Interdisciplinary Work?

[Dana Lutenegger]

Hello,

My interests include Chinese culture, language, and history, which end up falling into a lot of different workgroups.  I have tentatively joined the history workgroup, but should I join other work groups? Should there be interdisciplinary workgroups?

[Larry Sanger]

This is an excellent question, and I like the way you put it ("Should there be interdisciplinary workgroups?").

The question is really whether there should be "Area Studies" workgroups, that straddle history, language, politics, etc.  Or should there be, as a subgroup of History, Chinese History, and as a subgroup of Linguistics, Chinese Language?  If Area Studies starts dividing up the world geographically, does that mean that the history workgroup has no control over Chinese History as a topic?

It's worries like these that make me uncomfortable with interdisciplinary groups, but I'm very much open to reasoned debate about the issue.

[Zachary Pruckowski]

If you join the Linguistics, Literature, and History workgroups, and say that you intend to emphasize on Chinese topics, then that should work well.  If an article crosses into two or more workgroups, then we can require both editorial groups to give their OK (via their editors) before approving it.

[kalital]

The question is really whether there should be "Area Studies" workgroups, that straddle history, language, politics, etc.  Or should there be, as a subgroup of History, Chinese History, and as a subgroup of Linguistics, Chinese Language?  If Area Studies starts dividing up the world geographically, does that mean that the history workgroup has no control over Chinese History as a topic?

I think this is a reasonable concern, and also one that can be answered straightforwardly, if not briefly.  I can give examples from both African American Studies and Women's Studies.

In both those areas, you can think of the "Mothership" as the more encompassing entity: African American Studies or Women's Studies.  But most of us in those larger areas are also trained in more than one discipline: history, literature, anthropology, political science, etc.  The fact is that most of the people who study African American literature, or women's literature, or African American history, or women's history wind up on board the Mothership.  The reason that this affiliation with the Mothership takes place is because we find ourselves marginalized in the traditional disciplines in which we're trained. 

It's no cultural or historical accident that the literature on African American history is largely written by African Americans (or women's history by women) and that very little of it was discussed UNTIL minorities and women came along and insisted on enlarging the discussion to include them/us.  We may all be unhappy that this is the case, but it's a product of the particular cultural circumstances in which those disciplines evolved.  The ways in which African Americans and women are excluded from general discussion in the traditional disciplines (the reason we comprise sub-genres in the first place) is exactly the same reason that scholars who work on women's and African American topic areas find themselves drawn together across traditional disciplinary boundaries.  Despite the fact our disciplines are different, we see across disciplines to a common pattern of exclusion, brought about by a common history of cultural bias (racism, sexism).  We also share a new canon that gives us an intellectual foundation for work within our individual disciplines.

The black sociologist has a great deal to talk to the black literary critic about. For example, the black literary critic will be interested in critiquing a work of literature, but will have to contest the views of his white peers who regard black literature as a sociological rather than literary phenomenon. (This is so common as to be called the "sociological fallacy" in minority and women's literary circles.)  The black critic who attempted to place Richard Wright in literary context (viewing Native Son as a conscious, deliberate revision of Crime and Punishment) had to pit himself against the bulk of white literary critics who -- if they read the book -- regarded it as a near-factual depiction of what life was "really" like in that decade's equivalent of Da Hood. To understand Wright's work we need not only to have read Dostoevsky (in the traditional canon), but enough black history to understand the share-cropping system from which Wright emerged, the fact that he was a Harlem Communist (and how black communism differed from white communism), and his history as a member of a black Seventh Day Adventist church. African American Studies scholars are trained not only in the traditional canon, and also posses an understanding of black history and culture that goes well beyond what scholars not schooled in those areas can bring to bear. This knowledge could be picked up by anyone interested, but the majority of mainstream white scholars in a field will be almost entirely ignorant of it. The decision to learn, to know is what creates expertise.

The usual presumption in mainstream white literary criticism is that books by minorities and women lie outside the literary realm and are not part of the ongoing conversation between literary authors.  Women's work suffered very similar dismissive treatment, and feminist literary scholars found themselves first having to prove to their colleagues that women's writing was not simply "trivial" and "domestic," before they could even begin the work of analyzing it on its own terms.  There is now a huge and extremely convincing body of African American and women's literary theory that does place the works of these groups in larger context, as well as tracing the evolution of a literary tradition within those sub-groups BUT... most white, male literary scholars haven't ever bothered to read it.   The significant histories of these two groups are also now fairly well documented. That's the problem... the knowledge is there to be shared, but to get at it people have to be motivated to pick up a book.  Scholars outside of African American and Women's Studies, for the most part, are still writing about minority and women's literature (when they write about it at all), as if the now enormous body of critical work on these subjects simply didn't exist.

