Paper short abstract:

This paper suggests that, rather than threatening disciplinary distinction, interdisciplinarity supports specialist areas, both by enabling exchanges of knowledge between them, and by creating collaborative networks which support the academy and its intellectual independence.

Paper long abstract:

Academics with shared disciplinary interests construct distinctive identities and perform and represent these in relation to others. They do so via epistemes composed of particular theories, concepts, terminologies, methods and outputs (Strathern 2008). These provide both the sense of belonging that is central to identity, and specific forms of social capital, which provide access to funding, academic status, and security.

In a HE sector dominated by free-market ideology and extreme governmentality in all funding, managerial and assessment processes, disciplinary categories provide competitive forms of distinction which seek to arbitrate ‘taste’ in intellectual matters (Bourdieu 1994). Interdisciplinarity is often perceived as a potential breach of boundaries, compromising disciplinary epistemes through incursion, appropriation and even pollution, not only by other disciplines, but by attempts to commoditize research for a ‘knowledge economy’. There is certainly cause for concern when specialist knowledges cease to be valorised and supported. But interdisciplinarity is not the problem: in the past, the academy has flourished with free-flowing exchanges of knowledge between specialist areas. A recognition that such exchanges are enabled by what Strathern calls ‘common origins’, and that they are foundational to academic well-being, suggests that, rather than threatening disciplinary distinction, interdisciplinarity may be the key to maintaining the academy’s collective identity and social capital. Anthropology is particularly well placed, not only to engage with interdisciplinary research, but also to understand the potential of collaborative networks and values which – by promoting robust exchanges of knowledge and cooperative endeavour – serve to uphold the intellectual independence of the academy.