Acrefore 9780190846626 e 92

Interdisciplinarity: Its Meaning and Consequences

Raymond C. Miller, Department of International Relations, San Francisco State University
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.92
Published in print: 01 March 2010
Published online: 20 November 2017
This version: 27 August 2020
Summary
Interdisciplinarity is an analytically reflective study of the methodological, theoretical, and institutional
implications of implementing interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and research. Interdisciplinary approaches
in the social sciences began in the 1920s. At a minimum, they involve the application of insights and perspectives
from more than one conventional discipline to the understanding of social phenomena. The formal concept of
interdisciplinarity entered the literature in the early 1970s. The scholars responsible all shared the thought that the
scientific enterprise had become less effective due to disciplinary fragmentation and that a countermovement for
the unification of knowledge was the proper response. However, not all interdisciplinarians believe that the
unification of existing knowledge is the answer.
There are many ways of differentiating between types of interdisciplinary approaches. One classification
distinguishes between multidisciplinary, crossdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches. Multidisciplinary
approaches involve the simple act of juxtaposing parts of several conventional disciplines in an effort to get a
broader understanding of some common theme or problem. Crossdisciplinary approaches involve real interaction
across the conventional disciplines, though the extent of communication; thus, combination, synthesis, or
integration of concepts and/or methods vary considerably. Transdisciplinary approaches, meanwhile, involve
articulated conceptual frameworks that seek to transcend the more limited world views of the specialized
conventional disciplines. Even though many believe that interdisciplinary efforts can create innovative knowledge,
the power structure of the disciplinary academy resists interdisciplinary inroads on its authority and resources.
Keywords: academic discipline, area studies, interdisciplinary approaches, interdisciplinarity, interdiscipline,

multidisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, transdisciplinary, world view
Subjects: International Relations Theory, Pedagogy
Updated in this version

Updated references; major revisions throughout.
Introduction
As early as the 1920s, the US Social Science Research Council (SSRC) recognized that, in only
several decades after its invention, the departmental/disciplinary structure of the university was
becoming an obstacle to effectively addressing comprehensive social problems. Especially in the
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1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the Rockefeller Foundation and then the Ford Foundation worked with
the SSRC to fund interdisciplinary research and teaching in US higher education. In the early Cold
War era, area studies programs were major recipients of that funding. As a consequence,
international studies during this period were often conceptualized as interdisciplinary (Calhoun,
2017). At the founding of the International Studies Association (ISA) in 1959, its mission
statement explicitly states that the ISA “promotes interdisciplinary approaches to problems that
cannot fruitfully be examined from the confines of a single discipline” (International Studies
Perspectives, May, 2007, back cover).
The first section of this essay is a historical survey of selected professional literature on
interdisciplinary studies, beginning with the classic 1972 OECD Report on its Paris conference
(Apostel, 1972). It was the first major book entitled Interdisciplinarity. To achieve some conceptual
clarity on the many varieties of interdisciplinary activity in the academy, basic terms were
defined and a typology proposed. The second major part of this essay is structured by that
typology of multidisciplinary, crossdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches. Since all of
these categories rely on disciplines as the core ingredient, discipline is also defined.
In recent years, the concept interdisciplinarity has become popular among scholars. Many books
and articles have it in their titles. Books on interdisciplinary approaches vary from those
promoting interdisciplinarity (Farrell, Lusatia, & Vanden Hove, 2013) to those denigrating it and
praising the superior qualities of the disciplines (Jacobs, 2014). Furthermore, the widespread
discussion of interdisciplinarity does not mean that it has politically succeeded in the academy.
By and large the conventional disciplines have maintained their power over the university and
funding bureaucracies. The last section of this essay discusses the varying fortunes of
interdisciplinary approaches in the academy, especially in reference to international relations.
Historical Survey of Select Literature
The noun interdisciplinarity made its professional debut in a 1972 publication from the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The report, entitled
Interdisciplinarity: Problems of Teaching and Research in Universities (Apostel, 1972), was sponsored
by OECD’s Parisian-based Centre for Educational Research and Innovation. The Report had
chapters written by scholars from six different European countries: Austria, Belgium, France,
Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Though there were many differences between
them, they all shared the thought that the scientific enterprise had become less effective due to
disciplinary fragmentation, and that a counter movement for the unification of knowledge was
the proper response. The problem was “how to unify knowledge and what the many implications
of such unity are for teaching and research in the universities …” (Apostel, 1972, p. 11). Unification
“means the integration of concepts and methods in these disciplines” (pp. 11–12). A number of
unifying schemas were proposed, including mathematics, linguistic structuralism, Marxism and
general systems. Although the authors had different “transdisciplinary” proposals, they all
agreed that “interdisciplinarity is a way of life. It is basically a mental outlook which combines
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curiosity with open mindedness and a spirit of adventure and discovery. . . .” It is practiced
collectively. . . . It teaches that there can be no discontinuity between education and
research” (Apostel, p. 285).
In addition to a number of important theoretical articles, the OECD report had a major emphasis
on the design and implementation of interdisciplinary universities. The authors of that section,
Asa Briggs of Sussex University and Guy Michaud of the University of Paris, gave as their sample
model an interdisciplinary university with a special emphasis on international relations. They
believed that because the field of international relations had the most complex connections, it
necessarily involved the study of many methods, disciplines, issues, languages, and geographical
areas. All students of their proposed university were expected to be familiar with the basic
approaches and concepts of anthropology, politics, economics, international law, ecology,
geography, history, sociology, and ethno-psychology (Apostel, 1972, pp. 253–257).
Chronologically, the next major book that addressed the general issue of interdisciplinarity in the
university setting was entitled Interdisciplinarity and Higher Education. It was published in 1979,
and its editor was Joseph Kockelmans, the Director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program
at Pennsylvania State University. Possibly because he was European-educated, his orientation
was similar to the authors of the OECD Report. He argued that only through “philosophical
reflection” can the society’s intellectuals approach the “totality of meaning.” To overcome the
fragmented worlds that they have created, they need to reach agreement not only on the position
of the sciences, but also on “religion, morality, the arts and our sociopolitical
praxis” (Kockelmans, 1979, pp. 153–158). However, Kockelmans was opposed to using a pre-
existing framework, such as the ones listed above in the OECD Report, or the logical positivism of
the Unification of Science movement spearheaded by the Vienna Circle in the 1930s. None of them
fulfilled the comprehensive vision that Kockelmans advocated.
In October of 1984, OECD, in collaboration with the Swedish National Board of Universities and
Colleges, decided to hold a conference to revisit the concept and experience of interdisciplinarity.
More than half of the participants were from Sweden, and almost half of them were from one
university, Linköping. Linköping University was especially interested in the topic because it had
instituted a doctoral program based on four interdisciplinary themes (technology and social
change, water in environment and society, health and society, and communication). The
proceedings of the conference were published under the title Interdisciplinarity Revisited: Re-
Assessing the Concept in the Light of Institutional Experience (Levin & Lind, 1985). Essentially the
conferees agreed that the early enthusiasm for an interdisciplinary revolution was dampened by
the realities of societal and institutional politics. Interdisciplinary research and teaching were
still happening, but they were easier to accomplish if the participants did not boldly label them as
such. The advisability of keeping a low profile was due to the fact that the “magical slot” from the
mid 1960s to the early 1970s, in which interdisciplinary innovation had flourished, was replaced
by a more conservative period in which disciplines reasserted their authority. George
Papadopoulos of the OECD concluded that, “interdisciplinarity, even when it succeeds in
unscrambling existing curricula, remains a hostage to the disciplines” (Levin & Lind, 1985, p.
208).
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The first major work on interdisciplinarity by an American-educated scholar was published in