One more problem about the traditional disciplines is this:  the education received by traditional literary critics and historians simply doesn't include the necessary literature to understand and interpret literature by minorities and women in proper context.  The traditional historian or critic will be well versed in the canonical texts in their disciplines, but these canonical texts most definitely don't include the key texts for interpreting the works of non-white, non-male writers.  To be able to write knowledgeably about texts by minority and women, scholars need to do additional reading and research -- which, again, leads the serious scholar to African American Studies or Women's Studies. So... those area studies end up including ALL the people (including the white scholars) who put in the work that it takes to master the subject.

Whether it "should" be this way or not, most of us who study minority and women's experiences or productions are marginalized outsiders in our respective individual disciplines. We come together, across disciplines, to share knowledge that helps each of us in our individual disciplinary work.

So, in answer to who "owns" an article...  I believe that responsibility for articles must be shared between disciplines, and the question becomes: which disciplines should share which articles?  African American Studies clearly has a stake in articles about African American subjects.  But the disciplines also have a stake.  So I'd put an article on "Langston Hughes" under both Literature and African American Studies (and you'll find that the scholars in both groups probably overlap).  In addition, the Queer Studies folks might want to weigh in on that article.  This might pose a minor logistical problem -- but it is also a strength. It helps ensure that the diversity of views about a topic will be well-represented by the people most qualified to do the representing.

As for Chinese history, again, I think you'll find that it isn't an argument between Chinese Studies people and historians of China -- I think you'll find that in most cases there's a great deal of overlap. But both History and Chinese Studies should have a stake in the article and joint approval would be important. (And, actually, I think you'll find that the larger affiliation here turns out to be Asian Studies rather than Chinese Studies, for a variety of historical reasons.)

What we Area Studies people are asking you to do is to allow us to self-organize in the ways that are most comfortable and productive for our work. Again I say it isn't about turf battles -- it's about disciplinary affiliation in patterns that make sense to us. There are an enormous number of scholars who work primarily in interdisciplinary groups these days.  Forcing us to parcel ourselves out into fragments that make you comfortable and are easily recognizable to you is simply not productive.

Best,
Kali

[Larry Sanger]

Kali, there is an assumption you appear to make in several of your messages that I, and I dare say many others, do not share.  It is that the traditional disciplines are now the domains of white men.  Therefore, to make room for non-whites and women, it is necessary to create special (and, for whatever reason, interdisciplinary) disciplines for those marginalized groups.

Suppose we stipulate, however, what every university department does now stipulate, that we desperately want minority and female participation in groups if they happen to be dominated by white men, and we desperately want their perspectives, in our own desire not just to be neutral, but simply to get the facts right.

Explain to me, then, why this is naive, since you no doubt think it is laughably naive.

Also, you can say all you like that it's not about turf battles, but turf battles will come to you--you don't have to seek them out.

[kalital]

Larry,

I'm a big believer in the empirical method.  I like to count things and to measure them.  And by any measure, the vast majority of the disciplines you consider neutral are indeed the purview of white men.  This is true in the sciences: study after study, including the famous one from MIT, shows that women are excluded from the corridors of power at universities and in research facilities. It is most apparent in the ranks of tenured professors.  Similarly, an examination of representation of women and minorities on the tenure-track of almost every other discipline shows that members of those groups are drastically under-represented.  To be convinced of the truth of my claim that women and minorities are excluded from the traditional disciplines, all you need to do is count. You can see the inequity at every level, from full professor to part-time hire. (White men, of course, are overrepresented in the highest levels of academe, while minorities and women are overrepresented at the lowest.) You can look all this up, easily. The reasons for the exclusion are under debate, but the fact of the exclusion is not: it is simply fact. The current composition of CZ is merely a reflection of this imbalance.

You ask: "Suppose we stipulate... that we desperately want minority and female participation in groups if they happen to be dominated by white men, and we desperately want their perspectives, in our own desire not just to be neutral, but simply to get the facts right?"

