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Sep 20, - The Case for the Humanities: Pedagogy, Polity, and Interdisciplinarity. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. Hardcover: $
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Although in traditional grounded theory, Strauss and Corbin , p. Nevertheless, Clarke , p.

Historical Account of Interdisciplinarity

There is no such thing as context. Moreover, this basis enables her to show that all the elements in a given situation constitute and influence one another, meaning that they cannot be reduced to a mere phenomenon and its conditional context. Also, in the situation, it enables unique and particular elements to be identified that might not otherwise be considered if the researcher were to concentrate on just one main phenomenon from the very start. It is this approach that allows Clarke to make these broad theoretical starting points which do not separate theory from epistemology and method.

In terms of the development of interdisciplinarity, this epistemological turn is important because the social science disciplines often only study sub-phenomena that relate to the situation, e. What makes the situational analysis approach different is its emphasis on the fact that all these elements create the research situation and that we cannot focus on just one of them, as this would break it away from its relations to the other elements of the situation that constitute it. In other words, situational analysis, not only at the level of its theoretical bases, but also in terms of the conceptualisation of the subject of the research, is consistently interdisciplinary, which necessitates the integration of different forms of knowledge about all the aspects that make up the situation.

This means that the integration offered by situational analysis is not merely theoretical, but also epistemological.

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The usefulness of epistemological interdisciplinary situational analysis can be demonstrated in a number of cases. If, as one of them, we take interaction in a school classroom, the traditional object of pedagogical research, we should not just analyse the content and forms of interaction pedagogical communication but also the emotions that the individuals experience in that situation and the methods they use to regulate them, which is also a traditional object of psychological research.

At the same time, we should also take into account how power is used by the individuals in the interaction, and how its use is interpreted and legitimised, which, by contrast, is the focus of attention in the sociological approach. We can see that in highlighting the situation as the basic unit of the analysis, the boundaries between the social science disciplines start to dissolve rapidly.

No less exemplary in this regard are the research surveys by Clarke and Montini on female contraception, or by Jenifer Fosket on breast cancer, which analyse all the elements that enter the research situation. On the one hand, we can see in them an effort to incorporate pressure groups a traditional subject of study in the social movement and political science discipline or introduce new kinds of treatment an object of study in science and technologies , and on the other hand expert and moralising discourses that defend or criticise kinds of treatment a traditional subject in cultural sociology , as well as individual interpretation and the experience of actors an object of interest in sociology and the psychology of health.

At the methodological level, situational analysis is based on three key sets of tools used to provide the most detailed analysis of the various aspects of the situation being studied Clarke , p. In this sense, therefore, situational analysis fulfils the basic premise of grounded theory as understood by Glaser and Strauss , p. What is important for us is that all three tools enable the research processes to be integrated not only at the ontological, epistemological and theoretical levels but also at the methodological level.

In this respect situational maps are the most general research technique used in situational analysis, and they enable the broadest possible methodological integration. Therefore, they create the best conditions for unifying research strategies. Situational maps can be constructed using any type of material, not just the available texts or recordings of interviews with informers, but also visual data and observation data, etc. Coding and the notes created notes on this diverse information can then be used to construct maps of any situation, capturing all the key elements that make up the situation.

This enables situational analysis to integrate various techniques for the qualitative production of data into a single methodological framework. Maps of social worlds and arenas then represent an analogous means of organising and integrating data at the social meso-level, which is particularly useful for monitoring the development of social groups and organisations. The research processes of all disciplines interested in the social meso-level can be connected up and unified, i. Moreover, some of the most intensive empirical research over the last decade has been developed through situational analysis.

Last but not least, the use of positional maps gives a deeper understanding of the key positions of the actors identifiable in qualitative data. This kind of methodological tool can again be applied across all disciplines striving to understand how individual actors deal with certain problems or issues. This can be done regardless of whether it involves the position of children in relation to their nursery school teacher, how indigenous peoples see the arrival of Western medicine in Papua New Guinea or what librarians think of the way municipal library information systems work.

In these examples, we again see a blurring of the boundaries between pedagogy and psychology, anthropology and health sciences, and computer science and urban studies. In this article, we must therefore define the configuration of relations among the social science disciplines that we think are particularly suited to the use of situational analysis as a suitable framework for the development of interdisciplinary research. In his study, Steinmetz identified a total of three forms of interdisciplinary research and one variant of transdisciplinary research, which, since he is an analyst of modern empires, he compares to the four patterns of international relations: Indirect imperial domination , reminiscent of the international political situation of the United States in the s and s when it tried to assert its hegemony in various regions of the world by indirect means without direct territorial subjugation.

