- Table View
- List View
Intercultural Communication, Identity, and Social Movements in the Digital Age (Routledge Research in Communication Studies)
by Margaret U. D’Silva; Ahmet AtayThis book examines the complex and multidimensional relationship between culture and social media, and its specific impact on issues of identity and social movements, in a globalized world. Contemporary cyber culture involves communication among people who are culturally, nationally, and linguistically similar or radically different. Social media becomes a space for mediated cultural information transfer which can either facilitate a vibrant public sphere or create cultural and social cleavages. Contributors of the book come from diverse cultural backgrounds to provide a comprehensive analysis of how these social media exchanges allow members of traditionally oppressed groups find their voices, cultivate communities, and construct their cultural identities in multiple ways.This book will be of great relevance to scholars and students working in the field of media and new media studies, intercultural communication, especially critical intercultural communication, and academics studying social identity and social movements.
Intercultural Communication in Japan: Theorizing Homogenizing Discourse (Routledge Contemporary Japan Series)
by Satoshi Toyosaki Shinsuke EguchiJapan is heterogeneous and culturally diverse, both historically through ancient waves of immigration and in recent years due to its foreign relations and internationalization. However, Japan has socially, culturally, politically, and intellectually constructed a distinct and homogeneous identity. More recently, this identity construction has been rightfully questioned and challenged by Japan’s culturally diverse groups. This book explores the discursive systems of cultural identities that regenerate the illusion of Japan as a homogeneous nation. Contributors from a variety of disciplines and methodological approaches investigate the ways in which Japan’s homogenizing discourses are challenged and modified by counter-homogeneous message systems. They examine the discursive push-and-pull between homogenizing and heterogenizing vectors, found in domestic and transnational contexts and mobilized by various identity politics, such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, foreign status, nationality, multiculturalism, and internationalization. After offering a careful and critical analysis, the book calls for a complicating of Japan’s homogenizing discourses in nuanced and contextual ways, with an explicit goal of working towards a culturally diverse Japan. Taking a critical intercultural communication perspective, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Japanese Studies, Japanese Culture and Japanese Society.
Intercultural Communication in the Chinese Workplace
by Ping DuChina's sharp economic growth at the beginning of the twenty-first century has resulted in an increasing number of people from the other countries moving to work in China. This inevitably highlights the cultural differences that are apparent between China and other global workplace cultures. This book proposes a new theoretical and methodological approach to the investigation and explanation of intercultural differences in conflict management strategies and relational (politeness) strategies in workplace settings, taking the Chinese workplace as its focus. Drawing upon social psychology, sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, the book analyses various types of data such as recordings of meetings, participant interviews, organizational documents and emails to offer a new research approach that has relevance for researchers and scholars of intercultural communication globally.
Intercultural Competence and Pragmatics
by Gila A. SchauerThis Open Access book examines the link between intercultural competence (IC) and pragmatics by asking frontline modern foreign language teachers in higher education teaching a variety of languages (e.g., Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish) how they conceptualise intercultural competence and which skills, competences and knowledge they consider important in their teaching contexts. The data were collected with an online survey that focused on the relationship between intercultural competence and pragmatics.While international organizations such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) or the Council of Europe (CoE) agree that intercultural competence should play an important role in education, it is not always clear what IC may encompass in specific teaching contexts and subject areas. Examining how modern foreign language teachers in higher education conceptualise intercultural competence and the value they attach as well as the attention they give to various areas of pragmatics in their teaching is highly important, since those language professionals may be the final teachers learners encounter during their formal foreign language education. They are therefore in a unique position to shape modern foreign language learners’ intercultural and pragmatic awareness, competence and skills.This book will be of interest to language professionals, modern foreign language teachers and teacher trainers, as well as students and scholars of applied linguistics, pragmatics, and language education.