1990 by Julie Thompson Klein, professor of humanities at Wayne State University. Her book is
entitled Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory and Practice. Rather than making an argument for a
particular approach, Klein provided a compilation of all the existing literature across all fields of
knowledge. She concluded her extensive survey by observing:
Interdisciplinarity has been variously defined in this century: as a methodology, a

concept, a process, a way of thinking, a philosophy, and a reflexive ideology. It has been
linked with attempts to expose the dangers of fragmentation, to reestablish old
connections, to explore emerging relationships, and to create new subjects adequate to
handle our practical and conceptual needs. Cutting across all these theories is one
recurring idea. Interdisciplinarity is a means of solving problems and answering
questions that cannot be satisfactorily addressed using single methods or approaches.
Whether the context is a short-range instrumentality or a long-range
reconceptualization of epistemology, the concept represents an important attempt to
define and establish common ground.
(Klein, 1990, p. 196)
Nowhere in Julie Klein’s extensive bibliography (97 pages long) is there mention of the term
international relations or international studies, although she does have a section on area studies.
In 1997, the Academia Europaea and the European Commission organized a conference in
Cambridge, England around the topic “Interdisciplinarity and the Organisation of Knowledge in
Europe.” The conference proceedings were published in 1999 under the same title (Cunningham,
ed.). There were 24 contributors from 11 countries with most (9) coming from the United
Kingdom. Several contributors referred back to the seminal article by Erich Jantsch in the 1972
OECD pioneering publication. Collectively they agreed that modern disciplines were a product of
the scientific revolution of the 19th century. The specialized research entities of the University of
Berlin seem to have been the origin of the disciplinary structure of knowledge. “Focusing
scholarly attention on the essence or nucleus of the individual subject led inevitably to the
putting-up of barriers” (Rüegg, 1999, pp. 34–35). The division into insular, specialized
disciplines was seen by sociologists as an almost inevitable outcome of the differentiation
associated with the process of industrialization. John Ziman argued that the impetus toward
greater and greater specialization had to do with the scholarly requirement for originality. It’s
easier to be a “big frog in a small pond” (Ziman, 1999, pp. 74–75). He concluded his essay by
contending that “disciplines stand for stability and uniformity,” whereas “interdisciplinarity is a
code word for diversity and adaptability” (pp. 81–82).
In the United States, some of the young scholars in international relations observed the
disciplinary narrowing of the field and decided to publish a book in 2000 entitled Beyond
Boundaries: Disciplines, Paradigms, and Theoretical Integration in International Studies (Sil &
Doherty, 2000). A review (Miller, 2001) appearing in the newsletter of the Association for
Interdisciplinary Studies observed that the book does not deliver on its promise to meaningfully
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discuss disciplines, paradigms, and theoretical integration; however, it does juxtapose different
theoretical positions while calling for international relations scholars to be tolerant and willing to
cross boundaries between disciplines and schools of thought.
In 2002, an English academic, Joe Moran, published a book that he simply entitled
Interdisciplinarity. Though broad in comprehension, it focuses on English and cultural studies. He
argued that the institutional implications of openly pursuing interdisciplinary approaches are
inevitably political, both in the hierarchy of knowledge and in the allocation of material resources
(Moran, 2002). Oxford University Press decided to enter this academic realm by publishing the
Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (Froderman, Klein, & Mitcham, 2010). None of the 37
chapters are primarily on international studies, though one of the chapters uses area studies as an
example (Calhoun & Rhoten, 2010). In 2017, the Handbook came out in a second edition
(Froderman). Its 46 chapters address many issues, ranging from funding to pedagogy. However,
there is still no chapter dedicated to international studies. The philosopher and editor Robert
Froderman argued that “interdisciplinarity is the bridge between academic sophists
(disciplinarians) and the rest of society” (p. 7).
In 2009, Pami Aalto of Tampere University in Finland embarked on a major project to discuss and
showcase interdisciplinary approaches in international studies. Two books emerged from the
project. The first was International Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches (Aalto, Harle & Moisio,
2011), and the second, Global and Regional Problems: Towards an Interdisciplinary Study (Aalto,
Harle, & Moisio, 2012). Aalto and his fellow editors argue, “We want to assert that International
Studies—as a wider field of studies than International Relations—must necessarily be more
interdisciplinary than International Relations ever was during its golden era from the 1950s
onwards” (Aalto et al., 2011, p. 3). They observed that, in the inter-war period, international
studies was an interdisciplinary field with materials and perspectives drawn from many fields and
disciplines. They noted that this sense of the field was spelled out in the 1939 League of Nations
publication University Teaching of International Relations (Zimmern) as well as Quincy Wright’s
magnum opus The Study of International Relations (1955). Despite Wright’s extraordinary effort to
synthesize over 20 fields into the study of international relations, his influence over the
subsequent development of the field has been minimal. International relations, especially in the
United States from the 1950s on, has become more and more embedded in political science. A key
reason for this evolution was the focus on the cold war power conflict. Ironically, a major
intellectual force in this development was Quincy Wright’s colleague at the University of Chicago,
Hans Morgenthau. However, with the end of the Cold War era, Aalto and his fellow editors were
hoping for the emergence of a broader, more diverse, interdisciplinary approach to international
studies (Aalto et al., 2011, pp. 11–19).
In 2013, two European-based scholars, Andrew Barry and Georgina Born, published a book in
which they claimed to rethink what is meant by interdisciplinarity, entitled Interdisciplinarity:
Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural Sciences. For instance, the authors challenge the
conventional statement that interdisciplinary activity is about combining and integrating
knowledge from existing disciplines. They believe that interdisciplinarity is about gathering
knowledge from all available sources, not just disciplines. They point to community-based
knowledge, local experience, and indigenous knowledge, among other sources. Also, they start
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with the premise that neither disciplinary nor interdisciplinary activities are monolithic or
unchanging. Disciplines do have the political advantage in the academy because they usually
control the curriculum and the budgets that include faculty hiring. Thus, the disciplines have
considerable control over the conditions that determine the degree of receptivity to
interdisciplinary research and teaching in any particular university setting. In Barry and Born’s
opinion, truly interdisciplinary activities have qualities that differentiate them positively from
the disciplines. These three qualities are accountability, innovation, and ontology. Accountability
means being more responsive to societal needs. Innovation means being more practical about the
problems that are addressed. And ontology means that interdisciplinary activities are more likely
to be relational, holistic, and to view humans as being embedded in nature. Also, they respect the
participation of the public in the discovery and application of knowledge. But interdisciplinary
programs come and go. Some have staying power and become established interdisciplines, even
new disciplines. Some get absorbed, whereas others disappear altogether. “The chapters in this
book attest to the heterogeneity that characterises both disciplines and interdisciplines and the
necessity of probing the genealogies of particular interdisciplinary problematics” (Barry & Born,
