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I'm reviewing a paper today that has me wondering about whether interdisciplinary fields have worsened silos rather than breaking them down.
(1/n)
(1/n)
Its written with the literature of rural development, but the entire background section could be rewritten, more or less word for word, with citations from the field of environmental governance.
(2/n)
(2/n)
The findings, too, while perhaps novel for rural development studies, are well covered elsewhere.
This isn't a critique of the paper. Its a fine paper and a well described case study
(3/n)
This isn't a critique of the paper. Its a fine paper and a well described case study
(3/n)
But it has me wondering. Have we merely replaced our ontologically framed disciplines with topically oriented ones?
Is this better? Or is it perhaps worse? (4/n)
Is this better? Or is it perhaps worse? (4/n)
I always thought that the goal of interdisciplinarity was to widen perspective, to break down the ontological blinders of individual disciplines. But in pursuit of interdisciplinarity many people walked away from the rich intellectual histories that disciplines offer (5/n)
New fields emerged that started recreating ideas that were already well worn in some disciplines.
Where you used to have dialogue within a discipline across topics, problems, etc, an anthropologist who works on water learning from one who works on ritual, for example (6/n)
Where you used to have dialogue within a discipline across topics, problems, etc, an anthropologist who works on water learning from one who works on ritual, for example (6/n)
Now it seems that we have lots of people with varied trainings working together, but only talking about the one topic. (7/n)
Many of the greatest scientists were effective because they spent time with multiple disciplines, natural sciences, social sciences, and the arts, and studied them in depth (8/n)
But today we have uncoupled our methodologies from the disciplines with which they coevolved, as if they're just tools to be picked up a la carte. (9/n)
My question is are we learning more? Or are we just creating multiple sets of language with which to share the same stories? (10/10)