Let's not be coy about this.  The huge majority (I dare say ALL) of the groups on CZ will be dominated by white men. This means that you'll desperately be wanting minority and female participation across the board.  You can have these white male groups go out and try to recruit minority and women scholars on their own, but will they all know how to do it and who to talk to, and why (or why not) minority and women scholars might be interested in joining up? I've seen this strategy in play, and I can tell you up front: it won't work.  You need to focus on minority and female recruitment from the beginning, not as a palliative measure. Otherwise it'll just feel like tokenism to the minorities and women involved: "Do we have enough minorities yet? Can we stop recruiting 'them'?"  Or, as an alternative, you can have a basic editorial policy that makes minorities and women feel welcome from the beginning and that gives them a stake in joining CZ and building it in tandem with white, male scholars. This means acknowledging the fields with which a huge segment of the minorities and women in academia associate, and which the majority of them support even if they are not directly affiliated with them.

This IS about turf battles, but not in the way you make it out.  It's about your fear that if women and minorities enter your turf on their terms, you'll not be able to hold your ground. It's about your fear that somehow we're different than you in our commitment to the founding principles of CZ, and that you have to protect CZ from our incursion -- tame us down, make sure we affiliate as you think we should, not as we actually do. African American and Gender Studies are realities in academia.  You can't make us not exist because you're afraid of what we stand for.  What you can do -- and what you are doing -- is to exclude us from your projects by creating an environment hostile to our participation. You may not mean to do this, but that's the effect of your words and actions. 

Here's something you should think about.  I'm continuing this discussion with you because I feel it's my obligation as a white person to talk to other white people about race issues. I'm committed to trying to help my white peers understand how insidious racism is:  it creates an environment, a set of assumptions, a web of privilege where discrimination is invisible to most white people most of the time. I believe that CZ has the potential, in its founding moment, to break free of those usually invisible patterns of exclusion and to create a truly inclusive knowledge compendium.  I hear (as you may not) the resounding, deafening silence of minority voices in this discussion.  The silence is complete because they've voted with their keyboards. It's not the policy of neutrality that has driven them away (or failed to attract them), but your insistance on (exclusionary) business as usual. Unless you choose to create an environment that welcomes women and minorities on our own terms, as full members, and trusts us to be as neutral and as conscientious as authors and editors as you trust the white men to be, you'll be an almost all-white, overwhelmingly male venue. This isn't an ideological position: it's a fact. As an experiment the results have been duplicated again and again. And the idea that you somehow know better, that you can somehow attract us without giving us what we think is crucial for our participation, and that you can't trust us to be as neutral as you are... that's neither rational, nor demonstrable, nor neutral.

I'll underline again that I think you have the best intentions.  But what are intentions worth when your methods create the same environment as that created by those with far worse intentions? 

Best,
Kali

[Nat Krause]

Why don't we just begin by stipulating that we don't care what the sex or ancestry of a contributor is?

[David Goodman]

I think there is a certain bias to emeritus faculty and retired or part-retired professionals, who are likely to have both the time and the expertise. There are a great many people who have expertise, but only a little time, and perhaps part of the problem will be structuring participation so the more active faculty and professionals and researchers and post-docs and graduate students and also undergraduates and high school students can function as writers and also often editors.   
There is certainly an attitude outside  CZ that only those prepared to make a major time commitment should apply. This certainly is not the case with writers, and we should try to structure the editorial role so that one can be an editor for a few articles without major participation beyond that. Those with academic or professional  experience have learned to be reluctant to take on additional organizing or structural or policy roles unless they are sure of the impact on their schedules--they know how time-consuming these can be.
There is also an attitude outside CZ that we are doomed to the less exciting sort of academic writing, and that "encyclopedic" is a near-synonym for "dull."  The participation of   many more temporarily junior people is what will save us from that impression.

[Oliver Hauss]

Re:Interdisciplinary work, being a molecular oncologist, I have now repeatedly run against a wall of MDs on German wikipedia who think that their medical practice information is very much worthy to be included, while molecular biology is going "too far" with detail. Especially with genetically based diseases, I tend to disagree and point out that talking about what doctors do in face of a disease does not actually tell us something about the disease itself. "Medical" research is to a large degree done by biologists, biochemists etc. nowadays and we should definitely find some mode of operations to handle "cross-discipline disciplines" such as life sciences.

[Larry Sanger]

There is certainly an attitude outside  CZ that only those prepared to make a major time commitment should apply. This certainly is not the case with writers, and we should try to structure the editorial role so that one can be an editor for a few articles without major participation beyond that.

I have to say, this is exactly right.  We definitely must work hard against this impression.  One of the next things I want to do is rewrite the FAQ on citizendium.org and when I do that, I'll definitely make a point of emphasizing the potentially limited nature of CZ editorship.

[Profrap]

These points about medicine (in the form of diagnostic pathways) vs. biological knowledge/understanding are well taken.