2013, p. 41).
The American Political Science Association noted the increasing popularity of interdisciplinary
rhetoric and practice, and in 2007, they established a Task Force to study it. The report of the
Task Force was published under the title Interdisciplinarity: Its Role in a Discipline-Based Academy
(Aldrich, 2014). The report is interesting because of the obvious tension that permeates the
document between proponents of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. The first chapter
reiterates the value of disciplines. The Task Force Chair, John Aldrich, argued that disciplines are
the foundation of knowledge and the academy. In his view, interdisciplinary efforts often lack
valid and reliable measures for judging scholarship and teaching, and thus are inherently inferior.
Nevertheless, in a subsequent chapter, four pioneers of interdisciplinary scholarship argued for
the superior merits of interdisciplinary approaches. The four are David Easton (systems), R.
Duncan Luce (cognitive science), and Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph (area studies). In fact, Easton
stated, “I don’t see anything that can possibly be exciting and not be interdisciplinary. I think the
disciplines have sort of exhausted their contributions to our understanding of politics” (Aldrich,
2014, p. 55). Lloyd Rudolph concluded his interview by offering this reflection: “I realize that it is
not only that I value interdisciplinarity but also that I value being allowed to think out of the box
of disciplinary methods. New concepts reveal new realities” (Aldrich, 2014, p. 72).
In 2013 and 2015, two books were published that had both “interdisciplinary” and “international
relations” in their titles. The first was Interdisciplinary Perspectives on International Law and
International Relations: The State of the Art, edited by Jeffrey Dunoff and Mark Pollack (2013). A
more accurate title would have been “interdisciplinary perspectives on the historical relationship
between international law and international relations.” The authors noted that during the inter-
war period, scholars in the two fields worked very closely together. However, with the advent of
World War II and the rise of realism as the dominant theory in international relations, the study
of law was considered irrelevant, as unenforceable international law does not affect the behavior
of nation-states. Furthermore, normative law was considered too non-scientific for the post-
World War II behavioralists/positivists political scientists. It’s worth noting that the editors
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consider international relations a discipline and that they seem to use it interchangeably with
political science. With the rise of other theories in international relations that challenged the
dominance of realism, international law became a more acceptable ingredient of international
relations scholarship in the 1990s and thereafter. However, instead of a more equal relationship
between two disciplines, international law was often considered a subject rather than a discipline.
Or as the editors put it, “the intellectual terms of trade were asymmetrical” (Dunoff & Pollack,
2013, p. 649). The interdisciplinary perspective of the editors and their fellow authors is reflected
in their call for more pragmatic, eclectic theoretical approaches drawn from both international
relations and international law. “Our call therefore is not for token inclusion of international law
approaches, but rather for an interdisciplinary version of the pragmatic, analytically eclectic,
tool-kit approach” (p. 653).
The second book, edited by Patrick James and Steve Yetiv, was Advancing Interdisciplinary
Approaches to International Relations (Yetiv & James, 2015). Their advancement illustration is the
application of many perspectives from different disciplines and interdisciplines to the topic of
conflict studies. These include history, political science, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology,
gender studies, technology studies, demography, and systems analysis (p. 324).
In 2016, the British Academy published a report on its investigation of interdisciplinary research
and teaching in higher education in the United Kingdom. It is entitled Crossing Paths:
Interdisciplinary Institutions, Careers, Education and Applications. The working group was chaired by
David Soskice of the London School of Economics. In his preface, he recognized the need to
promote interdisciplinarity. According to him, this was necessary because the universities, the
research councils, the journals and publishers were organized along disciplinary lines. “The
incentive structures set up by the interplay of these institutions militates against
interdisciplinarity” (p. 5). Then, paradoxically, Soskice went on to argue, as did the group report,
that the best way to promote interdisciplinarity is the support of “strong disciplines” (Soskice,
2016, p. 6). This seems like a strategy that would perpetuate the problem they have identified. The
group recommended that junior faculty should first make their reputations in a home discipline.
Only then would it be safe to venture into interdisciplinary territory (p. 9). However, once
socialized in the discipline’s world view, it’s less likely that faculty will venture into
interdisciplinary territory.
The British Academy report recognizes that getting a credible and fair evaluation of
interdisciplinary research is very difficult in a discipline-controlled environment. Nevertheless,
the working group recommended “evaluating the whole and not just disciplinary parts of any
interdisciplinary output. The quality of interdisciplinary work lies in the way that it brings
disciplines together” (Soskice, 2016, p. 10). The evaluation chapter provides a set of guidance
questions for research-review panels for evaluating interdisciplinary research proposals. One of
the questions asks whether the proposal shows “an understanding of the challenges of
interdisciplinary integration, including methodological integration, and the human side of
fostering interactions and communication.” Therefore, it is not surprising that the chapter ends
with the statement, “a focus on interdisciplinarity revives a sense of the academy as a holistic
intellectual and social organism, integrated into the wider community, in which multiple flows
and exchanges between all of its parts ensure its vitality” (Soskice, 2016, p. 70).
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In 2019, Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies dedicated an entire issue to the work of the most prolific
American scholar of interdisciplinarity, Julie Thompson-Klein (Augsburg, 2019). Her newest
book is scheduled to be published in 2021 with the title Beyond Interdisciplinarity: Boundary Work,
Communication, and Collaboration in the 21st Century. The book focuses on a full range of sector-
crossing, including not only academic disciplines, but also occupational professions,
interdisciplinary fields, public and private spheres, local communities, project stakeholders, and
countries and cultures across the globe, wherever knowledge production is occurring. This new
book is an update and extension of her earlier work, Crossing Boundaries: Knowledge,
Disciplinarities, and Interdisciplinarities (1996).
Academic Discipline
Disciplines are the basic units in the structure of knowledge that have been “historically
delineated by departmentalization. Within each discipline there are rational, accidental, and
arbitrary factors responsible for the peculiar combination of subject matter, techniques of
investigation, orienting thought models, principles of analysis, methods of explanation and
aesthetic standards” (Miller, 1982, p. 4). They constitute the bureaucratic subcultures of the
modern university. The modern disciplinary system was established at the turn of the 19th into
the 20th century.
Many scholars have tried their hand at the task of explicating the characteristics of an academic
discipline, but the list provided by Arthur King and John Brownell (1966) in The Curriculum and the
Disciplines of Knowledge still seems among the clearest and most comprehensive. Below is this
author’s version of their original list:
1. Field of demarcated study (subject matter boundaries, inclusions and exclusions).
2. Shared set of underlying premises (basic assumptions about how the world works).
3. Shared set of concepts (jargon).
4. Shared set of organizing theories/models (explanatory frameworks).
5. Shared set of truth-determining methods (what counts as data—how to make sense of

