Inter-disciplinary research:
combining different
perspectives (2)
Desmond
McNeill
Lecture 1
• Disciplines differ – both with regard to what they study
and how they study it; and the two are linked, but not
inextricably.
• Many phenomena (and all phenomena in the social
sciences) cannot be regarded merely as ‘natural’/
‘material’ (existing independently of people’s beliefs and
values) nor merely as ‘social’/ ‘ideal’ (existing solely by
virtue of people’s beliefs and values).
How Disciplines Interact (1)
Field
Of
Study
NATURE
ECONOMY
SOCIETY
ECOLOGY
ecology
ecological economics
socio-biology
ECONOMICS
environmental
economics
Economics
sociological
(institutional)
economics
ANTHROPOLOGY/
SOCIOLOGY
environmental
anthropology
economic
sociology
anthropology/
sociology
Perspective
Source: «On Interdisciplinary Research: with particular reference to the field of environment and
development». Higher Education Quarterly, vol 53, no 4, October 1999. Desmond McNeill
Lecture 2
•
Within social sciences and humanities there is a major
division between perspectives: with economics and
anthropology marking the extremes.
• Combining disciplines, through interdisciplinary research,
is very challenging.
• Approaches such as environmental economics, and
medical anthropology, are more accurately seen as subdisciplines not ‘inter-disciplines’.
• Perhaps the best way to undertake interdisciplinary
research is to work as a team, drawing on two or more
different disciplines in order to cast light on a common
phenomenon or problem.
Lecture 3. Interdisciplinary research by individual
researchers
A ‘perspective’ is a combination of method and theory.
Method and theory are closely associated: compare
economics and sociology.
Disciplines can become introverted – applying their methods
and theories uncritically.
Having an interdisciplinary training can encourage one to
select a perspective which is best suited for studying a
particular phenomenon.
… and may even encourage more radical challenges to
existing disciplines.
Advice re masters thesis
Start from the phenomenon/ problem, not the theory or
hypothesis.
Draw on those disciplines, methods and theories which best
relate to the problem.
Be ‘reflexive’, critical.
Be rigorous with regard to both the collection and use of
empirical data and the analysis.
Avoid normative statements.
Academic quality and Interdisciplinary
Research
Academic quality is normally assessed by peer review.
The primary criteria of quality are that research should be original
and rigorous.
Originality
At masters level the demand for originality is not very strenuous.
Some interdisciplinary research is very original because it draws
inspiration from one discipline and uses it in another.
But whether or not this is original may depend on whether it is
viewed from one or the other perspective.
Rigour
What constitutes rigour is decided by those who practice
the discipline.
Within a discipline, there is generally strong agreement
as to what constitutes rigour.
Between disciplines, there is often strong disagreement.
This can therefore be a problem for researchers who
work in the interfaces between disciplines.
• The aesthetic qualities of the writing also
matter.
• Different disciplines, and even sometimes
different journals, develop their own styles.
• This may even relate to such things as use
of footnotes and acknowledgements.
Rigour: building up an
argument.
• Building blocks: empirical facts,
evidence.
• Connections: logical or causal links.
Evidence: authoritative sources of
information
Official statistics
Data from ‘recognised’ researchers, institutions
Newspapers?
Interviews
Observation
Friends, family?
What is the case: facts and evidence
How to test the claim that:
This is water.
This is a tree.
This person is in pain.
This person is a Norwegian.
What is the case –
what one person says is the case –
what people say is the case.
Logical argument/ causal explanation
Logical argument:
A is contained in B; B is contained in C.
Therefore: A is contained in C.
This man is a bachelor.
(Therefore), this man is unmarried.
Causal relations
How to test the claim that:
Water causes soil erosion.
Trees reduce global warming.
Tobacco induces addiction in humans
Democracies reduce the likelihood of armed conflict.
Example: rural-urban migration
in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Why do people migrate to cities?
Are migrants poorer than residents?
What are the attitudes of migrants (and non-migrants)?
….
Economics
Sociology
Anthropology
Methods (within social
science/humanities)
Economics:
Statistics: correlations based on cross-sectional data
and time series.
Sociology:
Surveys and questionnaires.
Interviews
Anthropology:
Participant observation.
Comparative case studies: compare a small number of e.g. villages
which are very similar in some respects but very different in others.
Masters thesis: some
observations on method
Often based on fieldwork: though only brief.
Maybe comparative case studies.
Interviews as one major source of information.
Think critically about the reliability of these sources of
information: e.g. how representative are the cases chosen,
the people interviewed, and the quotations from the
interviews ?
Some observations on theory
The theory (or theories) chosen should be that which best
contributes to explaining/ enlightening the phenomenon
being studied.
Openness to different theories, and even different
disciplines, is key to an interdisciplinary approach.
The process of critically assessing different methods,
different theories, and even different disciplines, is extremely
demanding.
Within the scope of a masters thesis, however, expectations
should not be too high.
Some (non-random) examples
of journal articles:
:
Anthropology
Loving and forgetting: moments of inarticulacy in tribal India*(p 243-261)
Piers Vitebsky
Ultima Thule: anthropology and the call of the unknown (p 789-804)
Kirsten Hastrup
Rights violations, rumour, and rhetoric: making sense of
cannibalism in Mambasa, Ituri (Democratic Republic of Congo) (p 825-843)
Johan Pottier
Spirit possession, power, and the absent presence of Islam:
re-viewing Les maîtres fous* (p 731-761)
Paul Henley
Economics
Competition and Price Variation When Consumers Are Loss Averse
Botond Koszegi and Paul Heidhues
Does Innovation Cause Stock Market Runups? Evidence from
the Great Crash
Tom Nicholas
The Power of Focal Points Is Limited: Even Minute Payoff
Asymmetry May Yield Large Coordination Failures
Vincent P. Crawford, Uri Gneezy and Yuval Rottenstreich
Explaining Changes in Female Labor Supply in a Life-Cycle Model
Orazio Attanasio, Hamish Low and Virginia Sanchez-Marcos
Political science
Global Distributive Justice and the State (p 487-518)
Simon Caney
Do Mayoral Elections Work? Evidence from London (p 653-678)
John Curtice, Ben Seyd, Katarina Thomson
Towards the End of a Long Transition? Bipolarity and Instability in Italy's
Changing Political System (p 138-149)
Maurizio Carbone, James L. Newell
The Grimly Comic Riddle of Hegemony in IPE: Where is Class Struggle?*
Adam David Morton
Some Masters topics 2008
Eco- tourism, wind power production and sustainable development
in Møre and Romsdal
Rhetoric and realities of local people involvement in conserving
the biodiversity of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda
Consuming the Wilderness - Competing for Access to the Last Frontier
People and cod: un/sustainability in the making
Perspectives on Poverty: The Poor as Human Waste of Modernity