However, in the humaniies -- which, alas, so far, on the CZ pilot seem to be a lonely wilderness with few, and isolated wanderers -- I think these kind of distinctions between practice on and knowledge about are best set aside, since each has a great deal to say to the other.  For instance, in the Literature workgroup, there are literaary critics and novelists, but no sense of competing paradigms (I think).

If expertise, ultimately, is to be micro-divided into miniature domains, then I am much less confident in the finished results.

RP

[Oliver Hauss]

These points about medicine (in the form of diagnostic pathways) vs. biological knowledge/understanding are well taken.

However, in the humaniies -- which, alas, so far, on the CZ pilot seem to be a lonely wilderness with few, and isolated wanderers -- I think these kind of distinctions between practice on and knowledge about are best set aside, since each has a great deal to say to the other.  For instance, in the Literature workgroup, there are literaary critics and novelists, but no sense of competing paradigms (I think).

If expertise, ultimately, is to be micro-divided into miniature domains, then I am much less confident in the finished results.

RP

I wasn't suggesting micro-division at all. My point is that we need a mode of operations to handle disagreements. As an example, if an MD tries to "pull rank" as "expert" on medical issues despite the fact that he's a cardiologist talking about cancer and I'm a molecular oncologist, what do we do?

Looking at humanities, both pure historians as well as archaeologists deal with historical information but from different angles. Here, too, in my eyes, due to the different approaches, interdisciplinary conflict might arise. How do we deal with that?

[David Goodman]

I have worked a little in WP in 3 separate areas--one in my formal academic discipline, biology, and in my actual profession, library science--which I see as a social science, and in one of my hobbies in the humanities--bibliography. I would not overgeneralize about the sort of difficulties we are likely to have, which will be particular to each field, and which will be determined by the sort of people we have, which will in turn depend upon how dynamic we are in recruiting--because most of the work will be done by the people who have yet to join. 


 

[Zachary Pruckowski]

I wasn't suggesting micro-division at all. My point is that we need a mode of operations to handle disagreements. As an example, if an MD tries to "pull rank" as "expert" on medical issues despite the fact that he's a cardiologist talking about cancer and I'm a molecular oncologist, what do we do?

Looking at humanities, both pure historians as well as archaeologists deal with historical information but from different angles. Here, too, in my eyes, due to the different approaches, interdisciplinary conflict might arise. How do we deal with that?

Well, there are 2 answers.

1)  We have constables.  All our constables have a college degree, so they might be able to offer some insight into the dispute (I'm in no way, shape, or form a bio or medical major, but I know that onco- means cancer, and I'm still in college).  In addition, you will both have workgroups, who will be able to reign in members who are out of place or out of line.  Another doctor is going to be quick to point out to the guy "pulling rank" that an oncologist knows his stuff.

[Larry Sanger]

I wasn't suggesting micro-division at all. My point is that we need a mode of operations to handle disagreements. As an example, if an MD tries to "pull rank" as "expert" on medical issues despite the fact that he's a cardiologist talking about cancer and I'm a molecular oncologist, what do we do?

Looking at humanities, both pure historians as well as archaeologists deal with historical information but from different angles. Here, too, in my eyes, due to the different approaches, interdisciplinary conflict might arise. How do we deal with that?

Well, there are 2 answers.

1)  We have constables.  All our constables have a college degree, so they might be able to offer some insight into the dispute (I'm in no way, shape, or form a bio or medical major, but I know that onco- means cancer, and I'm still in college).

No, constables will not be enlisted to settle problems like this--not according to the current policy outline, anyway.  Constables deal with behavioral problems (mercifully absent on CZ so far).  Editors themselves must deal with editorial disputes.

In addition, you will both have workgroups, who will be able to reign in members who are out of place or out of line.  Another doctor is going to be quick to point out to the guy "pulling rank" that an oncologist knows his stuff.

This might be the case, but Oliver Hauss was making a good point, namely, that people from different fields will have different conceptions of how to approach the same topic.  My stock example of this is the case of God, where the Religion Workgroup members might take one approach and the Philosophy Workgroup members might take a different approach.  The answer is that articles must be neutral and we are, for better or worse, constrained by the circumstance of having to work together.  This entails that we must compromise on pain of endless turf warfare.  My experience with academics working on projects like this is that they tend to be quite collegial most of the time.

Furthermore, the way to resolve most disputes is to resort to complementary sections or complementary articles.  So, for instance, the religion scholars can work on the part of the article concerning the differences between different religions' conceptions of God, whereas the philosophers can work on the part concerning the concept of God (or an entirely different article on the concept of God).  It seems to me some such solution is obviously forthcoming in the case of the cardiologist vs. the molecular oncologist.