them—i.e. research protocols).
6. Shared set of values and norms (preferred approaches to the material field that is studied
by the discipline—e.g. economists prefer the approach of the free market; also preferred
conduct by the practitioners of the discipline).
7. These six qualities cumulatively come together as a unique perspective—a coherent world
view—a disciplinary paradigm or matrix.
8. Community of scholars who share this world view (professional identity—academic tribes).
9. Shared set of literature and great scholars in the discipline.
10. Agreement on what to teach (structure and content of the basic texts and curriculum from
the introductory course to the advanced graduate seminars).
11.
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Means of reinforcing the professional standards (graduate training, hiring and tenure
control, associations, conferences, peer-reviewed journals, and grant-making processes).
12. Departmental home in a college/university (bureaucratic recognition, resource allocation

and territorial ownership).
Ideal-type conceptualizations of this nature have great heuristic value, but applying them in the
“real world” becomes problematic. After all, every group of faculty organized around a defined
academic interest that has aspirations for permanence, wish to be known, at least eventually, as a
discipline. Recognition as a discipline means more prestige and the prospect of more dependable
institutional support. A working solution to this definitional problem is to limit the designation of
discipline to those departmental groupings that appeared at the beginning of the 20th century and
have institutionally solidified their presence in the academy over the past 100 plus years. John
Ziman called them the “Grand Old Disciplines” (1999, p. 73). Thus, in the social sciences, the
conventional and building-block disciplines would be Anthropology, Economics, Geography,
History, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology. Without some kind of limitation on the use
of the designation discipline, even the distinction between discipline and interdisciplinary can
become meaningless. Nevertheless, the solution proposed is admittedly an arbitrary one, but the
historical process that created these disciplinary conglomerates in the first place was also a
relatively arbitrary process. Eric Wolf argued that the field of classical political economy was
divided into the specialized disciplines of economics, political science, sociology and
anthropology in a process that lost touch with the real world.
Ostensibly engaged in the study of human behavior, the various disciplines parcel out the
subject among themselves. Each then proceeds to set up a model, seemingly a means to
explain “hard,” observable facts, yet actually an ideologically loaded scheme geared to a
narrow definition of subject matter.
(Wolf, 1982, p. 10)
The establishment of these specialized disciplines at the beginning of the 20th century has been
called the “academic enclosure” process (Becher, 1989). In a few decades, these disciplines had
enclosed themselves in departmental organizations that gave them long-term bureaucratic
protection. Yet these disciplines, according to Weingart and Stehr, are “the eyes through which
modern society sees and forms its images about the world, frames its experience, and learns, thus
shaping its own future or reconstituting the past” (Weingart & Stehr, 1999, p. xi). Stephen Turner
argued that “disciplines are shotgun marriages . . . and are kept together by the reality of the
market and the value of the protection of the market that has been created by employment
requirements and expectations (Turner, 1999, p. 55). Turner believed that the disciplines’
animosity toward interdisciplinary initiatives was primarily driven by protectionism (p. 50).
The seventh disciplinary characteristic notes that the first six qualities come together in a world
view that is unique to each discipline. Comparing world view components is a useful method for
both disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholars. The concept has German origins and has been
productively utilized in many academic and non-academic venues for 150 years. This author was
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introduced into the way anthropologists use the world view method by Robert Redfield (1956).
According to Redfield, every culture or sub-culture has a world view, its embedded “mental
map.” It provides guidance on the nature of the world, how we know the truth about it, what is
right and wrong behavior, and what emotionally matters the most. Cognitive linguist George
Lakoff contended that “World views are complex neural circuits fixed in the brain. People can
only understand what fits the neural circuitry in their brains. Real facts can be filtered out by
world views” (Lakoff, 2017). Critical psychologist Michael Mascolo noted “the concept of world
view is founded on the epistemological principle that observation of the physical and social world
is a mediated rather than a direct process” (Mascolo, 2014, p. 2086). He reaffirmed Redfield’s
point that a complete world view has an ontology, an epistemology, and a normative belief
system.
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Table 1. Post-World War II Macro Social Sciences: Comparative Attributes
Discipline Core Subject Matter Central Explanatory Normative Data Collection Data Analysis
Concepts Strategies Orientation
Political Forms, qualities & processes of Power Behavioralism Centrality of state Voting surveys Statistics
Science politics and governments Governance Organization theory Superiority of Institutional case Content analysis
Policy Systems theory democratic pluralism studies Interpretation
Ideologies “Great texts”
Economics Production and distribution of Supply & Market model Centrality of rational Quantitative Statistics
goods & services demand individual indices Mathematical
Capital Superiority of modeling
competitive market
Sociology Social groupings Social Structural- Centrality of social Questionnaires Statistics (esp.
structure functionalism structure Interviews inferential)
Roles Conflict theory Sympathy for the less
Norms Social fortunate
constructionism
Source: Miller, R. C. (2018). International political economy: Contrasting world views (2nd ed., p. 17). London, UK: Routledge.
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This author has used world view as the comparative method in understanding the different
schools of thought in international political economy (Miller, 2018). One step in this process was
identifying the comparative attributes of the basic contributing disciplines. A summary of that
analysis is in Table 1: Post World War II Macro Social Sciences: Comparative Attributes.
Economics, political science, and sociology are compared in six fundamental dimensions: core
subject matter, central concepts, explanatory strategies, normative orientation, data collection,
and data analysis.
Interdisciplinary Approaches
Interdisciplinary approaches in the social sciences involve, at a minimum, the application of

insights and perspectives from more than one conventional discipline to the understanding of
social phenomena. Interdisciplinarity, on the other hand, is an analytically reflective study of the
methodological, theoretical, and institutional implications of implementing interdisciplinary
approaches to teaching and research. Strictly speaking, interdisciplinarians are those who engage
in the scholarly field of interdisciplinarity, though there are many faculty and others who
participate effectively in interdisciplinary projects without being reflexive about its methods,
theories, and institutional arrangements. On the other hand, interdisciplinary participants are
more likely to be aware of their underlying world views than disciplinarians.
There are many ways of differentiating between types of interdisciplinary approaches, and in
fact, of defining the basic term, interdisciplinary. For instance, the National Academies of Science
propose that:
“Interdisciplinary research is a mode of research by teams or individuals that integrates

information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or
more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental
understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single
discipline or area of research practice.”
(National Academy of Sciences, 2005, p. 39)
This definition privileges the process of “integration” as well as identifying “disciplines” as the
primary source of the ingredients to be integrated. Lisa Lattuca, in her faculty-interview study
Creating Interdisciplinarity (2001) argued that post-structuralists, like herself and all the
humanities professors and most of the social science professors in her study, reject both of these
privileging assumptions. They argue that integration presumes harmonious order, whereas
reality may be full of oppositions and contradictions, and that using disciplines as the basic raw
material legitimizes their monopoly over knowledge. However, all of the natural scientists in her
study were comfortable with the type of definition proposed by the National Academies (Lattuca,
2001, p. 104). The Political Science Task Force Report also accepted it. Nevertheless,
interdisciplinary approaches could be broadened to include the processes of juxtaposition,
application, synthesis, and transcendence as well as integration.
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By utilizing this broader definition of interdisciplinary approaches that includes processes other
than integration, the logic of the original OECD typology retains its efficacy. That typology
divided interdisciplinary approaches into multidisciplinary, crossdisciplinary, and
transdisciplinary. What follows is this author’s version of that typology.
Multidisciplinary Approaches
Multidisciplinary approaches involve the simple act of juxtaposing parts of several conventional
disciplines in an effort to get a broader understanding of some common theme or problem. No
systematic effort is made to combine or integrate across these disciplines. This is the weakest
interdisciplinary approach, and it actually enhances the stature of the participating disciplines
because their identities and practices are not threatened. They do not need to change any of their
protocols, yet they can claim their openness to interdisciplinary cooperation. Cafeteria-style
curricula, team-taught courses, ad hoc research teams, and conference panels could be examples
of this approach.
Crossdisciplinary Approaches
Crossdisciplinary approaches involve real interaction across the conventional disciplines, though
the extent of communication and thus combination, synthesis or integration of concepts and/or
methods varies considerably. Since the variety of crossdisciplinary approaches is so great, this
author has created a further six-fold typology. The six sub-categories of crossdisciplinary
approaches are: (a) topics of social interest, (b) professional preparation, (c) shared analytical
methods, (d) shared concepts, (e) hybrids, and (f) shared life experiences (Miller, 1982).
Hundreds of crossdisciplinary combinations have been created over the course of the last 100
years. Some of these combinations have been ephemeral, some long lasting, but poorly
articulated, and some have developed an institutionalized coherence that rivals the conventional
disciplines. The latter in this author’s taxonomy are the interdisciplines. David Long, one of the
authors in Aalto’s first book called them “neodisciplines” (Long, 2011, pp. 52–59).
Transdisciplinary Approaches
Transdisciplinary approaches, according to Jantsch’s classic essay (1972), involve articulated
conceptual frameworks that seek to transcend the more limited world views of the specialized
disciplines. These frameworks are holistic in intent. In the 1972 OECD volume, the
transdisciplinary approaches mentioned were general systems, structuralism, Marxism, and
mathematics. The 21st century transdisciplinary movement in Europe believes that the broader
public should be involved in providing, testing, evaluating, and implementing knowledge across
all fields. Academic disciplines, therefore, are only a part of the picture.
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Crossdisciplinary Approaches
Social Topics
Important social topics frequently attract members from several disciplines. They start out as
multidisciplinary groupings, but over time continuous communication creates a new
crossdisciplinary field of study. Examples would include environmental studies, cognitive
science, gerontology, labor studies, peace studies, and urban studies. The study of geographical
regions, area studies, is an interesting topical example because of its close relationship to
international relations.
Professional Preparation
Another organizing principle for crossdisciplinary combinations is relevant knowledge for
professional preparation. Examples include business management, diplomatic studies, education,
public administration, health services, and policy studies. There are undoubtedly more students,
faculty, and practitioners in this professional category than in any of the other categories, but the
self-conscious attention to their interdisciplinary nature is very limited. Nevertheless, there are
exceptions; for instance, Donald Schön (1983) in his book The Reflective Practitioner observed that
the professions are split between the rational technocratic view of the more theoretical and
conventional perspective vs. the more particularistic uncertainty of the actual field situations. He
tried to find a middle ground between these extremes by proposing a reflexive approach that
combines theory and practice. He argued that professionals should be aware of the frames within
which they operate so that they are open to critiquing the one they are using and even shift to
another if the situation requires it. Schon’s proposed approach is similar to the interdisciplinary
method of comparative world views or multi-perspective analysis (Miller, 1982).
Policy studies, a growing field in recent years, manifest this internal tension rather dramatically.
In the early 1950s, Harold Lasswell expressed his belief that through a rational and scientific
process the best policy options could be identified and implemented toward the betterment of
democratic objectives. Some of the analytical methods he advocated, such as benefit/cost
analysis, are still being applied today. However, his approach has been criticized as being
undemocratic, that is, “scientists know better,” and incredibly unrealistic as the political
decision-making process is anything but rational. Studying the “different perspectives that
underlie conflict in public policy arenas . . . is more illuminating and ultimately more practical
than quixotically tilting at scientific windmills” (Smith & Larimer, 2009, p. 18).
Shared Analytical Methods

