Transdisciplinary Scholarship Research Articles

Contested places: A typology for responding to place-based harms

• Summary In response to historic and ongoing devaluation of certain people, and concurrently, the places they live, many communities are grappling with how to respond to place-based harms. This has produced a wide range of responses, such as calls for “Land Back,” reparations programs, arts-based neighborhood regeneration, and local history initiatives. This paper explores the potential roles community practitioners can play in these contested places. Drawing on a review of the literature, this paper offers an emerging typology for responding to place-based harms. • Findings The proposed typology includes six place-based approaches: Reparation, Remembrance, Regeneration, Resistance, Harm-Reduction, and Repatriation/Rematriation. The authors distinguish each approach by its target and temporal focus, common strategies, primary change agents, and vulnerabilities. While drawing on transdisciplinary scholarship, authors also describe social work's engagement with each approach. • Applications This emerging typology may assist social work practitioners, scholars, and students as they study and employ strategies for intervening in contested spaces. It also suggests areas for future research in conjunction with responses to place-based harms.

DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURES AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: POLICIES, PRACTICES, AND VISIONS

Environmental media scholars have long drawn attention to the physicality of digital systems, situating their work as part of the infrastructural turn (Larkin, 2013; Parks & Starosielski, 2015; Star, 1999). Contrary to the prevailing “cultural imagination of dematerialization” (Starosielski, 2015), digital supply chains – from data centers to AI systems to consumer electronics – depend on minerals, water, land, labour, and energy (Crawford, 2021; Cubitt, 2016; Hogan et al., 2022). This growth-based model of digital technology is based on assumed access to resources, implicating it in the extractive global economy shaped by ongoing colonial violence (Liboiron, 2021; Spice, 2018). Transdisciplinary scholarship on the intersection of digital technologies and the environment has looked at online organizing and digital climate change action (McLean & Fuller, 2016; Pearce et al., 2019), indigenous resistance and data sovereignty (Duarte, 2017; Kukutai & Taylor, 2016), the environmental impacts of large-scale data centers (Hogan, 2015; Velkova, 2016) and alternative social media (Laser et al., 2022), and what "responsible digitalization" could look like (Dwivedi et al., 2022). Building on already existing work that critically examines the material implications of digital infrastructures, this panel asks what environmental justice means in relation to digital technologies. Turning against the language of revolution that too often gets leveraged by Big Tech to describe the latest "disruptive" technology that is allegedly going to solve the world's problems (Geiger, 2020; Tabel, 2022), we foreground subversive practices, regulatory interventions, and grassroots organizing and vision building as emancipatory alternatives to a for-profit, monopolized internet. From a theory of change that seeks to understand and challenge the extractive nature of digital technology production from all angles, we shed light on reform, repair, refusal, and resistance as paths for transformation. Zooming in on Southeast Louisiana where hundreds of petrochemical processing and manufacturing facilities are located, the first paper examines how Internet access can be reimagined in landscapes shaped by extractive economies. The paper analyzes the challenges that activist and research groups face when using Internet of things (IoT) devices for real-time environmental sensing of air quality due to underdeveloped Internet infrastructures in a region that is becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate change. The second paper engages with the material footprint and environmental implications of computing hardware production. It looks at the "Right to Repair" as one approach that challenges corporate control over design and obsolescence of electronic devices. By comparing examples of recent legislation in the EU, India, and the US, and analyzing them through the lens of design justice and discard studies frameworks, it argues that Right to Repair needs to be complemented by a substantial change in industry norms and practices rather than simply attempting to delay the disposal through repair by consumers. The third paper examines community resistance to data centers in the United States. In the past years, activists have framed their resistance to data centers along three critiques, namely noise pollution, resource consumption, and lack of public input to permitting processes. The paper investigates how environmental justice activists use formal legal and regulatory processes such as public meetings, petitions, lawsuits, public records requests to organise against new data center developments, and the challenges they meet as part of their organising. The fourth paper presents a "feminist principle of the internet on the environment" that was developed over several years in transnational collaborative work by practitioners. It addresses the interconnections between gendered online violence against land and environmental defenders on large social media platforms and on-the-ground resistance to extractive industries and outlines a new emancipatory vision for a different internet that centers planetary care and justice for communities and ecosystems. The fifth paper presents an analysis of the Internet Architecture Board's (IAB) workshop on "Environmental Impact of Internet Applications and Systems", held online in December 2022. It uses an infrastructural lens to analyze which politics are embedded and missing from industry responses to the sector's environmental harms. While international regulatory bodies are slowly coming to terms with the environmental impacts of distributed digital networks, the paper argues that the proposed sustainability solutions are as of yet too narrow in scope.