Intercultural Couples: Crossing Boundaries, Negotiating Difference
by Jill M. BystydzienskiDespite the growing presence of intercultural couples in the United States and worldwide, their stories often go untold. In Intercultural Couples, Jill Bystydzienski provides a rare and comprehensive understanding of the multidimensional experiences of intercultural couples, drawing mainly upon in-depth interviews with persons living in domestic partnerships--heterosexual and same-sex--representing a broad spectrum of ethnic, racial, religious, socioeconomic, and national backgrounds. In these relationships, each partner brings a different set of cultural experiences that may include gender expectations, ideas about appropriate relations with family members, childrearing, financial matters, and general lifestyle. Sometimes differences may be unrecognized or seen as minimal, yet some can become salient, forming the basis for conflict, enriching diversity, or both. Bystydzienski's findings show that, despite hurtful incidents from persons outside the couple partnerships, intercultural unions are a source of satisfaction for the partners, and are able to bridge divisions and reduce inequalities between persons of diverse backgrounds, providing a rich portrait of how these couples negotiate their identities as individuals and as couples in relation to the outside world.
Intercultural Couples: Exploring Diversity in Intimate Relationships
by Terri A. Karis Kyle D. KillianWhile cross-cultural relations were once assumed to be inherently problematic, in recent years these couples have increased in both numbers and social acceptance, and there is now a growing awareness of how little we really know about them. Addressing this gap in our knowledge, this book presents 12 chapters focusing on cross-cultural couple formations (i.e., a partner from the U.S. and another from abroad). Highlighting both the struggles and successes of couples, this book challenges the principle of homogamy, helping the reader gain a deeper understanding and respect for intercultural couples. The chapters tackle a broad range of topics and issues, including systemic considerations of the phenomenon of cross-cultural couples, bilingual couples, interfaith relationships, struggles in such couple formations, different methods of approaching solutions, and the use of the internet to meet partners from diverse backgrounds.
Intercultural Economic Analysis
by Rongxing GuoSince the end of the Cold War, the study of intercultural relations has become one of the most popular topics in the field of global politics and economics. This book presents a methodological framework for the analysis of intercultural issues frequently misinterpreted by existing theories. The book uses a challenge-and-response theory of cultural development to examine the relationship between different natural disasters and threats and the developments of ancient civilizations. The spatial interaction of ancient civilizations is assessed and some theoretical patterns of intercultural influences are presented with a focus on the Chinese, Egyptian, Indus, and Mesopotamian civilizations. Using the development of China as a case study, and on the basis of a simplified spatial model, the optimal spatial structure and size of culture areas are mathematically solved, and the political economy implications to the interactions between cultures differing in size are illustrated. The book also examines various aspects of intercultural economic influences, such as those of culture on international trade. The empirical results suggest that high-income trade partners are less sensitive than low-income trade partners to the measures of cultural dissimilarity which block international trade. The existing literature relating to the determinants of economic growth treats explanatory variables such as income inequality and cultural diversity separately. This book investigates whether there are any conditions under which income inequality and cultural diversity could encourage economic growth and provides evidence from a broad panel of nations, which reveals that economic growth is quite independent from the variables of inequality and cultural (linguistic and religious) diversity. Finally, this book provides suggestions for how cultural influences can benefit developing economies both large and small.
Intercultural Education: Theories, Policies and Practices (Routledge Revivals)
by Derek Woodrow Gajendra K. Verma Maria Beatriz Rocha-Trindade Giovanna Campani Christopher BagleyPublished in 1997, this volume is a result of a number of European Union and Council of Europe initiatives. The major stimulus came from an intensive course held in Lisbon in 1994 as part of two Erasmus networks exploring the nature of intercultural studies on a European-wide basis. Although the concepts of multiculturalism and interculturalism have frequently been discussed within a British context, this book draws on the interlocking and comparative persectives of specialists in education and teacher training in several European countries including Spain, France, Italy, Britain and the Netherlands. Educational policies and theories of identity are compared and there are special sections in multilinguism, teacher training, curriculum development, relationships between different ethnic groups and a vision of the future of intercultural education in Europe. The issues discussed in the book are significant in the development of modern societies as they seek to come to terms with the revolution in intercultural relations brought about by mass communications and global transport. The world is rapidly having to come to terms with cultural and social differences which can no longer be kept separate in their protective groups.