Similar research methods, especially the quantitative ones, are often shared across the
disciplines. They provide a basis for bringing methods-oriented faculty members together in
more permanent crossdisciplinary associations. These groups have conferences, journals, and
even academic programs. Examples of these shared analytical methods include statistics, computer
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modeling, game theory, and information theory (Miller, 1982). However, despite the potential
cost savings, conventional disciplinary departments are usually unwilling to replace their own
methods courses with the more generic ones from these crossdisciplinary programs.
Shared Concepts
There are some major concepts that appear in many disciplines that have the potential for
crossdisciplinary integration. Classic examples of shared concepts include energy, value, flows,
role, evolution, development, and cycles (Abbey, 1976). George Homans, a sociologist in
Harvard’s crossdisciplinary Social Relations Department in the 1960s and 70s used exchange as
his main integrating concept. The source of his inspiration was rational exchange theory from the
discipline of economics (today it would be called rational choice theory). He made an explicit
effort to use benefit/cost exchange as the basis of a theory of human behavior that could integrate
across disciplines. Homans argued that although the specifics of exchange relationships may vary
across different types of human experience, their overall interactive form may be quite similar
(Homans, 1974).
The concept of development was dominant in the social sciences in the 1950s and 1960s under the
crossdisciplinary umbrella of modernization theory. Modernization theory grew out of the need
to achieve some degree of coherent coordination between the different and sometimes
contradictory development strategies proposed by the separate social science disciplines.
Economists argued that development would occur if sufficient amounts of capital investment are
made and markets are developed. Political scientists argued that development requires modern
bureaucracies, effective governance, and political participation. Sociologists argued that modern
social institutions such as factories, schools, and mass media are key components in any
development plan. Anthropologists argued that the residents of poor countries had to change
their traditional cultural values into modern ones if development were to occur. Psychologists
argued that individual personality development is the key, shifting the orientation from
ascription to achievement. Modernization theory tried to bring all of these diverse perspectives
together. It was the central organizing theory of the crossdisciplinary field of development
studies.
Hybrids
The most widely recognized type of crossdisciplinary approach is undoubtedly the hybrids.
Hybrids combine parts of two existing, related disciplines to form interstitial new
crossdisciplines that attempt to bridge perceived gaps between disciplines (Miller, 1982). Well-
known examples include social psychology, political economy, biogeography, and historical
sociology. Sometimes the hybrid crossdisciplinary fields generate new theories whose promise is
so great that they are borrowed back into their constituent disciplines. Social psychology’s
symbolic interaction theory is a case in point. In fact, Dogan and Pahre (1990) argue that hybrid
activity is the most likely source of innovative advances.
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One of the most important hybrids in the interdisciplinary realm of international relations is
political economy, especially in the form of international political economy (IPE). IPE uses the
multi-perspective approach mentioned above. It juxtaposes the competing explanatory
perspectives of the market model from economics, institutionalism from political science and
sociology, and historical materialism from classical Marxist political economy (Miller, 2018). The
differing perspectives provide a rich treasury of insights, understandings, critiques, and research
strategies.
Shared Life Experiences

The basic premise in crossdisciplinary programs based on shared life experiences is that certain
groups have shared a common experience of oppression that gives them a shared identity, a
shared rejection of mainstream knowledge that reinforces this oppression, and a shared political
agenda to replace the unjust social conditions with an egalitarian society. Three major examples
of this category are women’s studies, ethnic studies, and post-colonial studies. These
crossdisciplinary fields entered the academy as outgrowths of the social movements of the late
1960s and early 1970s. They started out as multidisciplinary challengers to the disciplinary/
departmental power structure of the university, yet over the past four decades women’s studies
and ethnic studies have evolved increasingly into discipline-like programs, in other words,
interdisciplines. According to some observers, one of the costs of this institutional acceptance
was the loss of one of the early objectives of these movements, social change activism in the
community (Messer-Davidow, 2002).
Virtually all of the over 700 women’s studies programs in the United States teach feminist theory,
an integrating perspective that focuses on socially constructed gender systems and standpoint
analysis. Standpoint theory contends that how one perceives any human condition depends on
the position that one occupies in the society. Those who are being oppressed are going to see
things very differently than those who are doing the oppressing.
According to Ann Tickner, feminism challenges the neo-positivist and state-centric orientation
of international relations in the United States. The unequal relationships that pervade the world
are socially constructed and vary from place to place, with women suffering universally from
male-dominated exercises of power. Furthermore, dichotomies such as those that “separate the
mind (rationality) from the body (nature) diminish the legitimacy of women as
‘knowers’” (Tickner, 2014, p. 86). Knowledge should not be pursued for its own sake or for the
benefit of the state but in order to facilitate the emancipation of the oppressed (Tickner, 2014, pp.
176–77).
Theorists in African-American or Africana studies have made a deliberate effort to incorporate

