Sociology of Interdisciplinarity

Front matter

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©— Sociology of

Interdisciplinarity

Preface

Interdisciplinarity is important. This message is so commonly stated— whether in, for example, call texts published by research funding organisations, university research and impact strategies, or by policymakers and practitioners—that the implications of what is actually being advocated for are often backgrounded or, at worse, forgotten. As such, the lived experiences of those delivering ‘interdisciplinarity’, and indeed the ripple effects onto what forms of knowledge are produced (and why), rarely get the attention that it deserves.

We contend that Science and Technology Studies (STS) has a critical role to play in exploring such issues. Much of STS was originally developed through studying the professional experiences of those in research and innovation settings (e.g. natural science laboratories), and thus it has numerous conceptual tools available to explain how and why different research and innovation actors do (not) collaborate ‘successfully’, and with what effects. We resolutely argue that these underutilised social scientific tools and resources therefore have much to offer the interdisciplinarity debate, which we demonstrate in this book via our studies of energy research projects.

Our research lives, as those of most of our colleagues, are strongly influenced by interdisciplinarity. These changed contexts are only partially defined by us, as researchers. They are shaped by an interplay of funding structures and university strategies; by an increasing number of academic disciplines that create novel combinations among them; and, not least, by global developments (e.g. climate change and digital transition) that create pressures to work in an interdisciplinary manner. This note on the scale is important because a considerable amount of what has been written vii vill © PREFACE about interdisciplinarity, including research that we cite in this book, draws only on personal experiences. It is true that such autoethnographic studies are important for shedding light on normally hidden dynamics and that reflections can be created only from immersing oneself within project contexts, and thus some of this book’s chapters are indeed partially personal too. However, that said, and as the general motivation of the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) goes: these personal experiences are inadequate to fully understand the dynamics of interdisciplinarity. We need tools from the SSH to more fully understand the positions of those working in interdisciplinary projects. This book is an attempt to build such a toolbox for scholars and practitioners alike: as we show in this book, interdisciplinary projects can be analysed from within by using SSH tools themselves. SSH can therefore be used to investigate how SSH themselves are integrated or not with other disciplinary perspectives, going beyond isolated and limited descriptive reflections of interdisciplinarity that fail to sufficiently take advantage of the conceptual backing that SSH (and specifically STS) already offers.

Nevertheless, a personal note is necessary to frame our motivation. A desire to write this book has come from our own experiences of working in—and indeed being vocal advocates of—large-scale, consortia-based, interdisciplinary energy research projects. It has been through such projects that informal conversations with colleagues (from all manner of disciplinary backgrounds) have frequently raised concerns relating to, for example, frustrations of writing interdisciplinary project proposals that have to follow the ‘scripts’ of funding calls; what forms of knowledge carry what forms of authority within disciplinary integrations; various expectations of SSH from non-specialists; roles of quantitative (energy) models in organising interdisciplinary projects; common sources for disputes and controversies in ambitious interdisciplinary projects; and what disciplines in themselves actually offer. We felt that our common STS perspectives and recently collected data were directly able to respond to exactly these sorts of concerns. Indeed, we are somewhat surprised that so few of our STS colleagues have followed this path too.

We wrote the climax of this book—Chap. 5, on A Sociology of Interdisciplinarity—as an accessible introduction to relevant tools and resources from the STS literature. We specifically illustrated these by drawing on our three case studies (Chaps. 2, 3, 4); Chaps. 2 and 3 focused on interdisciplinary energy project’s agendas and experiences, with Chap. 4 focusing on a more conventional monodisciplinary energy project and

PREFACE ix illustrated how the themes raised in the preceding two empirical chapters still remained pertinent. Given how Chap. 5 therefore represents this book’s main contribution, it is obvious to see how it also directly led to the title of the book itself. In fact, it is exactly because of Chap. 5’s critical role in assimilating this book’s journey that we wish to make clear why we intentionally framed it as ‘A Sociology of Interdisciplinarity’, rather than ‘The Sociology of Interdisciplinarity’. To us, this framing was critical to emphasise immediately that this book does not represent the definitive end-point; instead, we hope that this book represents the start of deeper discussions on how STS literatures may spark reflexive debate on the project organisation, professional experiences, academic cultures, and institutionalised environments sitting behind interdisciplinary pursuits and outcomes.