Intercultural Europe: Diversity and Social Policy
by Jagdish Gundara Sydney JacobsThis title was first published in 2000: The essays in this text examine interculturalism in Europe, focusing on social diversity and social policy within the European Union. Issues addressed include racism and social policy, migrant communities in Europe, ethnic diversity, intercultural education and housing and segregation.
The Intercultural Mind: Connecting Culture, Cognition, and Global Living
by Joseph ShaulesIn this pioneering book, Joseph Shaules presents exciting new research from cultural psychology and neuroscience. It sheds light on the hidden influence of culture on the unconscious mind, and helps people get more out of their intercultural journeys.The Intercultural Mind presents new perspectives on important questions such as: What is culture shock, and how does it affect us? Why are we blind to our own cultural conditioning? Can cultural differences be measured? What does it mean to have an international mindset? Illustrated with a wealth of examples and memorable stories, The Intercultural Mind is a fascinating look at how intercultural experiences can transform the geography of our minds.
Intercultural Parenting and Relationships: Challenges and Rewards
by Dharam BhugunThis book provides understandings of how intercultural, -racial, -ethnic, -national, and -faith couples and parents in Australia bring up their children and manage their relationships. Which challenges and benefits do they encounter, and which strategies do they use to negotiate their differences and belongingness? In portraying the lived experiences of intercultural couples and parents, Bhugun considers contextual and external factors such as individual and personality traits, the environment, gender and power, religion, socio-economic status, extended family, friends, and diasporic communities. Moving the reader from beyond negative stereotypes to a more nuanced representation of both the challenges and benefits of the phenomenon, Intercultural Parenting and Relationships provides intimate testimonies and offers innovations in theory and practice.Scholars, practitioners, students, intercultural couples, parents, families and the wider community will benefit from the rich insights into the challenges and successes of intercultural relationships and parenting presented in this book.
Intercultural Studies from Southern Chile: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches
by Gertrudis Payàs Fabien Le BonniecThis book presents a multidisciplinary overview of a little known interethnic conflict in the southernmost part of the Americas: the tensions between the Mapuche indigenous people and the settlers of European descent in the Araucania region, in southern Chile. Politically autonomous during the colonial period, the Mapuche had their land confiscated, their population decimated and the survivors displaced and relocated as marginalized and poor peasants by Chilean white settlers at the end of the nineteenth century, when Araucania was transformed in a multi-ethnic region marked by numerous tensions between the marginalized indigenous population and the dominant Chileans of European descent.This contributed volume presents a collection of papers which delve into some of the intercultural dilemmas posed by these complex interethnic relations. These papers were originally published in Spanish and French and provide a sample of the research activities of the Núcleo de Estudios Interétnicos e Interculturales (NEII) at the Universidad Católica de Temuco, in the capital of Araucania. The NEII research center brings together scholars from different fields: sociocultural anthropology, sociolinguistics, ethno-literature, intercultural education, intercultural philosophy, ethno-history and translation studies to produce innovative research in intercultural and interethnic relations. The chapters in this volume present a sample of this work, focusing on three main topics: The ambivalence between the inclusion and exclusion of indigenous peoples in processes of nation-building.The challenges posed by the incorporation of intercultural practices in the spheres of language, education and justice.The limitations of a functional notion of interculturality based on eurocentric thought and neoliberal economic rationality. Intercultural Studies from Southern Chile: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches will be of interest to anthropologists, linguists, historians, philosophers, educators and a range of other social scientists interested in intercultural and interethnic studies.
Intercultural Thinking in African Philosophy: A Critical Dialogue with Kant and Foucault (Routledge Studies in African Philosophy)
by Marita RainsboroughThis book sets up a rich intercultural dialogue between the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Michel Foucault, and that of key African thinkers such as Kwame Anthony Appiah, Achille Mbembe, Kwasi Wiredu, Kwame Gyekye, Tsenay Serequeberhahn, and Henry Odera Oruka.The book challenges western-centric visions of an African future by demonstrating the richness of thought that can be found in African and Afrodiasporic philosophy. The book shows how thinkers such as Serequeberhan have criticised the inconsistencies in Kant’s work, whereas others such as Wiredu, Gyekye, Appiah and Mbembe have referenced his work more positively and developed progressive political concepts such as the metanational state; partial cosmopolitanism and Afropolitanism. The book goes on to consider how Mbembe and Mudimbe have responded to Foucault’s ideas in deciphering the various Western, African and Afrodiasporic discourses of knowledge on Africa. The book concludes by considering various theories of intercultural exchange, from Gyekye’s cultural borrowing, to Appiah’s conversation across boundaries, Wiredu’s cross cultural dialogue, Mbembe’s thinking outside the frame, Serequeberhan’s dialogue at a distance, and Oruka’s call for global re-distribution and a new ecophilosophical attitude to safeguard human existence on the planet.This book invites us all to engage in intercultural dialogue and mutual respect for different cultural creations. It will be an important read for researchers in Philosophy wherever they are in the world.
