Critical Realist versus Mainstream Interdisciplinarity

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8065022
AutoresLeigh Price (0000-0001-8707-3402, autor de correspondencia)
Año2014
Volumen13
Número1
Páginas52-76
Fecha de publicación2014-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Critical Realism (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1476-7430 • E-ISSN: 1572-5138
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1179/1476743013z.00000000019
OpenAlexW2093015962
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas26
Referencias citadas13

In this paper I argue for the superiority of a critical realist understanding of interdisciplinarity over a mainstream understanding of it. I begin by exploring the reasons for the failure of mainstream researchers to achieve interdisciplinarity. My main argument is that mainstream interdisciplinary researchers tend to hypostatize facts, fetishize constant conjunctions of events and apply to open systems an epistemology designed for closed systems. I also explain how mainstream interdisciplinarity supports oppression and gross inequality. I argue that mainstream interdisciplinarity is not true interdisciplinarity and refer to it accordingly as ‘condisciplinarity’. By way of example, I examine the condisciplinarity of the World Health Organization’s ecological model applied to the issue of men’s violence against women. Specifically, I argue that critical realist interdisciplinarity is preferable because it acknowledges inter alia the empirical, actual and real layers of reality, which allows it to develop depth-explanations of phenomena. In practice, this means that critical realist interdisciplinarity can potentially provide explanations that, compared to condisciplinarity, are broader (include more of the human and non-human context) and deeper (include for example individuals’ conscious and unconscious psychological motivations). In the World Health Organization’s example of the causes of men’s violence against women, condisciplinarity resulted in the absence of historical, global and unconscious aspects of the problem. It is also restricted the analysis to reductive, constant-conjunction based theories of the causes of the problem, specifically ‘risk factors’, thereby providing a relatively shallow explanation for the problem

Argument (complex analysis · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Mainstream · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Reductionism · Sociology · Unconscious mind · Critical Realism in Sociology · Law · Philosophy