Interdisciplinary terms and concepts

¶ … Interdisciplinarity

To call something 'interdisciplinary' means that it connects or bridges two disciplines and strives to show the connections between these two distinct worldviews. Within the construct of interdisciplinarity are many different varieties of interdisciplinarity. Fundamentally, instrumental interdisciplinarity is used for a purpose. For example, in the study of nursing, nursing practice and medical knowledge may be studied in conjunction with sociological theory, in order to improve health services at a clinic for poor clients who face personal and social challenges that can act as barriers to their ability to access care. Instrumental interdisciplinarity is used when setting policy and to achieve specific objects that cannot be reached within a single paradigm.

In contrast, conceptual interdisciplinarity bridging nursing and sociology might be used by an anthropologist studying a specific community's health beliefs. Conceptual interdisciplinarity functions as an intellectual exercise within academia to illuminate problems and issues pertinent to researchers. Viewpoints of different disciplines are used to inform one another. Finally, critical interdisciplinarity aims to criticize -- in an informed and intelligent way -- the assumptions of a discipline, from the perspective of a member of another discipline. Critical interdisciplinarity, in contrast to the previous two forms, offers an outsider's perspective. For example, women's studies or post-structural English criticism may attempt to critique the empirical and objective perspective assumed by science and medicine using a critical interdisciplinary perspective. A subset or less 'critical' form of critical disciplinarity could be said to be cross-disciplinarity, which simply looks at but does not critique the perspective of one discipline from the worldview of another discipline.

These exercises in bridging disciplines are necessary and useful, although critical interdisciplinarity must be exercised with some care. Although it can be useful to criticize what has become 'common sense' within a discipline, the critic must understand the alternative point-of-view in a genuine fashion. Instrumental interdisciplinarity can ensure a more broad and intelligent approach to practical problems and avoid policymakers making the same mistakes over and over again when dealing with deep-rooted problems. Conceptual interdisciplinarity can encourage researchers not to fall into the cliches of their narrow discipline and to have a more complete picture of a particular phenomenon. And critical interdisciplinarity can be a vital way to question the insider's thinking or what is assumed to be the 'common sense' perspective of the dominant paradigm of another discipline.

Interdisciplinarity is different from taking a multidisciplinary perspective. A multidisciplinary perspective merely uses different disciplines to look at a particular phenomenon. For example, the phenomenon of eating disorders could be looked at in a multidisciplinary fashion by using a series of lenses, including women's studies, biology, biochemistry, cultural studies, nutrition, and even literature and history. Interdisciplinarity, however, strives to create bridges between the divides from these perspectives.