe the multiple phases of a teaching project that was constructed around an actual request by a Muslim community in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) to establish an Islamic cultural centre. The request provoked a sometimes heated discussion among politicians and citizens that was published in daily newspapers. A large number of the arguments that appeared in the newspapers failed to meet fair argumentation standards and strategies. The teaching project described here therefore aimed to sensitize future teachers to issues of argumentation integrity in dialogues, especially between persons with different religious and ideological convictions. The project was subdivided into three main phases, which treated the topic from different perspectives and with different methods: a simulation game dealing with the request by the Muslim community, a theory-based phase in which participants became acquainted with a construct of argumentation integrity and from this deduced standards and strategies relating to unfair argumentation, and an application phase in which the participants had to examine published arguments by politicians relating to the request by the Muslim community in order to identify rule violations in argumentations. The empirical results suggest that the project promoted insight into unfair argumentation. Such insight can improve interreligious and intercultural communication processes at school.     

Czech lesbian activism: gay and lesbian parental rights as a challenge to patriarchal marriage

In their advocacy for the legal recognition of same-sex relationships during the 1990s, prominent Czech gay rights activists focused only on issues of sexuality and did not question the essentialist understanding of gender, especially in parenting. Consequently, even though the Czech Republic legalized registered partnerships for gays and lesbians in 2006, legal barriers now exist regarding parental rights for same-sex couples, who are prohibited from adopting children and accessing reproductive technology once they register with the state. This article examines a rising, new wave of Czech lesbian activism that has focused on gaining legal parental rights for registered same-sex couples. While lesbian activists were disempowered in terms of their public visibility as well as political involvement during the 1990s, the recent growing prominence of lesbian groups has been enabled by their stronger political focus and organizational coherence. Analyzing the lesbian activists' strategies, I show not only how lesbian activism can advance the public debate about traditional gender roles, but also how lesbian activism can strengthen the critique of the ideology of marriage.     

Cultural Sociology and Other Disciplines: Interdisciplinarity in the Cultural Sciences

The subject of this article is the relationship between cultural sociology and approaches to culture in other social science disciplines. What are the characteristics of the theoretical environment, in which cultural sociology is operating? The article begins by reviewing the literature on interdisciplinarity. Many authors argue that interdisciplinarity is increasing or should be increasing, but the general consensus is that disciplinary isolation is the norm. From this perspective, the relationships between disciplines can be understood in terms of trading zones, in which fields in different disciplines have little in common, theoretically, or empirically. Interdisciplinary communication in ‘trading zones’ requires that participants laboriously construct a set of terms that permits them to exchange ideas. Alternatively, I propose that clusters of fields in different disciplines are linked by free-floating paradigms. Participants in disciplines that share ‘free-floating paradigms’ are able to communicate with one another more readily. The article presents evidence for the second interpretation, drawn from survey articles in disciplinary handbooks. Disciplines and fields in which the study of culture draws from the same pool of paradigms and models and shares a set of lines of inquiry with cultural sociology include traditional disciplines, such as anthropology, communication, geography, history and psychology, and interdisciplinary fields, such as cultural studies, communication, feminist theory, material culture, science studies, and visual culture. Interdisciplinary fields – particularly cultural studies – perform an important role in diffusing paradigms across disciplinary boundaries. Free-floating paradigms are associated with the work of major theorists, such as Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Foucault, Bourdieu, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Clifford Geertz, Bruno Latour, Adorno, Gramsci, and Habermas.     

Sociology and American Studies: A Case Study in the Limits of Interdisciplinarity

American Studies is an academic discipline whose object of study is the United States of America and everything associated with it, and American sociologists largely ignore it. American Studies largely ignores American sociology. What causes this mutual exclusion? An outline of the disciplinary history of American Studies and journal article citation data show that the relationship between sociology and American Studies is weak and asymmetrical; American Studies cites sociology more often, but very little and not by much. I argue that mutual exclusion is due to mutual distrust in methods: sociology sees itself as a science, while American Studies, with roots in history and literature, does not. This article serves as a case study in the limits of interdisciplinarity.     