Intercultural Utopias: Public Intellectuals, Cultural Experimentation, and Ethnic Pluralism in Colombia
by Joanne RappaportAlthough only 2 percent of Colombia's population identifies as indigenous, that figure belies the significance of the country's indigenous movement. More than a quarter of the Colombian national territory belongs to indigenous groups, and 80 percent of the country's mineral resources are located in native-owned lands. In this innovative ethnography, Joanne Rappaport draws on research she has conducted in Colombia over the past decade--and particularly on her collaborations with activists--to explore the country's multifaceted indigenous movement, which, after almost 35 years, continues to press for rights to live as indigenous people in a pluralistic society that recognizes them as citizens. Focusing on the intellectuals involved in the movement, Rappaport traces the development of a distinctly indigenous modernity in Latin America--one that defies common stereotypes of separatism or a romantic return to the past. As she reveals, this emerging form of modernity is characterized by interethnic communication and the reframing of selectively appropriated Western research methodologies within indigenous philosophical frameworks. Intercultural Utopias centers on southwestern Colombia's Cauca region, a culturally and linguistically heterogeneous area well known for its history of indigenous mobilization and its pluralist approach to ethnic politics. Rappaport interweaves the stories of individuals with an analysis of the history of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca and other indigenous organizations. She presents insights into the movement and the intercultural relationships that characterize it from the varying perspectives of regional indigenous activists, nonindigenous urban intellectuals dedicated to the fight for indigenous rights, anthropologists, local teachers, shamans, and native politicians.
Intercultural Variation in Family Research and Theory: Implications for Cross-National Studies Volumes I & II
by Roma S Hanks Marvin B SussmanIntercultural Variation in Family Research and Theory sets forth 23 critical reviews in a 2-volume set that document the development of family research and theory in various societies around the world. Focusing on modern research while drawing on the historical roots of theoretical and methodological approaches employed in the study of family, this collection not only increases your knowledge about the status of family research in various countries, but also inspires cross-national research among researchers and scholars. The societies being studied have been grouped by region: Volume I contains the set&’s Introduction and contributions from the Far East, the Baltic region, Australia, and South Africa. Volume II covers the Middle East, Western Europe, Scandinavia, and also includes the Index.The materials in these two volumes are the result of the charge given to scholars of 23 societies to review the development of family theory and research in their homelands. Their obligation was to provide an analytic report telling a story from their perspective of reality. The book&’s editors now present some of the commonality of experiences and trends of the researchers and interpret country differences and similarities from their writings. Intercultural Variation in Family Research and Theory holds numerous suggestions for your investigations into the family field. You&’ll find that the set adds to the body of knowledge on comparative family analysis and raises concerns and issues for future research. The questions anddressed in this book include:how gender of the investigator influences choice of research topicshow funding sources shape the research agendawhat influence a researcher&’s career trajectory has on research topics, methods, and procedureswhy psychological and sociological frameworks and methodologies are commonly used in family researchhow political policy influences and dictates theory development and research what to do about the multitude of new questions that inevitably arise from such intercultural research
Interculturality in Institutions: Symbols, Practices and Identities (Culture in Policy Making: The Symbolic Universes of Social Action)
by Marilena Fatigante Cristina Zucchermaglio Francesca AlbyThis book provides qualitative analyses of intercultural sense making in a variety of institutional contexts. It relies on the assumption that in an increasingly culturally diverse world, individuals often enter contexts that have communal, historically determined and stable sets of values, norms and expected identities, with little cultural compass to find their bearings in them. The book goes beyond interpreting differences in people’s ethnic or linguistic roots and discusses instead people’s interpretive efforts to navigate different sociocultural situations. The contributors examine such situations in educational, organizational, medical and community settings and look at how participants with different levels of sociocultural competences (such as, migrant patients, migrant adult learners, children) try to cope with institutional constraints and expectations, how they understand symbols, practices and identities in institutional contexts, and how their creative adjustments come to light. This book provides insights from the fields of psychology, education, anthropology and linguistics, and is for a wide readership interested in cultural meaning-making.