Critical Geoarchaeology: From Depositional Processes to the Sociopolitics of Earthen Life

In the last several decades, geoarchaeological research and practice have moved well beyond their foundational concerns for site formation processes and the stratigraphic integrity of artifact associations, developing significant orientations toward archaeological and social theory. This review focuses on four overlapping research emphases that have explicitly extended the reach of geoarchaeological research within the broader social sciences and humanities, including ( a) interpretive, symbolic, and social approaches in geoarchaeological research; ( b) articulations with recent developments in posthumanist and new materialist scholarship; ( c) the application of geoarchaeological investigations to historical ecology and political ecology research programs; and ( d), building on the latter, critical engagements with ongoing transdisciplinary scholarship on the Anthropocene. Taken together, these different orientations offer new possibilities for geoarchaeological research to inform anthropological concerns for social and environmental production and the ways that archaeological and geological fields of practice and discourse contribute to shaping social, political, and environmental conditions today.

On Transdisciplinary Possibility: An Interstitial Exploration of American Religious History and Religious Ethics

ABSTRACTThis essay explores the intersections of religious ethics and American religious history and advocates for a transdisciplinary approach to scholarship in both disciplines. Four books, each published within the last 4 years, form the foundation of this discussion by modeling distinctive elements of transdisciplinary scholarship: Heathen: Religion and Race in American History by Kathryn Gin Lum; Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism by Peter Coviello; Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts Against Domestic Violence by Juliane Hammer; and The Sex Obsession: Perversity and Possibility in American Politics by Janet R. Jakobsen. Each of these texts raises questions that hover at the intersections of religious ethics and American religious history, demonstrating how scholarship in both areas can be strengthened through a destabilization of the disciplines themselves.

The ‘Home’ Re-Framed: Interrupting Key Assumptions of the Home in Leisure Studies

‘Home’ is often central to discussions of leisure as ‘home’ has potential to create a sense of place, facilitate personal control, and encourage creative self-expressions. Within leisure studies/sciences ‘home’ remains privileged and uncritiqued. This stable perspective assumes ‘home’ as a universal concept that is commonly known, understood, and taken-for-granted. Transdisciplinary scholarship articulates ‘home’ as having multiple meanings, and through the disruption of the standard template of ‘home’, other possibilities for living ‘home’ can be actively (re)created. Leisure studies may benefit from critical explorations of ‘home’ described in mobilities, diasporic and cultural/geography literatures. This article serves to conceptually dis-locate the ‘home’ and offer a revived starting point for its critique in leisure studies. To do so, we share a critical exploration of ‘home’ in leisure studies, articulations of its re-imagined formations using transdisciplinary literature, and present implications for conceptualizing ‘home’ differently.

Perceiving and problematizing ‘invisibility’ in English language education and criticality: a duoethnographic dialogue

ABSTRACT The dominant social, political and educational narrative of ‘homogeneous Japan’ has been both perpetuated and challenged inside Japan and abroad. Transdisciplinary scholarship and critical communal voices have highlighted Japan’s history as a site of diversity and complexity. the diverse ways people negotiate being, becoming and belonging as ‘Japanese’ and/or as members of Japanese society, and the marginalization individuals and groups have faced due to the homogeneity narrative. This article presents two researcher-practitioners employing duoethnographic inquiry to dialogue regarding how critical frameworks in applied linguistics and English language teaching (ELT) seek to account for identity negotiation, experience and (in)equity in Japanese society, and ELT therein. In sharing, probing, reflecting on and reimagining their stories dialogically, the authors discuss one key concern: in limiting their scope to addressing ‘essentialized and idealized nativeness in English’ dominant approaches to criticality have rendered individuals’ broader negotiations of identity and community membership, ‘invisible.’ The authors invite readers to engage with the dialogue herein, and reflect on what frames their own ‘seeing.’

Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary scholarship for a civilisation in distress: questions for and from the Global South

Despite obstacles, institutional barriers and prejudices, interdisciplinarity is a growing movement within academia. Evolving from the pioneering experiences in broad multidisciplinary ventures since the post–Second World War era, interdisciplinary programmes and research projects are now a worldwide reality in universities. Complex and interconnected challenges of humanity, such as social unrests, economic and ecological crises, political turmoil and global human health emergencies demand integration of efforts and competencies of researchers from a wide range of backgrounds, and the involvement of actors from outside the academia. In recent years, complex challenges fuelling the need for better integration of work in universities and research centres with real demands of societies are further feeding transdisciplinary endeavours. Such movements pose new questions, ranging from institutional arrangements to methodological frameworks, which are far from being solved. This article reflects on the nature and practice of scholarly engagement in this trajectory during the 21st century from vantage points of the Global South. Some insights are based on what we have learnt over our work lives, and some are based on collected information about experiences in India and Brazil. This contribution also raises questions that could potentially concern other countries, especially in the Global South. However, it is not a handbook directly applicable to realities other than Brazil and India. Discussions in academia about pathways to interdisciplinarity should go beyond its legitimisation. The agenda now has to shift towards transdisciplinary co-construction of knowledge, by creating gateways to connect the scientific world to the ‘real world’.

