[Air-l] What is a discipline.

[Danny Butt]

Hi,

Matt's question is a good one, and I heartily endorse his assertion of the
difficulties facing transdisciplinary scholars, a camp I'd slot myself in
(or out of :).

If we look at the *recent* history of cultural studies alongside the
commercial institutions of new media, the assertions of epistemological
novelty and the end of everything (such as traditional disciplinary
activity) are often associated with smart-arses leveraging their cultural
capital for essentially self-promotional purposes. Maybe that's a bit harsh,
but I get the feeling sometimes that the racial and feminist critiques of
disciplinary exclusion have been heavily appropriated by people with a lot
of socio-economic privilege to extend by avoiding issues of accountability
to disciplines, cultures and socio-economic locations. I guess I'd count
myself among that group at various points.

Growing fields (though it would be interesting to hear from those in "named"
programmes such as "Internet Studies" about how their enrolments are doing
after the crash lol) tend to produce Pollyanna-ish discourses that gloss
over these issues. Freed from the weighty constraints of disciplinary
history, how many of us haven't enjoyed some sense of frisson at being in
the middle of something new, exciting and developing? This is probably why
so much new media discourse (particularly in the U.S.) takes place in
Traweek's "culture of no culture", where ideas circulate with little
reflexive positioning or critique.  As Dilbert put it during the boom, "Hey,
I go to work, I get paid a million bucks. What's not to like?".

So I guess I'm interested in an ethics of interdisciplinarity -  from which
traditions do we draw from for our ethical frameworks, when these are no
longer given? By this I don't mean the work on "researching online human
subjects" which Charles Ess and co. have covered admirably. I guess I'm
asking about an "ethics of being interdisciplinary". So I suppose this is
more of a philosophical question (well outside my expertise:). And I was
sure this post started out about institutional strategy! Anyway, any leads?

Regards,

Danny

Matthew Allen wrote on 6/11/02 2:06 PM:

> the boundaries or terrain which they enclose.  I would assert that the
> difficulty for transdisciplinary scholars, such as found in areas of study
> such as Internet Studies, is not in traversing the ground, nor crossing the
> borders, of the many disciplines which they might encounter; rather, the
> difficulty is one of connection with and deep understanding of processes.

-- 
http://www.dannybutt.net