Our multi-scalar Sociology of Interdisciplinarity framework consists of six dimensions, and it is important for us to make clear that we hold a pluralist view on its application. As such, we do not believe the STS tools and resources (sitting behind each of the dimensions) are ‘better’ than any of the others; each dimension is appropriate for exploring particular issues. Indeed, the dimensions put the spotlight on usually overlooked aspects of interdisciplinary research project collaborations, and thus we would certainly hope for (and actively encourage) parallel consideration of the dimensions we raise, as well as further proposals for additional complementary dimensions too. What joins them altogether, though, is their shared common (sociotechnical) point of departure, which is what ensures they complement ontologically and epistemologically, rather than contradict, one another.

This book is certainly not intended only for STS scholars; nor is it only intended for those conducting (interdisciplinary) energy research. We have endeavoured to position this book at the boundaries between different knowledge-producing and knowledge-using communities, both inside and outside of energy research. Indeed, more broadly, we hope that colleagues may be more widely interested in our discussions around for how research and innovation systems are fundamentally organised, how this relates to normative goals of research, and what this all means for how SSH’s expertise is integrated.

Trondheim, Norway Antti Silvast Cambridge, UK Chris Foulds

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are grateful to numerous colleagues, without whom the book would not be what it is. Firstly, we thank all those who kindly gave up their time to be interviewed as part of generating Chaps. 2, 3, and 4’s datasets. We acknowledge these data were collected via the following projects: the EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (Grant number: EP/P001173/1; Chap. 2); the NTNU Energy Transition Initiative (Chap. 3); and the first author’s doctoral dissertation (including the Academy of Finland project Managing Insecurities led by Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, the Research Foundation of the University of Helsinki, the Kone Foundation, the Jenny and Antti Wihuri’s Trust, and the Finnish Graduate School for Science, Technology and Innovation Studies; Chap. 4). Secondly, we recognise the valuable chapter review comments and insightful conversations from many of our colleagues, including Mark Winskel (University of Edinburgh), Simone Abram (Durham University), Marianne Ryghaug and Tomas Moe Skjolsvold (both NTNU), Sarah Royston and Rosie Robison (both Anglia Ruskin University), Sampsa Hyysalo (Aalto University), Salla Sariola, and Heta Tarkkala (both University of Helsinki). Thirdly, we note that many of the reflexive starting points for this book have come from our own experiences of interdisciplinary projects, and thus we acknowledge all our various collaborators in recent projects.

xi xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors’ time on writing this book was primarily funded by NTNU Energy Transition Initiative (Silvast) and the Energy-SHIFTS project (Foulds), which was funded by the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 826025.

The open access fees for this book were kindly paid by NTNU and Anglia Ruskin University’s Open Access Fund.

CONTENTS l Introduction 2 Whole Systems Thinking and Modelling in the UK 3 Environment-Friendly Energy Research in Norway

Index xiii

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Chris Foulds is an associate professor at Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute. He was co-lead of the Horizon 2020 European Innovation Forum for energy-related Social Sciences and Humanities (Energy-SHIFTS, 2019-2021) and its predecessor EU platform (SHAPE ENERGY, 2017-2019). He employs a range of critical and reflexive social scientific perspectives from Science and Technology Studies, Sociology, and Human Geography, in investigating the relationships between policy and governance agendas, social practices and cultural conventions, and energy and sustainability transformations. He has a strong interest in unpicking the experiences and expectations associated with interdisciplinary pursuits. Foulds has led a number of projects funding through the EU, UK Research Councils, UK Government Departments, Newton, and various charities and foundations.