Freedom From Caste: New Beginnings in Transdisciplinary Scholarship

Freedom From Caste: New Beginnings in Transdisciplinary Scholarship

Narratives and Negotiations of Identity in Japan and Criticality in (English) Language Education: (Dis)Connections and Implications

AbstractInspired by the call to question (critical) assumptions underpinning frameworks for “seeing” (Lather, 1993) and ground criticality in alternative forms of knowing (Pennycook, 2018), this paper examines critical frameworks for approaching identity, experience, and (in)equity in “English” language teaching (ELT), with a focus on critical attention to Japan. Transdisciplinary scholarship, social movements, and other voices have detailed how the narrative of “homogeneous Japan” has given shape to notions of Selfhood‐Otherness, resulting in the erasing of Japan's history as a site of movement, change, diversity and hybridity, and marginalization of many therein. The author notes that the scope of dominant, critical approaches to identity, experience, and (in)equity in Japan and globalized ELT ‐problematizing essentialized and idealized “nativeness” in English—does not afford conceptual space for attention to how the negotiation of being, belonging and becoming in ELT is situated in broader negotiations of identity and community membership. The author contends that this issue is linked to tensions within criticality pertaining to the imposition of essentializing frameworks for seeing upon individuals and communities around the globe. The author then discusses potential broader implications for theorization, inquiry, and practice in ELT in and beyond Japan.

Diversity Wanted! Utilizing Transdisciplinary Scholarship on Structural Inequality to Educate Psychology Graduate Students.

The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) should promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice for the next generation of psychologists. I worry that the SoTL propagates an exclusionary field that becomes increasingly irrelevant in our diverse society given that graduate curricula largely exclude scholarship on structural inequality. I detail the process of graduate curricular changes in my current department, with a focus on my new required graduate course, Diversity, Systems, and Inequality. I utilize scholarship from law, sociology, philosophy, women and gender studies, education, and psychology. I provide the structure and content of the course-including syllabi and lecture slides-as well as modes of assessment that promote inclusivity and critical thinking. I detail how current faculty can learn to incorporate the content of this work into their own teaching and scholarship through weekly journal clubs. SoTL outlets can publish transdisciplinary, inclusive course materials regarding structural inequality, thus mainstreaming and amplifying such work for the benefit of the field and our world.

In the aftertimes, breathe: Rhetorical technologies of suffocation and an abolitionist praxis of (breathing in) relation

ABSTRACT This essay advances racial respiratory philosophy and calls for an abolitionist rhetorical studies as a response to Ersula Ore and my call for “cultivating otherwise worlds and breathable futures” in the Aftertimes. I draw from respiratory philosophy and communication and transdisciplinary scholarship on the constitutive nature of white violence, cruelty, and antiblackness, their relation to breathing/suffocation, and how the university is implicated therein. I then offer a cross-institutional analysis of the state’s dismissive, violent response to Eric Garner’s cry of “I can’t breathe” and the social atmospheres of antiblackness that saturate the university. I read these institutions through a racial respiratory lens to demonstrate how what I call technologies of suffocation work through similar logics and parallel effects in different settings to loot Black breath and sustain white supremacy. Following this analysis, I discuss abolition as a productive force of societal transformation that also demands an embodied, world-breaking/making praxis grounded in an ethical, affective, and collective reorientation around the living and breathing relations at the core of the modern world, a thorough ontic-epistemic dismantling that could create space-times for imagining a new society and new forms of relationality. I conclude by thinking toward abolitionist futures, radical humanism, and disciplinary transformation.

You must learn: sampling critical hip hop pedagogy in communication education spaces

ABSTRACT Critical communication pedagogies in universities are important because they teach students how communication processes produce social difference and social justice activism. To keep these pedagogical aims relevant to younger generations and promote open instructional practices, the pedagogies can benefit from an injection of culturally responsive approaches that engage college students today. This article reflects on the fusion of ‘critical hip hop pedagogy’ into my own communication teaching praxis through a course I developed, ‘Hip Hop Culture, Communication, and Social Change.’ I examine four core objectives that critical hip hop pedagogy fosters in educational spaces. These include challenging traditional white supremacist paradigms, grounding an intersectional analysis of identities and oppression, focusing on local capacity building and empowerment, and the use of trans-disciplinary scholarship and media. I conclude with ten teaching tenets that would strengthen the integration of critical hip hop pedagogy into communication education spaces.

