Working with Interdisciplinarity in Knowledge Communities
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- 1. Interdisciplinary Contestations: Tracing interdisciplinarity’s connections to democratization of knowledge communities (Ana María Macías García, Kirsten Jæger & Karina M. Smed (eds.))
- 2. Initiating Interdisciplinary Research toward Green Energy Transition—Experiences from the Humanities and Social Sciences (Anne Grethe J. Pedersen, Anders Horsbøl & Pernille V. K. Andersen)
- 3. Learning Interdisciplinarity—Students’ Reflections on Interdisciplinarity in the Context of PBL Project Work (Karina M. Smed & Anne Grethe J. Pedersen)
- 4. Embracing the Endless Journey: Complex Systems, Agency, and Positioning in Learning Contexts (Ana María Macías García)
- 5. The Role of Higher Education Systems and Policymakers in the Integration of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the European Union from a Gender Perspective (Adriana Calvo & Irene Pérez-Tirado)
- 6. Educational Interdisciplinarity in Cultural Mediation Contexts: Fostering Cultural Democracy at the National Centre of Contemporary Art in Chile (Beatriz Salinas, Sebastian Riffo-Valdebenito & Ximena Escobar)
- 7. The Status of Interdisciplinarity in the Project Assignment—and its Positioning of Pupils, Teachers, and School Subjects (Annette Rasmussen)
- 8. Higher Education Interdisciplinarity—Symmetry across Policy Levels (Kirsten Jæger)
- 9. Banal Cosmopolitanism? An Inquiry into the (de)Construction of the Nation within Critical Intercultural Communication, 1990–2020 (Hanne Tange)
- 10. Key Themes, Contributions and Future Perspectives on Interdisciplinarity as a Contribution to Democratic Knowledge Communities (Ana María Macías García, Kirsten Jæger & Karina M. Smed (eds.))
- About the Authors
Contents
Figures and Tables
2. Initiating Interdisciplinary Research toward Green Energy Transition—Experiences from the Humanities and Social Sciences
3. Learning Interdisciplinarity—Students’ Reflections on Interdisciplinarity in the Context of PBL Project Work
5. The Role of Higher Education Systems and Policymakers in the Integration of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the European Union from a Gender Perspective
Figure 1. PRISMA 2020 flow diagram for this systematic review which included searches of databases
Figure 3. Number of articles published on the topic reviewed
Table 1. Description of the publications included for the systematic review
6. Educational Interdisciplinarity in Cultural Mediation Contexts: Fostering Cultural Democracy at the National Centre of Contemporary Art in Chile
1. Interdisciplinary Contestations: Tracing interdisciplinarity’s connections to democratization of knowledge communities
Contemporary society is characterized by a constant and accelerated state of change, as emerging disruption and convergence has become the norm within many political, social, and cultural spheres (Rosa, 2013; Zantvoort, 2017). Consequently, knowledge takes new forms that are increasingly based on a variety of collaborations, innovations, co-creation and design processes (Gibbons et al., 1994). In academia, these transformations are also evident, and knowledge that offers insights into increasingly complex processes across several fields and involving several sectors is an emerging tendency (Ruoslahti, 2020). This is to some extent due to the modern-day institutionalization of practical problem solving and application of knowledge as a core value and focal point in knowledge production (Gibbons et al., 1994). Thereby, new types of knowledge and knowledge collaboration that transcend traditional disciplines and practices are becoming more visible in various types of knowledge communities.
The DEMOS (Democracy, Migration and Society) research group at Aalborg University is a knowledge community focusing on the study of democracy from an interdisciplinary perspective. This book takes a vantage point in the work of DEMOS researchers. DEMOS addresses changes of and challenges to democracy at a global level, paying particular attention to the key concepts of participation, migration, education, intercultural dialogue and sustainability. Many of the topics addressed by DEMOS address social change at global and international levels, whereby DEMOS researchers engage in diverse networks of knowledge producers in the context of contemporary transformations. In the educational context of Aalborg University, the pedagogical model of problem-based learning is central. Because of PBL’s inherent focus on specified problems rather than the disciplinary limitations of a topic, PBL has been claimed to transform knowledge production in different ways (Gibbons et al., 1994), and PBL practices are therefore highly relevant to include in a discussion of interdisciplinarity.
Thus, the anthology’s overall theme is interdisciplinarity in education and research on democracy, rights, migration, social change, sustainability, and intercultural education, and it takes a point of departure in the disciplinary and interdisciplinary diversity of the DEMOS research group at Aalborg University. The authors take their point of departure in an interest in communities of knowledge, but also an interest in the contestation of a particular form of knowledge community, the scientific discipline. In this introduction we present and discuss the various forms that such contestations have taken historically, including how inter- and transdisciplinarity have been proposed as responses to the problems identified in discipline-organized research and higher education. The authors contributing to this volume address various aspects of these debates. Some focus on the tensions and dynamisms within singular disciplines, and others address the implications of the interdisciplinary turn in specific contexts (higher education, primary school policy and European HE policy). As the DEMOS group studies democracy from interdisciplinary perspectives, this introduction therefore aims to situate inter- and transdisciplinarity in knowledge communities in discussions on democracy and knowledge organization by focusing specifically on questions of inclusion, participation, and democratization of knowledge.