Antti Silvast holds a researcher position in the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture. From December 2021, he will be an Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Department of Technology, Management and Economics, Innovation Division, the Responsible Technology Section. During his career, he has contributed to the forming of several successful European Horizon 2020 energy-related projects, including Checking Assumptions and Promoting Responsibility in Smart Development Projects (CANDID, at University of Edinburgh) and Sustainable Consumer Engagement and Demand Response

XV xvi ABOUT THE AUTHORS

(SENDER, at NTNU). Since 2014, he has been an editor of Science & Technology Studies, the official journal of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology. Silvast’s research develops tools in STS to study multiple energy issues including interdisciplinary whole systems research, energy modelling, smart grids, control rooms, energy markets, and risk and resilience in energy systems. After defending his PhD in Helsinki (Finland), he held postdoctoral appointments at Princeton University (US), University of Edinburgh (UK), and Durham University (UK).

LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 3.1 The number of Social Sciences and Humanities publications

published by all Centres for Environment-Friendly Energy

Research, per year (2009-2019). Sources: Oria, Web of Science,

Scopus, Google Scholar 56 Fig. 3.2 The number of Social Sciences and Humanities publications

published by all Centres for Environment-Friendly Energy

Research, per publication type (2009-2019). Sources: Oria,

Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar 57 Fig. 4.1 A Finnish customer survey, 2004, asks what power cuts cost.

More than a dozen similar questions are given in the survey.

(Source: Silvast et al. [2006, p. 104]) 79 xvii

LIST OF TABLES

Reviewing the Centres for Environment-Friendly Energy Research in scientific databases

Overview of the Centres for Environment-Friendly Energy Research, as of 15 June 2021. Data sourced from project database of the Research Council of Norway

Authors’ keywords when studying the Centres for Environment-Friendly Energy Research

The regulatory ‘pricing’ of electricity blackouts in Finland between 2008 and 2011

A Sociology of Interdisciplinarity and its six dimensions

83 95

Xix

Introduction

Abstract This chapter provides background context on the calls for doing (more) interdisciplinarity and explains our own positioning as to what interdisciplinarity actually is, as well as what we believe this book contributes to the study of said interdisciplinarity. Specifically, we discuss mainstream arguments for why interdisciplinary research is deemed to be a worthwhile endeavour by many researchers, policymakers, funders, and so on. We build on this by arguing that there is a unique—and currently under-fulfilled—role to be played by Science and Technology Studies (STS) in exploring the sociological dimensions of how large-scale (energy) research projects are actually carried out. Alongside these wider landscape discussions, we explain what this book contributes to the study of interdisciplinarity and to energy research, through our empirics and STS-inspired ideas. We also make clear how we define interdisciplinarity and disciplines and explain how we focus on problem-focused research that may (or may not) involve external stakeholders.

Keywords Interdisciplinary ° Knowledge integration ¢ Problem-focused research è Disciplines ¢ Sociotechnical

© The Author(s) 2022 1 A. Silvast, C. Foulds, Sociology of Interdisciplinarity, https: //doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88455-0_1

1.1 INTRODUCING THE BACKGROUND CONTEXT

1.1.1 Interdisciplinary Research as a Mainstream Research Endeavour

Interdisciplinary research has been advocated as the zenith of research practice for many years, quite often in direct response to questions that cannot be answered (or even preliminarily investigated) by disciplines working separately (Jasanoff 2013). Indeed, common arguments for advocating interdisciplinarity often centre on fixing the ‘poor connectivity’ between disciplines, whether this implicitly /explicitly relates more to the knowledges or the knowledge-producing communities that map across such disciplinary classifications. The theory goes that interdisciplinarity fills knowledge gaps by improving disciplinary connectivity, thereby ensuring a “better integration of existing knowledge” (Hulme 2018, p. 333, emphasis in original). From there, claims that interdisciplinarity provides a more complete—perhaps even ‘holistic’? or ‘whole systems’—perspective therefore often ensue.

