There is a lot to be said for research that builds on lessons from many academic disciplines and between scientists and practitioners. But in such research one always has to negotiate power relations. Whose vision dominates, who compromises? Who gets more of the funding? Which framework is used?
In one interdisciplinary team effort that I led, which explored the concept of ‘regime shift’, finding a common ground was at times like putting square pegs in round holes. When our world views simply did not match up, I remember one co-author suggesting “push harder!”. Yet that can splinter the peg or rip apart the holes. That violence is indicative of the power relations that need to be navigated. For instance, in some natural science – social science collaborations I have been part of, the unifying framework had to be one that spoke to the ecosystem scientists.
In a new publication led by Ross Shackleton and Livia Fritz, we review the relevance of thinking about power when doing inter- and trans-disciplinary research. We introduce different ways to think about power and examples of how they facilitate, block, or shape the potential of transdisciplinary work.
Shackleton, RT, LR Fritz & CA Kull (2024) “Power”. In Elgar Encyclopedia of Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity, ed. F Darbellay. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 394-398. Official link. Authors’ version PDF.
Christian Kull 