the perspective of women in their key concept, Afrocentricity. The meaning of Afrocentricity is
somewhat contested within the interdiscipline, but there is no doubt about what it opposes,
namely Eurocentrism. Among the specified features of Eurocentrism are reductionism,
individualism, and domination over nature, whereas Afrocentricity is associated with holism,
community, and harmony with nature (Azibo, 2001, p. 424). Karanja Keita Carroll (2008)
contended that the “Afrikan worldview” has embedded within it an African culture-specific
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axiology, epistemology, logic, cosmology, ontology, teleology, and ideology that necessitate a
research methodology that is consistent with these components. Instead of the Eurocentric
approach that emphasizes objective detachment, separation between the knower and the known,
material reality as primary, either/or logic, and knowledge for knowledge’s sake, the Afrikan
worldview emphasizes full engagement, the blending of knower and known, the spiritual essence
of reality as primary, both/and logic, and knowledge for the betterment of African peoples.
Africana research is about participation, relationships, interdependence, and the liberation of
Africana people (Carroll, 2008, pp. 4–27).
Transdisciplinary Approaches
Advocates for transdisciplinary approaches often directly challenge the efficacy of conventional
disciplines, claiming that they are part of the problem rather than the solution, especially when
the objective is the mitigation of complex social problems. Proponents of transdisciplinary
approaches frequently accuse the hegemonic conventional disciplines of protecting the status
quo rather than promoting progressive change. The framers of some transdisciplinary
approaches see them as providing alternatives to the world views of the conventional disciplines
that they would replace. Examples of discipline-replacement transdisciplinary approaches would
be general systems theory, Marxism, cultural studies and sustainability studies. Examples of
transdisciplinary approaches that could supplement rather than replace conventional disciplines
would be symbolic interactionism, rational choice theory, and gender theory (Miller, 1982).
General systems theory, the transdisciplinary approach that Jantsch favored, contends that
nature is a hierarchy of similar structures up through the whole succession of physical, biological,
and social systems. There are similar developmental patterns throughout nature, but there are
different paths that can lead to the same destination. Through the organization of energy from
the environment (negative entropy) and communication with the environment (negative
feedback), systems seek to maintain dynamic equilibria. This theory conceives of nature as a
holistic set of relationships that thrives on diversity.
David Easton introduced systems thinking to political science in the 1950s and 1960s because he
felt the discipline was too narrow. “I am not a political scientist but rather a social scientist
interested in political problems” (Aldrich, 2014, pp. 52–53). Currently, Carolyn and Patrick James
continue Easton’s systems approach with their application of “systemism” to foreign policy
analysis. However, in their view, systemism moves away from Easton’s bias toward homeostatic
proclivities and emphasis on the macro level. Systemism includes both the macro and the micro
and all forms of interaction between them (James & James, 2015).
Since the 1960s, general systems theory has been the main transdisciplinary approach of
environmental or ecological studies (Costanza, 1990). Today, this field is most likely to be called
sustainability studies. In a major conference on transdisciplinarity held in Switzerland in 2000,
sustainability was put forward not only as the major reason for the necessity of
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transdisciplinarity, but also as a transdisciplinary approach in itself (Klein et al., 2001). However,
Egon Becker argues that sustainability studies is a “transdisciplinary field” that is more of a
“conceptual and heuristic framework” than a general theory (1999, pp. 284–285).
The lack of an agreed-upon general theory for engaging in the intellectual process of integrating
across disciplines led William Newell to search for the most comprehensive and functionally
effective transdisciplinary theory. He decided on general systems. But the first difficulty that
Newell faced was deciding on which version of general systems theory to embrace. He identified
eight possibilities: chaos, complex systems, fractal geometry, nonlinear dynamics, second-order
cybernetics, self-organizing criticality, neo-evolutionary biology, and quantum mechanics
(Newell, 2001). After studying them all, he chose complex systems as the preferred approach.
Newell (2001, p. 7) explains: “Specifically, the theory of interdisciplinarity studies that I am
advocating focuses on the form of complexity that is a feature of the structure as well as the
behavior of a complex system, on complexity generated by nonlinear relationships among a large
number of components, and on the influence of the components and relationships of the system
on its overall pattern of behavior.” Newell presented his preferred theory to a panel of well-
known interdisciplinarians for their reactions. None of the six respondents agreed with his
suggestion, primarily because they did not believe that the range and diversity of
interdisciplinary possibilities could be captured within one theoretical framework (Issues in
Integrative Studies 19, 2001, pp, 1–148)
One of the respondents to Newell’s proposal, Richard Carp (2001), took issue with his basic
premise, namely that the knowledge to be integrated via complex systems theory comes
exclusively from existing disciplines. Carp insisted on widening the knowledge sources. He stated
that we should stop thinking of “the disciplines as unique sources or resources for knowledge and
thought” (Carp, 2001, p. 74). Carp argued that we should “learn from multiple knowledge
formations” (p. 75). Disciplines should not be the “gatekeepers.” The universities are just one of
the many institutions in society that not only possess knowledge but can also create it. We should
not be talking about interdisciplinary studies but “knowledge formations” (p. 75).
In Europe, the transdisciplinary movement has taken several different directions. The Swiss
Academies of Arts and Sciences conference in 2000 promoted a process form of
transdisciplinarity that transcended not only disciplinary boundaries, but also the boundary
between the scientific establishment on the one hand and the users of the results of scientific
research on the other hand. Users include government agencies, businesses, non-profit
organizations, and members of the general public. Since all of these groups are stakeholders in
the solution of the societal problems that science has an obligation to address, they should all be
present at the table in the research process. In fact, the more stakeholders involved, the more
“robust” the research. “We take the contributions to the informing and the rationalizing of
actions in their societal context to be the main performance of problem-oriented research, and by
implication, also of transdisciplinary research” (Zierhofer & Burger, 2007, p. 57). In other words,
according to the Swiss school, the purpose of transdisciplinary research is to seek and facilitate
the implementation of solutions for societal problems, such as violence, poverty, and global
warming, that serve the common good (Pohl & Hadorn, 2008). Norwegian professor Willy
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Ostreng, in his major book on interdisciplinary research, agrees and adds that as
transdisciplinarity traverses the boundaries between science and stakeholder expertise it creates
a new science, a “post-normal” science (Ostreng, 2010, pp. 29–33).
Another European school of transdisciplinarity is centered around Basarab Nicolescu, a French

academic. His group is organized around the International Center for Transdisciplinary Research.
The movement’s objective is the achievement of the totality of meaning across all the sciences,
art, religion, and cultural perspectives. That endeavor involves the search for relations and
isomorphisms across all realms. The French school’s epistemology is explicitly non-Aristotelian
in that it wishes to go beyond lineal and binary logic. They recognize different levels of reality in
which different modes of understanding prevail. They start with the differences between classical
physics and quantum physics, between reason and intuition, between information and
consciousness, and between linear and non-linear logics. Non-linear logic is explained as the
unity of oppositions, the inclusion of the excluded middle, and the evolutionary process of ever
more comprehensive syntheses. Manfred Max-Neef calls this epistemology “strong
transdisciplinarity.” He sees some of it in the natural sciences, especially in quantum physics and
complexity theories. However, he does not see any of it in the social sciences. He sees economics
as the most retrogressive and therefore one of the biggest obstacles to a unified, spiritually
evolved, sustainable future (Max-Neef, 2005, pp. 5–16).
There are some interesting analogies between “strong transdisciplinarity” and the field of
cultural studies, for which many claim transdisciplinary status. Both approaches are strongly
critical of the excessive reliance on rationality and analytic reductionism, as well as of the
fragmented specialization of the structure of knowledge. The location of cultural studies at the
interface of the humanities and the social sciences enables its practitioners to bring together their
different concepts of culture and then to add the additional dimension of everyday meanings and
practices present among the broader population (Moran, 2002).
It is generally agreed that the institutional origin of cultural studies was at Birmingham
University in 1964. The founders had an anti-establishment orientation informed by Italian neo-
Marxist Antonio Gramsci and French post-structuralist Michel Foucault. The Birmingham group
wished to understand and challenge the power over the general population that the cultural elites
exercised through the mass media and the power that the intellectual elites exercised through
their control of the structure of knowledge, that is, the departmental/disciplinary structure of the
academy. When cultural studies diffused to the United States, the field lost some of its political
agenda; however, it retained its emphasis on popular culture. Numerous academic fields are
identified as contributing to cultural studies, including cultural anthropology, textual criticism,
art and social history, linguistics, sociology, aural and visual culture, philosophy of science,
political economy, communication studies, psychology, and feminism. These multiple sources
led Joe Moran (2002, p. 50) to comment, “Cultural studies could be said to be synonymous with
interdisciplinarity itself.” It is both ironic and instructive then that the founding enclave of
cultural studies, the Birmingham Centre, was shut down by the higher education authorities of
the United Kingdom in 2002, presumably because of the “low quality of its research
production” (Klein, 2005, pp. 52–53).
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Consequences
Advocating explicitly for interdisciplinary approaches in a discipline-controlled environment can

be risky. It can be politically risky for administrative units and personally risky for faculty,
especially for junior faculty. Interdisciplinary approaches do have implications for the structure
and politics of knowledge. They have implications for International Relations, especially if the
study of international relations is considered an interdisciplinary field. A 2002 publication
assessing the field came to this conclusion:
While there seems to be little problem in designating international relations as a “field,”

