The university and interdisciplinarity

pp. 45-63

in: Francis X. Remedios, Val Dusek, Knowing humanity in the social world, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

This chapter is on Fuller's view that the university is the premier site of knowledge production for the public good. Fuller defends the university against the impact of neoliberalism in which clients influence how academic knowledge is produced. In this context "interdisciplinarity" becomes a battleground. Fuller prefers a version of interdisciplinarity that is regenerative of the university in which academics reach beyond their own fields to a neoliberal version of interdisciplinarity in which academics work in teams for clients on projects. With agent-oriented social epistemology, Fuller's view of interdisciplinarity is that it is internal to agent to organize the disciplines versus object-oriented social epistemology in which disciplines are organized externally by experts. Fuller's view of interdisciplinarity is contrasted to Frodeman's view of transdisciplinarity.