Calls for doing interdisciplinary research have become so widespread and pervasive that doing and advocating for interdisciplinarity now very much occupies mainstream discourse—as shown by various contributions from researchers (e.g. Irwin et al. 2018; Nature 2015), educators (e.g. European University Association 2017; University of Essex 2020), funders (e.g. British Academy 2016; European Commission 2019; UKRI 2021), policy actors (e.g. HM Government 2017; Pellerin-Carlin et al. 2018), and related multi-stakeholder associations (e.g. Science Europe 2019) alike. Given this widespread multi-stakeholder agreement and its emergence “as a political preoccupation” (Barry and Born 2013, p. i), it is then no surprise that there have been calls for systemic, cultural changes that better enable the development and maintenance of interdisciplinarity (e.g. Caniglia et al. 2021).

Such is the widespread institutional support for interdisciplinarity that we believe scholars have become somewhat numb to the public support for interdisciplinarity. Essentially, explicit support and interest for interdisciplinarity is so commonplace that it has been rendered almost invisible or at least significantly backgrounded. Indeed, we would argue that vocal supporters of interdisciplinarity are rarely credited or congratulated— unlike they perhaps would have been 10-20 years ago—for endorsing or even directly funding interdisciplinary research. This is, of course, progress.

As part of this move towards greater interdisciplinarity in research and innovation, there have been explicit calls for interdisciplinary ambitions to account for the integration of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) approaches (Pedersen 2016). Indeed, this cause has been internationally championed at the broader SSH level by, for example, the European Alliance for Social Sciences and Humanities! (EASSH) and the Shaping Interdisciplinary Practices in Europe? (SHAPE-ID) EU Horizon 2020 project. Similarly, the EU platform for energy-related SSH* has also argued for SSH to be better integrated within the Framework Programmes of the EU (Foulds et al. 2020; Robison and Foulds 2019, 2021), as well as called for deeper reflections as to the roles afforded to SSH in interdisciplinary research, including considering its implications for the policy advice being generated (Foulds and Robison 2018; Royston and Foulds 2021). Such calls are built on the foundations of a range of works that demonstrate the underutilisation of SSH within (energy) research (e.g. Foulds and Christensen 2016; Sovacool 2014; Sovacool et al. 2015).

It is therefore clear that the SSH are being pursued directly as part of a particular configuration of interdisciplinarity that traverses both the Natural/Technical Sciences and the SSH. We believe that this pursuit is widely understood and observed by research stakeholders, although we strongly contend that the implications of this configuration (which funders and other actors alike are pushing) have not been given the attention it deserves. For instance, how may Natural/Technical Scientists imagine the role of SSH in their projects, and vice versa, and with what effects for a collaboration’s power dynamics? How can knowledge be translated to become credible among distinct and hitherto separated cultures of scientific knowledge production? Indeed, the implications of such a marriage is a central thread of this book that we return to at various stages. Beyond this though, and aside from being a key part of our object of study (interdisciplinarity), we argue that the SSH themselves also have much to offer to the very study approaches utilised—including, for instance, positionality, infrastructures and epistemics of knowledge production, movement of knowledge, dynamics of appropriation, different disciplinary

'https://eassh.eu/.

2 https://www.shapeid.eu/.

3 This book’s second author co-led the EU platform for energy-SSH via the EU Horizon 2020-funded projects: SHAPE ENERGY, over 2017-2019 (www.shapeenergy.eu); and Energy-SHIFTS, over 2019-2021 (www.energy-shifts.eu).

interpretations of scientific findings, and the importance of organising around disciplinary collectives. It is exactly in these respects that our next sub-section discusses our proposed role of Science and Technology Studies (STS) in better understanding the dynamics and experiences underlying research practice.

1.1.2 What Science and Technology Studies’ Sociotechnical Underpinnings Have to Offer

In the previous sub-section, we made clear that calls and some structural support for interdisciplinary research exist within the mainstream management and delivery of research systems. We also discussed the role that SSH can play in shedding more light on the social dynamics of interdisciplinary research. In this sub-section, though, we take this further by specifically drilling into what the underutilised STS can offer the study of interdisciplinary practice. Not only is this the core rationale upon which this book is based, but this sub-section also implicitly represents this book’s first call (of many) for those leading interdisciplinary project evaluations to directly engage with STS ideas. But first, it is necessary herein to step back and consider the origins of STS and, in particular, what STS itself offers through its common point of departure.

