Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Problem-focused research 609
There is no doubt about it - the opposition between multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary
research is clear only in extreme cases. One is tempted to link the
forms of disciplinary association to a specific type of research since disciplinar
integration may be highly advanced in basic research, but is less so in
problem-focused research, and still less so (if it is not actually absent) in applied
research. But is this not a mind's eye view?
Moreover, in this series of examples designed to throw light on the various
degrees of integration of research, two dimensions have been mingled : teamwork
and the establishment of closer relations between disciplines. Examples
a, b and c refer to researchers and to methods of team-work, examples d and e
to borrowings amongst the disciplines and to their mutual penetration.
Another variable to be taken into account is the institutional structure, in
accordance with which the degree of co-ordination and integration of research
may vary - that is, according to whether researchers work in a single institution
or in several. Viewed from this angle two variables stand out: the situation,
firstly, in which there is institutional integration in so far as the research
workers all form part of the same institution, but do not integrate their research
activities, each studying a separate subordinate problem; and secondly, the situation
in which the researchers belong to different institutions, yet genuinely
integrate their research work and findings, drafting joint reports on these.
In it not possible that interdisciplinary research, which involves questioning
and listening carefully to fellow research workers, was a simpler matter when
one and the same scientist succeeded in penetrating neighbouring disciplines
and mastering them?
It must be remembered in this connexion that specialization as we know it
today is a recent phenomenon, and the great authors of the past - less preoccupied
with problem-focused and planned research than our contemporaries -
were in fact doing interdisciplinary work before the term had been invented:
Aristotle, Thomas More, Rousseau, Montesquieu were at once political
scientists, moralists, educators, sociologists and jurists. But today the fields of
research have increased in number and scope to such an extent that interdisciplinary
polyvalency can no longer be attained by any one individual, and multidisciplinary
team-work is agreed by all to be essential.
Is there not, after all, a certain danger of arbitrary eclecticism when a single
individual makes use of data from several disciplines ? Is there not a risk that his
work wil be less rich than what results from the careful collaboration of several
researchers, well trained in their various disciplines ?
Are interdisciplinary efforts to be excluded from the domain of problemfocused
research? A priori, it appears not. And it ought even to be added that
scientifically planned action will be all to the better if it is based on the results
of interdisciplinary research than if it depends on juxtapositions of data derived
from several disciplines.
Things must, however, be considered on a factual and not merely abstract
plane. It is ii~t easy to draw the line between multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary
research, and the dificulty is increased when the distinction between
studies conducted with a view to action and theoretical research remains vague.