Interculturele gespreksvoering: Theorie En Praktijk Van Het Topoi-model
by Edwin HoffmanDit boek helpt om verschillen en misverstanden in de interculturele gespreksvoering op te sporen en aan te pakken. Het is geschikt voor het hoger beroepsonderwijs, voor het wetenschappelijk onderwijs, en voor de nascholing van professionals.Interculturele gespreksvoering, Theorie en Praktijk van het TOPOI-model is gebaseerd op het TOPOI-model. TOPOI is een praktisch analyse- en interventiekader en staat voor Taal, Ordening, Personen, Organisatie en Inzet: de vijf gebieden in de communicatie waar zich diverse verschillen en misverstanden kunnen voordoen. Het TOPOI-model gaat uit van een systeemtheoretische benadering. De kern: interculturele communicatie is interpersoonlijke communicatie. Het is de interactie tussen unieke personen met eigen specifieke contexten, en met mogelijke verschillen die divers en multidimensionaal zijn. Divers omdat verschillen kunnen samenhangen met de cultuur van andere collectieven dan alleen het land, de etnische groep of de religie. Meerdimensionaal: omdat verschillen behalve cultureel, ook persoonlijk karakteristiek, sociaal, biologisch, organisatorisch, psychologisch, juridisch, of anderszins kunnen zijn.Deze vierde druk van Interculturele gespreksvoering is drastisch herzien. Het boek is flink ingekort, geactualiseerd en toegankelijk geschreven zonder afbreuk te doen aan het theoretische fundament en de praktische toepasbaarheid van het TOPOI-model. Het boek is aantrekkelijk door praktijktheoretische inzichten, talloze praktijkvoorbeelden en de toepassing van het TOPOI-model op verschillende praktijksituaties. Dit boek heeft een begeleidende website met extra verwerkingsopdrachten en extra toepassingen van het TOPOI-model op praktijksituaties.Dr. Edwin Hoffman is zelfstandig trainer, adviseur en onderzoeker interculturele communicatie en diversiteitscompetentie. Daarnaast geeft hij onder meer les aan de Alpen Adria Universiteit in Klagenfurt, Oostenrijk.
Interdependence and Uncertainty: A study of the building industry
by Charles CrichtonTavistock Press was established as a co-operative venture between the Tavistock Institute and Routledge & Kegan Paul (RKP) in the 1950s to produce a series of major contributions across the social sciences. This volume is part of a 2001 reissue of a selection of those important works which have since gone out of print, or are difficult to locate. Published by Routledge, 112 volumes in total are being brought together under the name The International Behavioural and Social Sciences Library: Classics from the Tavistock Press. Reproduced here in facsimile, this volume was originally published in 1966 and is available individually. The collection is also available in a number of themed mini-sets of between 5 and 13 volumes, or as a complete collection.