STS is a large and an increasingly popular and heterogeneous area of research, and while attempts to define the field for relative outsiders exist (e.g. Sovacool et al. 2020; STS Helsinki 2021), it is not in our interest to develop a concise designation here. Indeed, we contend that any such fixed designation would not serve the diverse corners of this area. In general terms, though, STS is unique in its interest in the interplay between science, technology, and society, in a manner that pays specific conceptual and empirical interest to the actual content and processes of science and technology in the making. This focus remains unique among social scientific studies, many of which still treat the social and technical aspects of science and technology as a binary and, in doing so, narrow the Social Sciences to the study of ‘the social’ dimensions of these matters. STS takes the binary distinction to be a fallacy, hence the common way to term its focus as being sociotechnical (Silvast et al. 2013). Therefore, to reiterate: being sociotechnical “is not the same as either just having social and technical researchers in the same research team or in having researchers trained in both disciplinary routes” (Cooper 2017, p. 115). Whilst these may indeed be happening within sociotechnical studies, actually being sociotechnical requires a fundamental, ontological appreciation of the coproduction of the social and the technical. For a more detailed review of the STS field, we recommend one of the recent handbooks, such as Felt et al. (2016).

Within these terms of reference, there is inevitably a range of STS interests and perspectives in play around the roles of science and technology in practice and normatively in society. In this book, though, we are particularly inspired by the Science Studies component of STS, which has for decades explored the social construction of (scientific) knowledge (e.g. Hacking 2000; Knorr Cetina 1999; Latour and Woolgar 1979; Pinch and Bijker 1984). STS itself has some of its origins in studies of professional scientists collaborating with one another in Natural Science laboratories, for example, and thus if we assume current societies to be ruled by expertise and knowledge, it is possible to start utilising such insights (previously used around, for instance, the knowledge society; Knorr Cetina 1999, Chapter 10) for investigating the knowledge-object relationships of interdisciplinary practice too.

Indeed, given the interest of STS in how “sets of relations” (Law 1991, p. 18) shape knowledge creation, for example, STS is no stranger to the study of interdisciplinarity. In fact, the reflexivity advocated for by STS scholars has been put to good use in considering how STS itself emerged as a discipline. For example, both Mitcham (2003) and Sørensen (2012) discussed the interdisciplinary ‘disciplining’ of STS to the extent that it became an interdiscipline, and Cozzens (2001) similarly argued that a unifying core of ‘STS thought’ could only ever exist once STS researchers (themselves usually from different disciplines) were able to leave their past disciplinary baggage behind them. Moreover, in preceding these discussions, there were even questions as to whether interdisciplinarity could be feasibly achieved within STS, given its disciplinary positioning and organisation (Bauer 1990). It is therefore evident that whilst STS explorations into interdisciplinarity remain in the minority, STS does have a track record of asking the deeper questions of interdisciplinarity.

To be clear, we assert that an STS perspective cannot be treated as a single entity, given that the interdiscipline is dispersed and itself positioned across and between disciplines. Here, through this book, we adopt the following considerations from it:

e That SSH studies of interdisciplinarity should focus on the actual content of scientific research in large-scale, collaborative projects.

e That this requires a set of research methods that capture this actual content, including conventional qualitative interviews and fieldwork, alongside any methods that dig into the mundane everyday dynamics of project planning and implementation.

e That while we detail the inner life of (interdisciplinary) projects, this content of science—including the ways in which projects are organised—has clear normative implications. Therefore, the study of a project’s inner life does not only stop at its situated practices, but extends to the institutional terms and and contexts of actions that those practices sit within.

