Bereichsbild Transdisziplinäre Konzepte und Methoden: Ausschnitt Notizpapiere zwischen Buchrücken

Focus of Research  Transdisciplinary Concepts and Methods

 

Project Selection:

 

 

Bergmann, Matthias et al., 2005: Quality Criteria of Transdisciplinary Research. A Guide for the Formative Evaluation of Research Projects. ISOE-Studientexte, No 13 / English Version, Frankfurt am Main

Becker, E. (2002): Transformations of social and ecological Issues into Transdisciplinary Research. In: UNESCO/Eolss Publishers (Eds.): Knowledge for Sustainable Development. An Insight into the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS, Volume III. Paris, Oxford, 949-963, Version 2008: Download (408 kb)

Transdisciplinarity

Globalization, climate change, demographic transition and environmental impact are current examples of problems having a new kind of structure: within them societal action and ecological effect are so closely intertwined that the boundaries between society and nature become increasingly fuzzy. A complexity of causal processes is characteristic of social-ecological problems, with such processes running at different spatial, temporal and social levels locally or globally, as current event or long-term effect, as part of everyday life or as part of policies instituted by world-wide regimes or multinational organizations.

Faced with such complex problems, what is needed is a new form of knowledge production and a new way of dealing with (non-)knowledge such that capability of a society to act is increased. The individual disciplines into which science is divided reach their limits here, and transdisciplinary cooperation becomes an important challenge. Only through such cooperation will it be possible to recognize, analyze and find policy solutions for complexly structured social-ecological problems.

In this context the questions concerning which states of affairs are problematic cannot be decided solely on the basis of objective scientific criteria; rather interests and values must also be taken into account. What a society or part of a society sees as a problem depends critically on how knowledge of a given state of affairs is evaluated by and for various societal actors, as well as how accessible this knowledge is. With an increase in the complexity of problems the uncertainty of claims to knowledge becomes more and more apparent. This uncertainty, however, stands in conflict with the societal expectation that research provide reliable knowledge that is relevant to and useful for societal decision making processes. Transdisciplinary research confronts this modern problem of knowledge explicitly.

This presupposes that the relevant societal actors are involved in the research process, with their view of the problem and their stores of everyday and practical knowledge being integrated with a scientific view of the problem and scientific knowledge. In this way transdisciplinary research conceptualizes and organizes research as a learning process undergone together by society and science, a process that is, moreover, reflexive. In dealing with problems, then, transdisciplinary research transcends disciplinary and faculty boundaries, as well as those between scientific knowledge and relevant practical knowledge. By means of a process of knowledge integration it becomes possible then to guarantee the connectivity of discipline-defined subprojects, formalizing the results as new scientific knowledge and questions, while at the same time producing policy relevant strategies for action aimed at solving problems.