[Air-l] What is a discipline.

Irene Berkowitz berkowitz at mail.temple.edu
Wed Nov 6 11:49:54 PST 2002


Dear All,

Since I more or less posed the original question, allow me to say I
would not assume at all that I came from a position of determining
"institutional strategy," nor, however, would I say that this shouldn't
be an issue of concern.   I may have a more difficult time than others
separating the issue of ethics (I particularly like all of the framing
of interdisciplinary ethics), institutional strategies, political
economics and the notion of processes of discipline, and more
specifically defined "disciplinary space."   This comes from my bias of
trying to look at this question in terms of "the historical versus
ahistorical perspectives."  

I am simply thinking that we need to examine not only the issue(s) of
whether "Internet ______" is a discipline, but rather what is/are the
issues that lie at the heart of the debate.  I am most concerned that to
the degree that we don't try to grapple with these definitions we are
easily consumed by hegemony and the processes that define context for
us, without our conscious intervention into the more subtle actions
which ultimately have significant consequences.  In particular, I think
the ethical issues are particularly vulnerable in scenarios experiencing
radical shifting of boundaries, and random blending of "stuff."  In
fact, I think that this is exactly the kinds of scenarios that lead to
the kinds of corporate scandals that have emerged within the past ten
years.  This type of reasoning takes me right back to my inability to
easily separate institutional structures from cultural processes and
ultimately issues of great social import such as ethics.

There have been many excellent points raised by a number of people in
this discussion, but I am also yet not willing to cave in on the point
that the construct of academic discipline,  is not central to the
political and economic organization of the university and therefore is
integrally linked to the university's primary social institutional
functions, and certainly it's ethical behavior within the society. 

I think Matt's post is very intriguing re: the processes of a
discipline, and I whole-heartedly agree with almost all of what Charles
is saying.  I guess I'm suggesting that it is within these processes
that the political and economic nature of organization will manifest
itself to define the "space" or territory of a discipline, and this is
certainly one of the places that ethics becomes central to the processes
and where our antennae need to be focused or we easily can become
misguided.  I think beyond interesting discussion, we have a serious
responsibility to try to bring as much light to these issues as possible
and that strategies are part of a legitimate discussion of ethics.

I should hope that more people will continue to post.  The range of
discussion has been enlightening and quite worthy of our effort.


IB



Irene Berkowitz
Coordinator for Curricular Publications and Systems
Office of the Vice Provost
Temple University
tel. 215-204-7596  fax. 215-204 3175
berkowitz at mail.temple.edu

>>> cmess at lib.drury.edu 11/06/2002 1:36:02 PM >>>
radhika gajjala writes

> ethics of inter/trans/disciplinarity sounds pretty good - but who
will lay
> down the Law on this one?

Hmmm.  
It seems to me that aoir-ists, as interdisciplinarians par excellence,
should attempt to articulate these ethics.

Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but my experience with the ethics
working committee convinces me that

a) we - by which I mean, a bunch of different people working out of a
bunch
of different disciplines in a bunch of different kinds of institutions
and
cultural contexts - already have some sense (partly overt and
articulate /
partly covert and tacit) of what such an ethics would "look like,"
based on
our experiences, our own ethical reflections, etc.
(In particular: one of the most important sources for the development
of the
working committee's guidelines were the ethical reflections of many
different researchers in a variety of contexts.  In addition to some of
the
hallmark articles and values statements, these individual works meant
we did
not have to start de novo and in a vacuum: we were able instead to
begin
exploring some paths worked out in practice that turned out to be very
helpful and substantive.)

b) with enough good will and patience (in the case of the working
committee,
nearly two years - but hey, that's not much in the scope of the history
of
world philosophies - smile!) people from a variety of disciplines,
experiences, and cultures, can achieve a reasonable degree of success
both
in articulating commonly shared values and orientations, and in marking
out
irreducible differences that help demarcate important distinctions
between
disciplines, methodologies, and larger cultural/national traditions.

It would seem to me, then, that an ethics of
inter/trans/disciplinarity
would share with the current ethical guidelines precisely an emphasis
on a
pluralism that avoid both monolithic dogmatism (what most of us seem to
find
unsatisfactory about "disciplines" in the narrow sense) and a sheer
relativism that by endorsing everything may not endorse much of
anything
(and renders attempting to make qualitative judgments about research
and
scholarship more or less a meaningless exercise).

It would also share with those guidelines a sense of on-going dialogue
and
openness - i.e., a sense that discerning and articulating these sorts
of
things is very much a continuing process, one open to pursuing new
insights
and new directions.  (A good thing we have these documents on the web -
they
can be changed easily!)

Finally, if such an ethics were to have these characteristics, they
would
not look entirely like the Law (e.g., as brought down from on high,
carved
in stone, by a single prophet who enjoyed exclusive access to the
Absolute)
but more like an emergent _ethos_, a description and prescription of
what
our best habits (ethos), our best practices might be under the current
circumstances.
(This may be part of radhika's point?)
They would be the work of a collective dialogue - one marked by
sometimes
passionate but respectful debate over important differences.
They would be the result of a lot of hard work - but also a lot of
fun.

In sum, I'd encourage aoir-ists to jump in and start articulating!

cheers,

Charles Ess
Director, Interdisciplinary Studies Center
Drury University
900 N. Benton Ave.                          Voice: 417-873-7230
Springfield, MO  65802  USA            FAX: 417-873-7435
Home page:  http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html 
Co-chair, CATaC 2002: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/~sudweeks/catac02/ 

Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23

> From: radhika gajjala <radhika at cyberdiva.org>
> Reply-To: air-l at aoir.org 
> Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2002 07:16:05 -0500
> To: air-l at aoir.org 
> Subject: Re: [Air-l] What is a discipline.
> 
> 
> ethics of inter/trans/disciplinarity sounds pretty good - but who
will lay
> down the Law on this one?


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