Conscious Use, Collaborative Research and 'Interdisciplinarities'

The spark for my paper is a Chinese doll coming to a Swedish day care centre. The doll was conceived in a Vinnova research project related to the toxic contamination of our environments.[1] My part dealt with i.a. political economy and methods.

The proposed paper focuses on how the sustainability research community need to integrate the process of doing the research with what used to be called ‘the communication phase’ of the research.

A conclusion in my part of the Vinnova research project was that a number of 'interdisciplinarities' must be used, constructed and/or confronted in order to create images for a political economy of the Environment.

My strategy was and is to confront widely different knowledge interests. One of the many families of knowledge interests which emerge through such exercises can be illustrated by today's quest for 'social union environmentalism'. A precursor was visible in Sweden of the 1970s. We can thus understand the contradictions facing 'social union environmentalism' today and imagine a landscape where new patterns of consumption might be created. Such a vision is needed in spite of the fact that success has as yet been limited.

In the proposed paper I try to find methods which provide more room for i.a. 'interdisciplinarity, boundary-spanning, and transparent multiple partisanships’.

Interdisciplinarity is of course an accepted concept. It has been an ideal of the academic wing of the environmental movement ever since the dawn of the new environmental consciousness. But many attempts have failed. Fear that immersion in conceptual problems will delay projects, have made research teams reluctant to devote the time needed for 'translating'.

Boundary-spanning and the importance of boundary-spanning individuals have been discussed in many disciplines. But the intricacies of bringing boundary-spanning into academia have been poorly understood specifically in the more positivist oriented sciences.

Transparent multiple partisanships is a worthy aim for practioneers turned academics. Accepting such hybrids might help bringing the academic community into more fruitful dialogues with other actors who want to contribute to a reversal of the global ecological degradation.

My submission relates to Stream D1 Media and Public Understanding

[1] Hollander, E. (2011): The Doll, the Globe and the Boomerang – Chemical Risks in the Future Introduced by a Chinese Doll Coming to Sweden - University of Gävle, (Research report 2) Sweden 2011. Many concepts used in this abstract are developed there. Important references are also provided.