the symposium left unclear whether this field is most properly a subfield of political
science, a subfield of several disciplines, an amalgam of the subfields of multiple
disciplines or an academic discipline in its own right.
(Puchala, 2002, pp. xvi–xvii)
The dominant location for International Relations in the United States is as a subfield of Political
Science (Aldrich, 2014, p. 5). In the United Kingdom, however, the field of International Relations
is more often treated as a separate discipline (Waever, 1998). How the field is conceptualized and
institutionalized does have implications for its intellectual strategies, the identities of its
practitioners, and its access to resources, both on and off-campus. David Long has argued that “it
matters whether IR is considered a discipline in its own right or not. It matters in teaching and
research not only by what is cut off, but what is encouraged” (Long, 2011, pp. 59–60). Rudra Sil
warned that “inflexible disciplinary structures may very well come to constitute a hindrance to
whatever ‘progress’ is possible in our collective efforts to understand aspects of international
life” (Sil & Doherty, 2000, p. 6). Nevertheless, American political scientists are firmly committed
to keeping international relations within their fold. A 2002 doctoral dissertation tells the tale of
how, in 1986, the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn)
successfully absorbed the multidisciplinary graduate program in International Relations. It is an
interesting tale of money and powerful personalities, and it would probably be more accurately
described as a hostile takeover (Plantan, 2002).
Even though the author of the dissertation, Frank Plantan, used the language of
interdisciplinarity, he did not employ the conceptual distinctions presented above. That is partly
because the graduate program of International Relations at Penn was just a multidisciplinary
collection of volunteer faculty members from 10 different departments with no separate,
dedicated financial support. By centering his analysis on the Penn case study, Plantan limited the
operational meaning of interdisciplinary to this loose arrangement of multidisciplinary
specialists, an unstable and vulnerable setup. Yet in his discussion of the intellectual development
of the field he mentioned several integrating strategies that have crossdisciplinary and even
transdisciplinary qualities. His examples included realism, functionalism, behavioralism,
neoliberal institutionalism, rational choice, and constructivism. However, in his historical
analysis Plantan saw these theoretical perspectives as ideas to fight over rather than as
integrating strategies. In his experience, the competitive departmental environment triumphed
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over interdisciplinary cooperation. Plantan (2002, pp. 374–375) concluded, “The hefty sunk costs
of an existing tenured faculty and staff, and a historic mission (however dubious) in the colleges
or university’s broader curriculum, accords them a staying power, an inertia, that no
interdisciplinary program can hope to achieve whatever its intellectual merit.”
When Robert Axelrod, the President of the American Political Science Association, established a
Task Force in 2007 on Interdisciplinarity, he argued that interdisciplinary research is borrowing
across disciplinary boundaries, both importing and exporting, but especially exporting (Axelrod,
2008). The Task Force Report (Aldrich, 2014) argued that interdisciplinary work begins with
faculty who are prepared with accumulated deep knowledge in a discipline. To insure that
interdisciplinary teaching and research do not endanger the institutional power of the
conventional disciplines, the Report placed a major emphasis on discipline-based peer review.
They contended that peer review is the preeminent means by which “the value of scientific
knowledge can be established,” and peer review is only credible if it comes from an established
discipline (Aldrich, 2014, pp. 13–23). They continued, “Disciplinarity has not yet been
successfully transcended as a means to address key values of scholarship—particularly to resolve
contested claims about knowledge, to anchor peer review and the authority it carries with it to
protect academic freedom, or to manage the labor market” (p. 23).
Interdisciplinarians would find this reasoning self-serving at the very least. After all, one of the
main reasons for engaging in truly innovative interdisciplinary activity is to break free of the
narrow, restrictive and presumably inadequate contexts of the established disciplines. The
National Academies Report (2005) argues that there are four “drivers” for interdisciplinary
research: inherent complexity of nature and society, need to explore areas that are not confined
to a single discipline, need to solve societal problems, and the power of new technologies (p. 40).
This Report gives several examples, but the most comprehensive is the case of climate change.
Research on this complex and vital issue involves 10,000 scientists in 80 countries from more
than 20 disciplines, including agricultural scientists, archeologists, atmospheric chemists,
biologists, climatologists, ecologists, economists, environmental historians, geographers,
geologists, hydrologists, mathematicians, meteorologists, plant physiologists, political
scientists, oceanographers, remote sensing scientists, and sociologists (p. 31).
The established disciplines have been attacked by the post-structuralists for being Eurocentric,
sexist, racist, pseudo-objective, status quo-protective and structured in a way that is
disconnected from reality. To this group of critics both the ontologies and epistemologies of the
conventional structure of knowledge are unacceptable (Moran, 2002). Paradoxically, some of the
academics who espouse these views have managed to find an institutionalized niche in the
university in departments or centers of cultural studies, ethnic studies, post-colonial studies, and
women’s studies. However, in the process of institutionalization, they seem to have followed the
advice of the Political Science Task Force Report: if interdisciplinary projects want to be
successful—that is, achieve bureaucratic recognition with regular budgets and assigned faculty
positions—you need to behave like an established discipline (Messer-Davidow, 2002). Besides
those interdisciplines that have successfully entered the university structure since the 1960s,
there were many generic interdisciplinary programs that also evolved into departments even
though they were founded as challengers to the disciplinary/departmental system. Evidently, the
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generic-interdisciplinary departments were perceived by the established departments as the

