{"title":"Conflict, Controversy, Compromise, and Compression: The Pragmatics of Transdisciplinary (Development) Projects","authors":"Richard Bärnthaler","doi":"10.14764/10.ASEAS-0038","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Drawing upon qualitative interviews, this article narrates central controversies and conflicts that scholars working in the field of “development” face in their daily work. Based on how these conflicts and controversies have been reconstructed, I place them in the discourse on transdisciplinarity, drawing into question the claim to authority and novelty around the term “transdisciplinarity” that Western institutions have attributed themselves with in recent years. Finally, I turn to the question of collaboration: How can transdisciplinary projects deal with the fact of pluralism on the one hand and the necessity to work towards shared problem definitions, solutions, and strategies on the other? In this context, I make a case against transdisciplinarity’s often-held conceptions of harmony, comprehensiveness and total systems as well as unity and for compromise, partiality and joint contextual strategies. The “art of deliberation”, thus, replaces the notion of transcendence as a central competence of transdisciplinary scholars.","PeriodicalId":37990,"journal":{"name":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2020-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"6","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.14764/10.ASEAS-0038","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 6
Abstract
Drawing upon qualitative interviews, this article narrates central controversies and conflicts that scholars working in the field of “development” face in their daily work. Based on how these conflicts and controversies have been reconstructed, I place them in the discourse on transdisciplinarity, drawing into question the claim to authority and novelty around the term “transdisciplinarity” that Western institutions have attributed themselves with in recent years. Finally, I turn to the question of collaboration: How can transdisciplinary projects deal with the fact of pluralism on the one hand and the necessity to work towards shared problem definitions, solutions, and strategies on the other? In this context, I make a case against transdisciplinarity’s often-held conceptions of harmony, comprehensiveness and total systems as well as unity and for compromise, partiality and joint contextual strategies. The “art of deliberation”, thus, replaces the notion of transcendence as a central competence of transdisciplinary scholars.
期刊介绍:
The Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies (ASEAS) is an international, interdisciplinary and open access social sciences journal covering a variety of topics (culture, economics, geography, politics, society) from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Topics should be related to Southeast Asia, but are not restricted to the geographical region, when spatial and political borders of Southeast Asia are crossed or transcended, e.g., in the case of linguistics, diaspora groups or forms of socio-cultural transfer. ASEAS publishes two focus issues per year and we welcome out-of-focus submissions at any time. The journal invites both established as well as young scholars to present research results and theoretical and methodical discussions, to report about on-going research projects or field studies, to publish conference reports, to conduct interviews with experts in the field, and to review relevant books. Articles can be submitted in German or English.