According to Steinmetz , p. Colonialism , i. What is characteristic about disciplinary colonialism is that one discipline controls another and clearly dictates how knowledge should be produced and validated within that discipline. The Westphalian system of equal sovereign states is the third type of analogy of interdisciplinary cooperation, in which scientific disciplines exist as sovereign entities with clearly differentiated boundaries and none is dominated by another.

This kind of relationship is reminiscent of the ties between the states of Europe after , when the system of territorially delimited and sovereign states emerged.


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In this concept, the individual disciplines carefully monitor their boundaries and tend to define themselves rather than collaborate with one another. Non-imperial travel and transculturation. The last pattern of international relations applicable to scientific disciplines is similar to the situation after the fall of an empire, e.

If we then look at relations between disciplines from the viewpoint of this analogy, an originally dominant and self-contained discipline loses control of its boundaries, or the disciplines it formerly controlled, providing an opportunity for mutual inspiration, i. Although situational analysis is a framework for taking an interdisciplinary approach to research, we do not think that it corresponds to any of the types of interdisciplinarity described by Steinmetz because of the power relations between fields. In our opinion, situational analysis offers a federal structure of disciplines , reminiscent of relations in political federations, e.

If we then apply this concept to cooperation between disciplines e. Instead, it provides researchers with a bolt enabling them to connect their research work with that of other researchers with similar ideas from other disciplines or with a basis for individually controlled research which seeks to respect different cognitive viewpoints without enforcing the primacy of just one of them.

Because of this, situational analysis does not lead to the colonialism of other disciplines nor does it result in disciplines cautiously guarding their own boundaries, or in non-territorial dominance. Although there are numerous barriers impeding the development of multidisciplinary research in the social sciences, approaches exist that have the potential to overcome them. One of these is situational analysis, which, in the case of qualitative research, enables at least some of these barriers to be broken down. Specifically, these provide ways of eliminating most of the barriers created by the existence of different intellectual bases and external interdisciplinary relations.

Following the work of Katri Huutoniemi et al. In practice, this approach results in the connecting up of different kinds of empirical data which in normal circumstances would just be part of one research field greatly enhancing our understanding of empirical reality. Different data collection techniques are then combined to form a coherent methodological system, while the synthesis and development of theoretical concepts from multiple research fields give it a far more holistic and comprehensive picture of social reality.

It also leads to an alternative way of understanding phenomena which highlights the fact that the situation from which the analysis must start should be the subject of all social sciences. It is this accentuation of the role of the situation and situationality of all phenomena that leads us to believe that we should understand phenomena through interdisciplinary logic.


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    • However, this distinct focus on the situation does not only bring advantages. Many of the diverse elements present in the situation that needs to be dealt with by the researcher raise questions as to how all the aspects of the situation can be captured and represented.

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    In this regard, and in the spirit of the pragmatic philosophy from which it originates, situational analysis offers the following answers. The researcher should focus mainly on those aspects of the situation that are most useful from the cognitive point of view, i. As for the representation of various meaning positions, in research based on situational analysis the process of cumulating findings may be slower but its scientific value is significantly higher, as it does not involve unreflected theoretically or epistemologically managed reductionism and allows for a much deeper understanding of complex reality.

    As we noted at the beginning of the study, situational analysis is not and cannot be a general tool for developing multidisciplinarity in all social science fields because it is closely tied to qualitative research methodology, antipositivism and pragmatic philosophy. These three approaches contain the potential for interdisciplinary research based on situational analysis.

    Since the qualitative approach can only be used in certain kinds of research, this restricts its use as a tool of methodological interdisciplinarity within social science. From the antipositivist orientation stems the limitation in the field of epistemological interdisciplinarity and from the tradition of pragmatic philosophy, of theoretic interdisciplinarity. Despite these understandable limitations, we still believe that situational analysis is a promising approach, which, if used more frequently, could lead to the development of alternative non-power-based forms of interdisciplinarity in the social science.

    Abbott, A. Chaos of disciplines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bhambra, G. Introduction and the challenge of interdisciplinarity.

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    Journal of Historical Sociology, 24 , Blumer, H. Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Brewer, G. The challenges of interdisciplinarity.