most threatening as well as the most vulnerable. As a consequence, whenever conventional
departments found sympathetic administrators they embarked on a campaign for their abolition.
In the Politics of Interdisciplinary Studies the stories of several of these program eliminations are
told. They include programs at Wayne State, Miami of Ohio, Appalachian State, and San Francisco
State, among others. (Augsburg & Henry, 2009).
The Political Science Task Force Report also describes how the discipline-based peer-review
process works in the federal grant-making process, the largest source of extramural funding in
the United States. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is probably organized the most
pervasively around the conventional or established disciplines. Therefore, disciplinary criteria are
used to evaluate most grant proposals submitted to the NSF. There are small programs within
NSF that seem to facilitate interdisciplinary projects: The Measurement, Methodology and
Statistics Program and the Human and Social Dynamics Program.
Although the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is organized functionally, its
reviewing process also relies largely on disciplinary faculty and their criteria for quality. Federal
funding agencies reflect and respect disciplinary boundaries, though they do seek ways to attack
new problems through interdisciplinary efforts (Aldrich, 2014, pp. 101–111). However, the
ostensibly integrative interdisciplinary projects they fund frequently end up as merely
multidisciplinary.
A group that studied the grant-making experience of the Academy of Finland from 1997–2004
discovered, to their surprise, that almost half of the grants (42%) had some degree of
interdisciplinarity despite the disciplinary orientations of the review boards. The solution of the
study authors to the disciplinary/interdisciplinary divide is to consider all research
interdisciplinary. They reason that since disciplinary boundaries are so amorphous and so
frequently permeated that maintaining these distinctions is artificial and inhibitive of creativity
in research (Bruun, Hukkinen, Huutoniemi, & Klein, 2005, p. 169). However, ignoring disciplinary
boundaries and their associated departmental bureaucracy seems not only unrealistic about the
confining power of the disciplinary structure of knowledge, but also politically naive as well.
A further interesting dimension of the International Studies Association (ISA) is the relationship
between its many crossdisciplinary sections and the dominant Political Science discipline. Of the
29 sections (2019), 22 seem crossdisciplinary in nature. Examples include interdisciplinary
studies, human rights studies, environmental studies, peace studies, feminist theory and gender
studies, and global development studies. For years the leadership of the ISA seemed merely to
presume, despite the organization’s claim to interdisciplinarity, that all the section program
chairs could gather at the annual Political Science Convention to review the draft program of the
upcoming ISA Convention. The implicit assumption in this past ISA practice was that the section
program chairs were most likely political scientists who would be attending the annual Political
Science Convention. This assumption always struck this author as problematic, especially in light
of the organization’s mission statement and its interdisciplinary membership. The greater
efficiency of the Internet facilitated the discontinuance of this practice.
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The history of the relationship of area studies to International Relations is a fascinating one in
itself. The ISA section sponsoring this contribution, the Interdisciplinary Studies Section, was
originally established by area studies scholars according to Fred Riggs, one of its founders. In the
1970s, area studies scholars were contemplating founding a separate umbrella organization for
all area studies programs, but they were persuaded to stay within the ISA as an independent
section. Area studies centers were established in elite universities after WWII as part of a national
Cold War strategy. They were “among the most far-reaching interdisciplinary projects in
American higher education” (Aldrich, 2014, p. 89). Their responsibility was to provide
information on the geographic regions of the world in support of the national interests of the
United States. Participating faculty came mostly from language, literature, anthropology, history,
and political science (international relations) departments. The centers, despite their holistic
aspirations, were multidisciplinary in form and particularistic in methodology. Money and
guidance ostensibly came from private sources, such as the Ford Foundation and the Social
Science Research Council (SSRC), but they actually came from the Department of Defense and the
Central Intelligence Agency (Cumings, 2002).
In the first few decades after World War II, the study of international relations was significantly
oriented to area studies because the money flowing into the universities supported area studies
type of knowledge. The legacy of that emphasis is reflected in a 2006 Teagle Foundation survey
that found in the responses of 109 Liberal Arts Colleges, half of the top ten interdisciplinary
majors were in area and international studies. Since the end of the Cold War between the United
States and the Soviet Union, extramural teaching and research support has dwindled significantly
for area and international studies. Lloyd Rudolph comments, “after the close of the Cold War, the
disciplines and the ‘methodists’ succeeded in attacking and defeating the area studies orientation
of Ford and via Ford the SSRC” (Aldrich, 2014, p. 70). Area studies programs have had to endure
criticism from those who see them as a “colonial enterprise” (faculty in post-colonial and ethnic
studies programs), while many in the disciplines see them as lacking any theoretical coherence
and methodological rigor. From the perspective of conventional disciplinarians, their region-
centric particularism and their multidisciplinary structures make them the poster examples of
what ails interdisciplinary programs (Miyoshi & Harootunian, 2002; Szanton, 2004).
Nevertheless, despite the continuing identity crises in area studies, they have managed to survive.
Their latest restoration positions them as part of the internationalization of the academy,
presumably made necessary by the knowledge demands of globalization and regional hot spots
such as the Middle East. However, the continuing viability of area studies remains uncertain. As
one observer noted, the different area studies faculties are as separated from each other as the
members of disciplines are from each other. “By and large, the world area studies tribes inhabit
relatively watertight intellectual domains” (Lambert, 1991, p. 184). This observation is consistent
with the author’s experience. As an administrator in charge of curriculum development, he
suggested that the area studies programs could share a core course in which the common
methodological principles of area studies could be explored. The area studies faculty, however,
were not interested. Nevertheless, David Szanton hopes that participation in area studies
programs have helped to “deparochialize” disciplinary faculty, though it does not seem to have
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date: 10 May 2024
lowered the heights of the disciplinary walls. Maybe by being one of the first interdisciplinary
programs to use identity as one of its key concepts, area studies may have prepared the way for
ethnic studies, women’s studies and post-colonial studies (Szanton, 2004).
The case of international political economy (IPE) also raises a number of interesting
interdisciplinary issues. In its reincarnation over the last four decades or so, it fits in the category
of crossdisciplinary hybrids. IPE’s location in the structure of knowledge is as confused as
International Relations. The disciplines of Economics, Political Science and Sociology all claim
IPE as a subfield. However, Marxists, in the tradition of classical political economy, see political
economy as an overarching, holistic frame in which cultural, economic, political, and social
dimensions are inter-related subsets. According to Marxists, the establishment of the specialized
disciplines around these dimensions is a part of the hegemonic strategy of capitalism to obfuscate
the oppressive nature of the capitalist system.
The late British political economist Susan Strange, a non-Marxist, complained about the lack of
knowledge sharing across disciplinary boundaries. She was especially critical of the way in which
economists and political scientists ignored each other and their respective knowledge domains.
She accused American scholars of International Relations of being too narrowly connected to
state-centric political models that did not include serious economic analysis. In fact, she argued,
“Far from being a subdiscipline of international relations, IPE should claim that international
relations are a subdiscipline of IPE” (see Strange, in Lawton, Rosenau, & Verdun, 2000, p. 412).
Susan Strange is among the “Magnificent Seven” that Benjamin Cohen singled out in his
intellectual history of international political economy (Cohen, 2008, p. 8). She was the leader of
the “British School,” which is more holistic, interdisciplinary, and explicitly normative in
contrast to the “American School,” which is more positivistic in orientation. Cohen continued his
geographic schools of thought analysis of IPE in a 2014 publication, Advanced Introduction to
International Political Economy. In response to criticism of the limitations of his original
dichotomy, he added schools of thought based in continental Europe, Latin America, and China.
He also recognized “leftist” or “heterodox” schools in the United States and the British
Commonwealth. However, his geographic schools of thought approach focused primarily on
national/regional and cultural differences, rather than theoretical.
Members of all schools of international political economy would probably be comfortable having
their field identified as an “interdiscipline” (Underhill, 2000). An interdiscipline is a
crossdisciplinary field that approximates the characteristics of an academic discipline, but it does
not qualify as a 20th century conventional discipline. In fact, maybe International Relations
would also best be characterized as an “interdiscipline.” However, that identification still leaves
unanswered where International Relations fits in the power hierarchy of knowledge.
According to Barry Buzan and Richard Little, members of the English or British School of
International Relations, the widespread placement of International Relations in the United States
as a subfield of Political Science has significantly limited its theoretical potential. Buzan and Little
(2001) argued that American International Relations is dominated by an ahistorical, Eurocentric,
Westphalian, political/military model. One of the consequences of this approach is the preference
for “fragmentation into the anarchy of self-governing and paradigm-warring islands of theory
Page 24 of 30
date: 10 May 2024
rather than integration into the imperial or federative archipelago of theoretically pluralist grand
theory” (Buzan & Little, 2001, p. 31). Margaret Hermann, in her 1998 ISA presidential address,
expressed seemingly similar sentiments about fragmentation: “The field has become an
administrative holding company rather than an intellectually coherent area of inquiry or a
community of scholars” (Hermann, 2002, p. 16). However, her solution is a respectful dialogue
that builds a “mosaic of multiple perspectives” around problems that are issues of “world
politics” (pp. 31–33). She does not seem to be recommending “grand theory” nor going beyond
Political Science. Thus, hers is an intra-disciplinary rather than an inter-disciplinary solution. On
the other hand, Hermann does seem to embrace the “interdisciplinary mental outlook”
advocated by the authors of the pioneering OECD Report (Apostel, 1972).
Understanding the different types of interdisciplinary approaches and their differentiation from
disciplinary approaches gives one deeper insight into the knowledge production and transmission
process. If International Relations is to be a truly independent, interdisciplinary field that can
take full advantage of multiple perspectives and methodologies in order to deal more effectively
with global problems, it needs to liberate itself from the embrace of confining disciplines,
especially Political Science.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank the following for helping to improve this article: Stanley Bailis, Felicia Krishna-Hensel,
Renee Marlin-Bennett, Tina Mavrikos-Adamou, Anja K. Miller, and Julie Thompson-Klein.
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Interdisciplinarity: Its Meaning and Consequences

Interdisciplinarity: Its Meaning and Consequences

Keywords: academic discipline, area studies, interdisciplinary approaches, interdisciplinarity, interdiscipline,

Subjects: International Relations Theory, Pedagogy

Updated in this version

Historical Survey of Select Literature

The first major work on interdisciplinarity by an American-educated scholar was published in

Interdisciplinarity has been variously defined in this century: as a methodology, a

(Klein, 1990, p. 196)

1. Field of demarcated study (subject matter boundaries, inclusions and exclusions).

3. Shared set of concepts (jargon).

4. Shared set of organizing theories/models (explanatory frameworks).

5. Shared set of truth-determining methods (what counts as data—how to make sense of

9. Shared set of literature and great scholars in the discipline.

12. Departmental home in a college/university (bureaucratic recognition, resource allocation

(Wolf, 1982, p. 10)

Table 1. Post-World War II Macro Social Sciences: Comparative Attributes

Interdisciplinary approaches in the social sciences involve, at a minimum, the application of

“Interdisciplinary research is a mode of research by teams or individuals that integrates

(National Academy of Sciences, 2005, p. 39)

Shared Analytical Methods

Shared Life Experiences

Theorists in African-American or Africana studies have made a deliberate effort to incorporate

Another European school of transdisciplinarity is centered around Basarab Nicolescu, a French

Advocating explicitly for interdisciplinary approaches in a discipline-controlled environment can

While there seems to be little problem in designating international relations as a “field,”

(Puchala, 2002, pp. xvi–xvii)

generic-interdisciplinary departments were perceived by the established departments as the

Max-Neef, M. A. (2005). Foundations of transdisciplinarity. Ecological Economics, 53(1), 5–16.

Moran, J. (2002). Interdisciplinarity. London, UK: Routledge.

Teaching the Scientific Study of International Processes

Active Teaching and Learning: The State of the Literature

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