Using student subjects in experimental research: a challenge to the practice of using students as a proxy for taxpayers

The tax discipline has accepted the practice adopted in the economics and psychology disciplines of using student subjects for experimental research purposes. However, in other social science disciplines (e.g. accounting, management or consumer research), experimental research that uses students as a substitute for another group has been widely criticised as having little external validity. In this research, data are compiled from journal articles over a 20?year period to investigate the extent to which tax experiments use student subjects and the potential implications from this practice. Three research questions are addressed. First, do tax studies using student subjects justify or explain the use of student subjects? Second, are policy recommendations or other extrapolations to the tax-paying population made from the student subject results? Third, is any acknowledgement made of the potential limitations of using student subjects? The findings indicate that approximately half of the tax experiments investigated used student subjects. Of these, approximately 80% provided no justification for their chosen subject sample. A similar proportion did not acknowledge any limitations from the use of a student sample. Around half of the papers using student subjects extrapolated their findings to the general tax-paying population or provided tax policy recommendations. In addition, the research indicates that the tax discipline has not had the same level of robust debate on the use of student subjects in experimental research as that seen in other disciplines. This potentially limits the external validity and utility of many of the tax research experiments undertaken to date.     

Homophobia: a challenge for psychosocial nursing

1. In 1975, the American Psychological Association stated that homosexuality was not a disorder and that homophobia was a form of prejudice based on stereotypes. 2. Because homophobia, like racism or sexism, is learned, it can be unlearned. 3. People who feel homosexuality is a choice hold more negative attitudes toward individuals who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered. 4. Homophobia not only damages individuals who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered, but also limits heterosexuals by locking them into rigid gender-based roles.     

Ambivalences: a challenge to permanency for children

A key to determining a permanent plan for children in placement lies in determining and working with the history and relative intensity of parental ambivalence in the parent-child relationship as it is acted out in the placement experience. A study of cases in a public department disclosed not only indicators of parental ambivalence but also the reinforcement of that ambivalence by agency policy, working conditions, and lack of resources.     

Immunity challenge

As people get older, their immune systems falter. The elderly are more susceptible to infections than youngsters are, and hyperactive inflammatory responses appear to contribute to some age-associated illnesses, including Alzheimer's disease and atherosclerosis. Investigating the effect of aging on the immune system was once a scientific stepchild, but card-carrying immunologists are now tackling the problem head-on. Despite the immune system's complexity, researchers have started to make sense of how its components change with age. As the research progresses, scientists hope to bolster elderly people's response to infectious diseases and quiet the inflammation that can make aging a painful experience.     

The role of social work in the field of mental health: dual diagnoses as a challenge for social workers

This paper provides a discussion about the relevance of medical terminology within the social work context. The authors use the example of dual diagnoses to argue for less stigmatised attitudes toward people who become, in the process of help, labelled as people with dual diagnoses. It sets out that using medical terminology in the field of social work is more often a strategy to exclude people from the system of help than as a moment of providing adequate help. It is concluded that social workers do not need the knowledge about diagnoses – knowing the diagnosis is important only as information that illustrates users’ specific experience and perception of reality, the available resources and obstacles that people face in their everyday life. The planning of a social work intervention should be based on an operational definition of everyday life, e.g. how people live through the day, what are the important and valued roles they play in life, what are their wishes and needs.     

Interdisciplinarity and innovation dynamics. On convergence of research, technology, economy, and society

In the age of globalization, economic growth and the welfare of nations decisively depend on basic innovations. Therefore, education and knowledge is an important advantage of competition in highly developed countries with high standards of salaries, but raw material shortage. In the twenty-first century, innovations will arise from problem-oriented research, crossing over traditional faculties and disciplines. Therefore, we need platforms of interdisciplinary dialogue to choose transdisciplinary problems (e.g., environment, energy, information, health, welfare) and to cluster new portfolios of technologies. The clusters of research during the excellence initiative at German universities are examples of converging sciences. The integration of natural and engineering sciences as well as medicine can only be realized if the research training programs (e.g., graduate schools) generate a considerable added value in terms of multidisciplinary experience, international networking, scientific and entrepreneurial know-how, and personality development. The Carl von Linde-Academy is presented as an example of an interdisciplinary center of research and teaching at the Technical University of Munich.