Interdependence In A World Of Unequals: African-arab-oecd Economic Cooperation For Development
by Dunstan M. WaiThe accumulation of surplus petrofunds by some Arab countries, far exceeding the present absorptive capacities of their economies, has given rise to the idea of a major new development effort in sub-Saharan Africa, financed by Arab surpluses and supported by OECD technology and expertise. The guiding principle in the idea of a tripartite partnership is that, given a proper allocation of responsibilities among the three regional participants, cooperation would benefit all parties. The Arab countries, it is argued, would gain experience in management and in the acquisition of technology as a result of increased transactions with Western industrialized countries. Funds from the Arab countries would catalyze accelerated development in sub-Saharan Africa and would provide a desirable alternative to OECD-intermediated flows of capital and trade between Africa and the Arab world; this could help reduce Africa's dependence on the OECD countries for technology, expertise, financing, and markets. And finally, the OECD members would benefit politically from an effective development effort involving their response to initiatives taken by the South, and would gain economically by increasing their exports as African and Arab absorptive capacities rose and by continuing to exercise management functions in the context of development. To further explore the potential of this triangular cooperation, a group of experts from Africa, the Arab Middle East, Western Europe, and North America held a conference at the Rockefeller Foundation conference center in Bellagio, Italy, in May 1980. In their discussions--the basis of this book--they identified and analyzed a wide range of problems and issues involved. They concluded that the central issue is whether trilateral projects of appropriate design for the African setting can be identified and implemented through arrangements that ensure an equitable and effective distribution of responsibilities, risks, and benefits among the participants,
Interdependencies Between Fertility and Women's Labour Supply
by Anna MatysiakThe book explores interlinkages between women's employment and fertility at both a macro- and a micro-level in EU member states, Norway and Switzerland. Similarly as many other studies on the topic, it refers to the cross-country variation in the macro-context for explaining cross-country differences in women's labour supply and fertility levels. However, in contrast to other studies, which mainly focus on Western Europe, it extends the discussion to Central and Eastern European countries. Furthermore, it looks at the macro-context from a multi-dimensional perspective, indicating its four dimensions as relevant for fertility and women's employment choices: economic (living standards), institutional (family policies), structural (labour market structures), and cultural (social norms). A unique feature of the study is the development of indices that measure the intensity of institutional, structural, and cultural incompatibilities between women's employment and fertility. These indices are used for ranking European countries from the perspective of the country-specific conditions for work and family reconciliation. A country where these conditions are the worst, but where women are additionally perceived as important income providers, is picked up for an in-depth empirical study of the interrelationship between fertility and women's employment choices. Finally, against the review of theoretical concepts predominantly used for studying interdependencies between fertility and women's labour supply the book assesses the micro-level empirical studies available on the topic and proposes an analytical approach for modelling the two variables. Thereby, it also contributes to methodological developments in the field.
Interdisciplinarities: Research Process, Method, and the Body of Law (Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies)
by Didi Herman Connal ParsleyThis book illuminates methodology in legal research by bringing together interdisciplinary scholars, who employ a diverse set of methodologies, to address a specific shared research challenge: ‘the body’. The contributors were asked a question: if you were invited to contribute to an edited book on ‘the body’, where would you start and then where would you go? The result is a self-reflective discussion of how and where researchers engage with methodological practices. The contributors draw on their own interdisciplinary research experiences to explore how ‘the body’ might be addressed in their work, and the resources they would deploy in order to carry out the task. This ‘book within a book’ is innovative in both content and format. It provides a rare insight into how top interdisciplinary legal scholars go about making decisions about their research. The shared device of ‘the body’ allows the volume to trace a number of rich approaches into the process of research as practiced by these diverse scholars. In presenting thinking and research in action, the volume offers a new, self-reflective view on the much-addressed theme of the body, as well as taking a fresh approach to the historically vexed problem of research methodology in legal studies.
Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural Sciences (CRESC)
by Andrew Barry and Georgina BornThe idea that research should become more interdisciplinary has become commonplace. According to influential commentators, the unprecedented complexity of problems such as climate change or the social implications of biomedicine demand interdisciplinary efforts integrating both the social and natural sciences. In this context, the question of whether a given knowledge practice is too disciplinary, or interdisciplinary, or not disciplinary enough has become an issue for governments, research policy makers and funding agencies. Interdisciplinarity, in short, has emerged as a key political preoccupation; yet the term tends to obscure as much as illuminate the diverse practices gathered under its rubric. This volume offers a new approach to theorising interdisciplinarity, showing how the boundaries between the social and natural sciences are being reconfigured. It examines the current preoccupation with interdisciplinarity, notably the ascendance of a particular discourse in which it is associated with a transformation in the relations between science, technology and society. Contributors address attempts to promote collaboration between, on the one hand, the natural sciences and engineering and, on the other, the social sciences, arts and humanities. From ethnography in the IT industry to science and technology studies, environmental science to medical humanities, cybernetics to art-science, the collection interrogates how interdisciplinarity has come to be seen as a solution not only to enhancing relations between science and society, but the pursuit of accountability and the need to foster innovation. Interdisciplinarity is essential reading for scholars, students and policy makers across the social sciences, arts and humanities, including anthropology, geography, sociology, science and technology studies and cultural studies, as well as all those engaged in interdisciplinary research. It will have particular relevance for those concerned with the knowledge economy, science policy, environmental politics, applied anthropology, ELSI research, medical humanities, and art-science.