Firstly, we demonstrate how disciplinary knowledge organization shaped the institutionalization of the modern university, combining research, teaching, and certification of knowledge for professional practice, and simultaneously developed firm boundaries between academic (legitimate) and non-academic (illegitimate) forms of knowledge. Secondly, we account for significant developments that have contributed to a contestation of disciplinary knowledge organization and to the current social, political, and academic celebration of inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge work. These developments involve the demystification of disciplinary knowledge production in the form of ethnographic studies demonstrating, even in the natural sciences, the context- and culture-specific nature of knowledge production in the disciplines. At the same time, the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s also targeted the privileges of disciplinary knowledge communities and paved the way for foundation of broad interdisciplinary fields such as gender studies and access to universities for groups hitherto excluded from higher education. Subsequently, we address more direct attacks on disciplinary knowledge organization that followed the introduction of concept of Mode 2 knowledge (Gibbons et al., 1994) pointing to the many new forms of collaborative knowledge production that penetrate the boundary between academic and non-academic knowledge producers and the criticism of disciplinary knowledge organization for being “unsustainable” (Frodeman, 2013). Taking our point of departure in this historical account of the role of interdisciplinarity in paving the way for more inclusive and potentially democratic knowledge communities, we discuss whether interdisciplinarity still represents a force for change. Finally, the chapter presents the contributions to the volume.
The Institutionalization of the Discipline-Organized University
Most historical accounts place the flourishing of the modern scientific discipline in the nineteenth century (Schaffer, 2013), connected to the establishment of modern research universities. Prior to the existence of the academic discipline, research, education, and professional practice existed as separate and distinct practices. Research took place in the context of learned societies. Universities offered training for a few professions but were not connected to research. The achievement of the academic discipline was to connect university-based research, research-based education, and certification of training for professional practice, which meant that the discipline-organized university became the dominating epistemic authority enabling a distinction between disciplinary, objective, scientific knowledge and all other forms of knowledge: “The distinctive characteristic of modern disciplines is precisely to organize teaching, research, and professional organization within the same kind of institutional unit” (Heilbron, 2003, p. 30). The disciplinary university provided the “cognitive structure” of society (Delanty, 1998, p. 4). The modern discipline thus institutionalized the idea that the discipline is the only proper mechanism for generation of objective, state-of-the-art knowledge on a given academic field because this knowledge is the result of research conducted by way of scientific methods accepted by trained members of the disciplinary community. As long as the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake [“as an end in itself” (Delanty, 1998, p. 4)] remains a socially accepted goal, the disciplinary university can claim a relatively autonomous status beyond or above politics and economy. The fact that “the modern, disciplinary academy limits the audience of academic writing to other specialists in the academy, industry, and government” was not seen as a problem (Parker & Samantrai, 2010, p. 6).
As Heilbron (2003) points out, the institutionalization of the academic discipline as an epistemic authority happened over a historical period of at least 150 years. What, precisely, initiated what some has referred to as a decline of the autonomy and epistemic authority of the university institution, is probably an unanswerable question, as this change in status happened and is happening as the result of multiple developments, including state regulation, decline in public spending on universities, and stakeholder pressures for “useful research” (Lövbrand, 2015). The market for knowledge is now crowded. Contrary to the golden age of disciplinary knowledge organization, the academic disciplines no longer reign supreme but coexist with a wide range of knowledge-producing and disseminating organizations, including (for example) interdisciplinary centers at the universities, various forms of think tanks, international organizations, and citizen science initiatives (Bäckstrand, 2003). Commenting on the scientization of a broad range of organizations and institutions, and specifically on the vital importance of scientific activity for international organizations, Bekele (2021) observes: “Universities are thus no longer considered as the sole and even the most authoritative producers of scientific knowledge; the intellectual space is now shared with IOs” (p. 10). Disciplines (typically organized as university departments) must, as all other knowledge organizations, strive for social legitimacy and the associated privileges in the form of funding and influence. This is, for example, illustrated by an investigation of European higher-education policies (Jæger, this volume) finding that university disciplines are sometimes referred to as impediments for progressive pedagogies and higher levels of sustainability knowledge among the youth.
Closed Communities: Academic Tribes and Epistemic Cultures
While the successful institutionalization of the modern research university promoted the legitimation of the academic disciplines, new understandings of disciplinary communities emerged that in their own way contributed to the demystification of the once unquestioned disciplines and the truths produced by them. One contestation of the academic discipline as producer of objective true knowledge is represented by the concept applied in the title of this book: the term knowledge community. The concept indicates a certain relativization of the knowledge produced in disciplinary communities as it emphasizes that this knowledge is the result of group-specific perspectives and interests. One of the first scholars to use the term knowledge community to denote the academic discipline was Tony Becher in his book “Academic tribes and territories: Intellectual enquiry and the culture of disciplines” (1989). The book demonstrated how many of the concepts used by anthropologists (ritual, culture, hierarchy, etc.) to characterize tribal collectives could be applied to university disciplines, which helped promote imaginations of disciplines as internally coherent and culturally distinct entities. As pointed out by Tange (this volume), similar observations were made by other scholars, for example Bourdieu who noted how each discipline cultivated specific discourses, concepts, and meanings.
Details
- Pages
- 232
- Publication Year
- 2026
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783631946008
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783631954126
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9783631945995
- DOI
- 10.3726/b23414
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2026 (July)
- Keywords
- Interdisciplinarity higher education research democracy PBL learning knowledge communities Ana María Macías García Kirsten Jaeger Karina M. Smed
- Published
- Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, Oxford, 2026. 232 pp., 7 fig. b/w, 1 table.
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