STS therefore offers tools to enable a deeper unpacking of interdisciplinarity in the making. In using STS to dig deeper into the more mundane everydayness of doing interdisciplinarity, a richer picture is generated that allows one to move beyond more simplistic discussions of identifying ‘barriers’, ‘obstacles’, ‘challenges’, and so on. It is these more simplistic discussions that can be overly reductive and linear, for instance, through implying that their identified barriers need only be jumped over or busted through to neatly ‘fix’ centuries-old institutions and ensure that interdisciplinary efforts will prosper (c.f. Shove 1998). Indeed, over the last 20 years, there has been a plethora of studies that have focused explicitly on identifying the barriers to doing interdisciplinarity (e.g. Brewer 1999; Campbell 2005; Cohen et al. 2021; Hein et al. 2018; Kelly et al. 2019; Lyall and Meagher 2012; Morse et al. 2007; Wallace and Clark 2017). Such studies are often situated within a wider descriptive convention that lacks a conceptual bedrock to their discussion of interdisciplinarity. We assert that this then commonly leads to the same sorts of generic difficulties and recommendations being reproduced relating to, for example, disciplinary languages, communication strategies, balancing expertise, resource burdens, and career trajectories. Whilst quite often rich and undoubtedly interesting in isolation, we strongly argue that such interdisciplinary studies are reaching their saturation in terms of their contributions. Our collective understanding of interdisciplinarity is not advancing at the rate that it once was. STS can help rectify this by filling the current conceptual void and by asking questions that have not yet been sufficiently explored.

Fundamentally: SSH has much to contribute to the study of interdisciplinarity, including (but not limited to) how SSH themselves are addressed within interdisciplinary approaches. STS specifically offers a solid, underutilised basis for moving beyond a mere descriptive account of the experiences encountered. Connecting said experiences within and through such conceptual tools allows scholars to speak more to, and learn from, other contributions in the literature, and, as such, better interpret interdisciplinary data at hand. In this vein, it is the drawing together of STS-led concepts that this book argues for and evidences the merits of—we now discuss this, in the context of this book’s broader contributions and positionings, in the next section.

1.2 [INTRODUCING Tuts Book

1.2.1 A Position Statement on Notions of Interdisciplinarity

To make clear exactly what we mean by ‘interdisciplinarity’ or ‘interdisciplinary research’ in this book, we now outline our positions on key boundaries and scope issues. This position statement outlines where we position ourselves amongst the diverse approaches to interdisciplinarity—including, for instance, what ‘interdisciplinarity’ even means and how it is operationalised as an object of study. Specifically, in this sub-section, we present five positions in turn, which together form the foundations of and offer context for many of this book’s arguments.

1.2.1.1 Position #1: Definitions of Disciplines Should Account

for the Interconnectedness, Porosity, and Inevitable Subjectivity

of Their Knowledges and Knowledge-Making Communities In considering our position on the boundaries and relations between disciplines, we believe it is important to first reflect on what a discipline is. Indeed, we contend that works on interdisciplinarity rarely contain any definition of a discipline—although perhaps this is to be expected, given that the rationale for these works is in transgressing disciplines. Interdisciplinary scholars may therefore be fundamentally critical of disciplines and hence potentially feel that they do not need to define what they critique. Whatever the reasoning, any critique or discussion of interdisciplinarity will suffer if one is not clear on one’s terms of reference (e.g. scope, boundaries, and purpose) for a discipline.

In reflecting on what a discipline is, we found Jacobs’ (2013, p. 28) discussion instructive: “A discipline is a form of social organization that generates new ideas and research findings, certifies this knowledge, and in turn teaches this subject matter”. In drawing parallels between defining disciplines and defining professions, Jacobs developed this further through discussion of, for example, scholarly associations, conference participation, publishing strategies, career pathways, and responsibilities for handing over to the next generation, that together socially organise institutional disciplinary groupings.

What is also clear from Jacobs’ (2013) discussion is the importance of acknowledging the messy interconnections between disciplines. Indeed, whilst disciplines can provide useful proxies for different ways of generating, interpreting, and applying knowledges, we should not obsess about them to the point where the porosity of disciplinary boundaries is forgotten. Knowledges and their associated institutional structures cannot be compartmentalised:

[K]nowledge is transgressive. Nobody, in my awareness, has succeeded anywhere for very long in containing knowledge. It seeps through institutional structures like water through pores of a membrane. As with liquids in membranes, knowledge seeps in both directions. (Gibbons and Nowotny 2001, p. 68)