Interdisciplinarity and Climate Change: Transforming Knowledge and Practice for Our Global Future
by Roy BhaskarInterdisciplinarity and Climate Change is a major new book addressing one of the most challenging questions of our time. Its unique standpoint is based on the recognition that effective and coherent interdisciplinarity is necessary to deal with the issue of climate change, and the multitude of linked phenomena which both constitute and connect to it. In the opening chapter, Roy Bhaskar makes use of the extensive resources of critical realism to articulate a comprehensive framework for multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and cross-disciplinary understanding, one which duly takes account of ontological as well as epistemological considerations. Many of the subsequent chapters seek to show how this general approach can be used to make intellectual sense of the complex phenomena in and around the issue of climate change, including our response to it. Among the issues discussed, in a number of graphic and compelling studies, by a range of distinguished contributors, both activists and scholars, are: The dangers of reducing all environmental, energy and climate gas issues to questions of carbon dioxide emissions The problems of integrating natural and social scientific work and the perils of monodisciplinary tunnel vision The consequences of the neglect of issues of consumption in climate policy The desirability of a care-based ethics and of the integration of cultural considerations into climate policy The problem of relating theoretical knowledge to practical action in contemporary democratic societies Interdisciplinarity and Climate Change is essential reading for all serious students of the fight against climate change, the interactions between governmental bodies, and critical realism.
Interdisciplinarity and Social Justice: Revisioning Academic Accountability (SUNY series, Praxis: Theory in Action)
by Joe Parker Ranu Samantrai Mary RomeroIn the 1960s and 1970s, activists who focused on the academy as a key site for fostering social change began by querying the assumptions of the traditional disciplines and transforming their curricula, putting into place women's and ethnic studies programs that changed both the subject and methods of scholarship. The pattern of scholars and activists joining forces to open fields of research and teaching continued in subsequent decades, and recent additions, including critical race studies, queer studies, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies, take as their epistemological foundation the inherently political nature of all knowledge production. Interdisciplinarity and Social Justice seizes this opportune moment in the history of interdisciplinary fields to review their effects on our intellectual and political landscape, to evaluate their ability to deliver promised social benefits, and to consider their futures. The essays collected in this volume detail histories of the interdisciplinary fields that emerged from social movements, examine how effectively they have achieved their goals of intellectual and social change, and consider the challenges they now face inside and outside the academy.
Interdisciplinarity and Wellbeing: A Critical Realist General Theory of Interdisciplinarity
by Berth Danermark Leigh Price Roy BhaskarIn this book, the authors provide a much-needed general theory of interdisciplinarity and relate it to health/wellbeing research and professional practice. In so doing they make it possible for practitioners of the different disciplines to communicate without contradiction or compromise, resolving the tensions that beset much interdisciplinary work. Such a general theory is only possible if we assume that there is more to being (ontology) than empirical being (what we can measure directly). Therefore, the unique approach to interdisciplinarity applied in this book starts from ontology, namely that there is a multimechanismicity (a multiplicity of mechanisms) in open systems, and then moves to epistemology. By contrast, the mainstream approach, which fails to acknowledge ontology, is “unserious” and tends to result in a methodological hierarchy, unconducive of interdisciplinarity, in which empiricist science is overtly or tacitly assumed to be the superior version of science. This book is primarily aimed at those people interested in improving health and wellbeing – such as researchers, policy-makers, educators, and general practitioners. However, it will also be useful to academics engaged in the broader academic debate on interdisciplinary metatheory.