4.1. From Disciplines to “Epistemic Zones of Action”

For the full version of the original text go to The Economy of Interdisciplinary Knowledge Transfer by Vannina Hofman, Jara Rocha and Josep Perelló.

Official academic knowledge production is typically structured around the model of established disciplines. This model that became widespread in the 20th century focuses reality and analyses it, and as such it led to major advances both in scientific-technical disciplines in the “experimental sciences” and “natural sciences”, and in the humanities and social sciences.

In recent times, serious doubts have been raised about this model of knowledge production. One of the cases that led to this attitudinal change is the struggle against climate change, which requires a combination of disciplines ranging from physics to economics, in order to attack the problem through scientific knowledge. The scientific community is thus increasingly tending towards “problem-oriented-research”, and funding sources are valuing more highly interdisciplinary projects with different conceptual and methodological frameworks in which actors from outside the academy play key roles. But these inter-institutional, interdisciplinary practices generate tension within universities and research centres. And the tension is intensified even further when elements from outside the academic field, such as citizens for example, are added to this interdisciplinarity. Examples such as citizen science and the emerging transdisciplinarity in transformation sciences pose a challenge to existing channels of professional recognition, prestige, and legitimation, which are often insufficiently open to hybrid practices. Within the existing academic model, interdisciplinary (or transdisciplinary, or non-disicplinary) research is under pressure insofar as the criteria used to evaluate work and productivity are not appropriate to measure the time, effort, and processes required to generate new frameworks and methods. The tension between disciplinary and interdisciplinary interests can also be seen as a clash between two different types of capital, which Lisa Garforth and Ann Kerr (2011) have called “symbolic capital” and “scientific capital”, based on the Pierre Bourdieu’s earlier study Homo Academicus. Scientific capital has to do with disciplinarity, with the identity and evolution of disciplines, and to their assessment criteria, while symbolic capital is open towards models of interdisciplinary innovation.

Interdisciplinary research projects can only be successfully carried out if many diverse interests converge in them. We should aim towards using models that lessen the tension – although not necessarily the difference – between the different types of capital. Interdisciplinarity, of course, requires disciplines in order to exist. Disciplines, in the sense of accumulated knowledge capital and in the sense of sets of practices, cannot be eliminated from the outside. Only researchers working within the practices can blur their boundaries, build bridges, and expand territories. An interdisciplinary focus cannot be imposed. What can be done is suggest means to balance the tension between them, and generate catalysts for new models of knowledge production in the different stages pertaining to education processes.

One strategy for easing the tension of the disciplinary model with a view to expanding possible knowledge-production practices, which takes into account the permeable boundaries between different forms of knowledge and their heterogeneous sources, is to introduce the notion of practices into the heart of the apparently rigid structures of disciplines and the Academy. This generates dynamism and change in situations that seemed to be defined by pre-established limits. A notion that can be extremely useful in this sense is that of the “modes of extitutionalisation” that Daniel López (2014) works with, based on Michel Serres’ notion of extitutions, in as far as it allows us to question social organisations without first having to identifying them according to pre-established typologies.

The notion of “zone” can also provide a useful approach to studying the components and functioning of knowledge production: zones of contact and of contamination, time zones, language zones that entail a specific habitability and performativity, in which everything has be constructed, and where research action takes place. Underlying the term ‘zone’ there is also a less clearly-defined space with blurred boundaries, and the need to accept more vagueness in epistemic zones. It becomes easier to organise and communicate the ideas of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity if we imagine them not as closed, watertight spaces that have to be linked, but as interconnected zones, and as zones for knowledge production. They affect each other and are in turn affected. “Zooming” in and out even allows us to trance their coexistence, and as such their ecology, and the map the more obvious (or even the less obvious) connections in a research project or exploration. Similarly, intensifying the ideas of dynamism, process and construction, we can also think in terms of “action clusters”. Verbs.

Thinking in terms of epistemic zones changes our overall understanding of the relationships, trajectories, and mediations that emerge in interdisciplinary knowledge production projects. In regard to knowledge transfer, they allow us to question what is inside and what is outside (that which is unknown) and lead us to either make explicit or ignore that which is known. This approach leads us to question the role of technology in the change in participation structures, in the links between “inside” and “outside”, and in the capacity for diverse participation to promote a new kind of science. It requires us to accept that it is impossible to come up with certain answers unless we include or connect with other epistemic zones, and at the same time re-scales the knowledge/research outcomes with many-sided nuances depending on the zone from which the action is observed. It also allows us to go one step further and consider the possible implications of thinking in terms of connected-disconnected, instead of inside-outside, in an epistemic zone.

Thinking about the economy and interdisciplinary knowledge transfer in terms of epistemic zones and/or action clusters seeks to:

- Explicitly point out notions of inside and outside (known/unknown), instead of taking them for granted as immovable constructs. Reconfigure them, if possible, so as to move towards inclusive, rather than exclusive, territories.

- Develop situated knowledge about action clusters and dynamism.

- Detect the role of the strategies and technologies used to describe the boundaries and borders between inside and outside (or connected and disconnected).

- Include forms of knowledge that do not fit within disciplinary boundaries, on equal terms and with equal recognition.

- Visualise the circulation of different types of capital (and come up with an appropriate narrative) and their systems of legitimation. Set out the tensions and the conflicts that they may generate.

Review the specific conditions of possibility, temporalities, spaces, and trajectories of the different epistemic zones that come together in a specific project. Avoid automatically dragging in (pre)concepts learnt in the disciplinary framework, which may not be effective. In other words, recognise the limits disciplines, and accept the possibility of other forms of knowledge construction of other zones. This applies to knowledge production and also to knowledge dissemination, to the way in which the outcomes of the research results and processes will be shared (this point connects to the dissemination and transmission of outcomes).