I keep thinking that interdisciplinarity means the same as 'intersectionality', but not so. Intersectionality is an idea developed in feminist studies, proposing that our "identities are […] culturally mediated constructs implicated in relations of power, privilege and oppression” (Saxe, 2017, p. 155, citing Liasidou, 2013). Ouch. This feeds into our social constructs of ability and disability, shutting out access to equity and parity with societal barriers, as opposed to the "inherent deficiencies in the ‘disabled’ person" (p. 155). We can think of intersectionality as where our human "struggle against one form of oppression [...] cannot in practice be separated from the many other struggles that members of our communities are engaged in" (Chu, 2008).
No, interdisciplinarity - also known as ID (Klein, 2017) - is about our ability to cross-pollinate our professional understanding. Whether that is of own first professional field, or of a profession we are moving into. Interdisciplinarity is "a method or mindset that merges traditional educational concepts or methods in order to arrive at a new approaches or solutions" (Oregon State University, 2023). It is how we are grounded in one professional field through education and experience, then want to learn a new discipline. And we bring the knowledge of those differing fields together. We get conflation, cross-over, cross-pollination, a Venn diagram in action.
One interdisciplinary definition I particularly like is that it is "a portmanteau word for all more-than-disciplinary approaches to knowledge" and "more specifically refers to the intra-academic integration of different types of disciplinary knowledge" (Frodeman, 2017, p. 4). Love that idea of 'portmanteau': "In the sense of ‘that into which things are packed together’; originally applied by ‘L. Carroll’ to a factitious word made up of the blended sounds of two distinct words and combining the meanings of both; hence used attrib., and subseq. extended to things that are or suggest a combination of two different things of the same kind" (Simpson & Weiner, 1989, p. 157). That we pack together our 'discipline', our profession, with another discipline. That is very evocative!
How we know we are working in an interdisciplinary way is because we are "Interacting", "Integrating", "Focusing", "Blending" and "Linking" knowledge and tools across our boundaries of practice (Klein, 2017, p. 22). We create hybrid models, picking up the elements from one field, amending, testing, and using what works in a new place, or in a new way. We create a composite: "A philosopher might use history to inform readers about a particular movement in philosophy or, vice versa, use philosophy to provide epistemological context for a particular event" (p. 23).
We can be alert for these boundary-crossing tools and ideas. It is a great way to reuse good ideas in new ways.
Sam
References:
Chu, C. M. (2008). Intersectionality and Interdisciplinarity: Information Studies and Studies of the ‘Other’ [Poster presentation]. i-Conference, February 28, www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/15184.
Oregon State University. (2023). Graduate School: What is Interdisciplinarity?. https://gradschool.oregonstate.edu/master-arts-interdisciplinary-studies-mais/what-interdisciplinarity
Saxe, A. (2017). The theory of intersectionality: A new lens for understanding the barriers faced by autistic women. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 6(4), 153-178. https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v6i4.386
Simpson, J. A., & Weiner, E. S. C. (Eds.) (1989). Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed., Vol X Poise-Quelt). Clarendon Press.
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