Rigidly drawing boundaries between academic disciplines is not always possible and/or useful. Discussion of interdisciplinarity would therefore only benefit from acknowledging that no objective categorisation will do justice to the disciplinary complexity and evolution in play. Indeed, we welcome the inclusion of disciplines—which are, themselves, constructions—that are self-assigned and self-identified. We do not believe it productive to rigidly apply top-down classifications of what a discipline can and should be, as it would close off possibilities of including new, emerging disciplines—which themselves may be hybrid disciplines (or ‘interdisciplines’) that may have arisen through a common set of interdisciplinary research interests (e.g. Gender Studies and Urban Studies).

Furthermore, there are many intersecting scales and dimensions as to how disciplines are organised. For example, is Environmental Social Science a discipline in itself, or does it just constitute part of Environmental Science? Contestation around disciplinary labels is inevitable, and this is wholly appropriate—it could never be possible to achieve consensus, not least because disciplines change, evolve, emerge, and fade, too. This certainly fits with the second author’s experiences of, for example, producing disciplinary lists of researchers (e.g. SHAPE ENERGY 2017) and analysing open survey questions that ask for disciplinary associations (e.g. Foulds et al. 2017, p. 17).

An implication of acknowledging this interconnectedness between disciplines is that it directly problematises the assumption that the adding together of different, so-called ‘distinct’ disciplines will objectively add up to a ‘complete’ picture. Indeed, it is often assumed that interdisciplinarity represents the completion of a “jigsaw” (Castree and Waitt 2017, p. 3), where the connection of new disciplinary additions supposedly reveals more of “an ‘objective world’ awaiting discovery and accurate reporting” (Castree and Waitt 2017, p. 3). Thus, seeing disciplines in the way that we have set out above, then, has implications for our expectations of what interdisciplinary research can realistically achieve.

1.2.1.2 Position #2: We Focus Primarily on Interdisciplinary Problem-Focused Research and Not on Interdisciplinary General Education To borrow from Klein’s (1990) terms, the ‘interdisciplinary general education’ (p. 156) form of interdisciplinarity—which targets the predisciplinary mode of understanding—is not where we concern ourselves in this book. Instead, we primarily focus on what Nein (1990) refers to as ‘interdisciplinary problem-focused research’ (p. 121), specifically related to furthering societies’ response to challenges associated with low-carbon sociotechnical transformations.

For this form of interdisciplinarity, and as discussed by Mitcham (2003), problem-focused interdisciplinarity has tended to originate via either (1) research-producing communities being interested in and subsequently posing new cognitive questions that span across disciplines or (2) an interest in generating (often technical) solutions for practical problems facing societies, which may or may not be pushed by the problem-holders themselves (e.g. policy actors).

As our Position #1 implied, the social organisation of disciplines cannot be neatly separated into different institutional activities. Yet, despite this, we believe it important to be clear on whether the ambitions underlying one’s interdisciplinarity is more/less grounded in problem-focused interdisciplinary research or within educational approaches to broadening understanding (especially if said interdisciplinarity is acting as an object of research in itself). Our implicit focus on interdisciplinary problem-focused research therefore makes clear that our discussion of interdisciplinarity in this book inevitably contains certain normative dimensions.

1.2.1.3 Position #3: The Full Spectrum of Multidisciplinary,

Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity Should Be Part

of a Broad Definition of Interdisciplinarity That Covers

the Range of Crossdisciplinary Research Practice It has long been said that interdisciplinarity lacks a coherent, single definition (Salter and Hearn 1996). As Callard and Fitzgerald (2015, p. 4) put it, “interdisciplinarity is a term that everyone invokes and none understands”. We certainly note that multidisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are also used frequently, and are often conflated and/or used interchangeably with interdisciplinarity. In distinguishing between each of these terms, we note the following (inspired by Klein [2010] in particular):

e Multidisciplinary research: parallel endeavours from different disciplines, which do not have (or at least do not prioritise) integration.

e Interdisciplinary research: integrated perspectives from different disciplines that add up to more than the sum of their parts.