Co-edited by Andrew Barry and Georgina Born, Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural Sciences will be released by Routledge on Mar.29, 2013.

 

The idea that research should become more interdisciplinary has become commonplace. According to influential commentators, the unprecedented complexity of problems such as climate change or the social implications of biomedicine demand interdisciplinary efforts integrating both the social and natural sciences. In this context, the question of whether a given knowledge practice is too disciplinary, or interdisciplinary, or not disciplinary enough has become an issue for governments, research policy makers and funding agencies.

 

This volume offers a new approach to theorizing interdisciplinarity, showing how the boundaries between the social and natural sciences are being reconfigured and examining the current preoccupation with interdisciplinarity. Contributors address attempts to promote collaboration between, on the one hand, the natural sciences and engineering and, on the other, the social sciences, arts and humanities. According to contributors, interdisciplinarity has come to be seen as a solution not only to enhance relations between science and society, but the pursuit of accountability and the need to foster innovation.

 

The book is essential reading for scholars, students and policy makers across the social sciences, arts and humanities, including anthropology, geography, sociology, science and technology studies and cultural studies, as well as all those engaged in interdisciplinary research. It will have particular relevance for those concerned with the knowledge economy, science policy, environmental politics, applied anthropology, medical humanities, and art-science.

 

Andrew Barry is Professor of Political Geography at the University of Oxford.

Georgina Born is Professor of Music and Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

 

The Chinese version appeared in Chinese Social Sciences Today, No. 408, Jan.23, 2013

(Source: Routledge)

                                                                                                                                       (Edited by Yang Min)