Sowing the seeds: Sociocultural resistance in the psychological sciences.

Objective: This article problematizes the use of resilience as a psychological and developmental indication of well-being. We base our argument on the possibility that resilience theories internalize responsibility for survival within the individual, and that survival is dependent on the ability to assimilate to injustice. Resistance, on the other hand, represents acts of intentional, active, and often collective survival which can expose and oppose social injustice. Method: Bringing together transdisciplinary scholarship on resistance, we propose a conceptual framework of sociocultural resistance. This framework seeks to forward studies of health that acknowledge the complexity of relationships, culture, and power constitutive of the human condition. Results: We provide examples of sociocultural resistance in the psychological and developmental sciences and suggest the use of diverse theory and methods in the study of resistance. Conclusions: Resistance research is a timely, necessary, and critical turning point in the social sciences with the potential to change unjust systems and promote a nuanced view of health. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Exploring the Conceptual Frameworks Guiding Developmental Research and Practice in Higher Education: Some Challenges for Transdisciplinary Work

This article examines questions initially raised at a meeting that took place 50 years ago on the topic of the development of knowledge in higher education where Jean Piaget coined the term “transdisciplinarity” and distinguished it from interdisciplinarity. We consider the question of why transdisciplinary scholarship has been so challenging for the field of developmental science. We argue that shifts in the guiding metatheoretical framework of theory and research, away from split-mechanistic paradigms and towards process-relational ones, do not always align with the conceptual frameworks used in educational practice. Using the example considered by Piaget and others at the original conference on higher education and the development of knowledge and also examining the domain of identity development, we find support for ways developmental scholarship has embraced the shift to a relational-developmental metatheory. In contrast, we argue that the relational-developmental paradigm has not been fully adopted by practitioners, with evidence of some using the Cartesian-split-mechanistic paradigm and others using some aspects of the relational-developmental paradigm. We highlight the importance of examining the conceptual frameworks guiding developmental scholarship and practice, suggesting that alignment of conceptual frameworks is an essential ingredient for progress in transdisciplinary scholarship and practice to take place. Conceptualizations at the metatheoretical level condition each and every aspect of theory, research, and practice, giving meaning to both theoretical and empirical activities and guiding practice-based work. Debates often occur at the metatheoretical level, and thus are not open to empirical adjudication. We conclude that metatheoretical alignment between scholars and practitioners is critically important to transdisciplinary efforts in developmental science and therefore more attention to the metatheoretical assumptions of the process-relational paradigm is critical for work with practitioners to succeed.

Transgression and Individuation. Proximities between Law and Literature

This paper aims at unveiling the relationship between transgression and individuation, by looking at the common roots that such concepts share in law and literature. The main objective of such endeavour is to conclude that unveiling the interconnections between transgression and individuation actually reveals further potentialities in transdisciplinary legal scholarship, especially in terms of its relevant pertinence to core legal-theoretical questions, such as interpretation and adjudication.

The psychoanalytically-informed interview in social work research

ABSTRACT British psycho-social studies is a new paradigm of transdisciplinary scholarship situated at the borderlands of social and psychological theory. Its development has been represented as providing avenues for a more critical and reflexive engagement with psychoanalysis in social work, disentangled from the unfavourable meanings with which psychoanalysis has been associated (e.g. as apolitical and reductively focussed on intrapsychic dynamics). However, much remains to be said about the implications of methodological developments and debate in psycho-social studies for social work research, particularly in terms of the impetus it provides for reflecting on the transformations brought about in resituating psychoanalytic concepts and practices away from their traditional clinical context in social research and theory. This article draws from doctoral research concerned specifically with the theory and practice of research interviewing. It provides an account of the development of this research and explores the role of interpretation as part of a psychoanalytically-informed interview approach.

Negotiating the Multilingual Turn in SLA: Response to Stephen May

AbstractIn volume 103 of Modern Language Journal, Stephen May suggested that the multilingual turn has not fully delivered on its promises, pointing out second language acquisition (SLA) researchers’ continued focus on parallel monolingualisms rather than on dynamic bi/multilingualism, the lack of theorization of historicity in sociolinguistic research on the latter, the balkanization of academic knowledge preventing transdisciplinary scholarship, and West‐centered methodological nationalism. While I agree with his points, I believe the solution requires more than critical reflexivity, reading beyond our areas of interest, and relinquishing fast‐held methodological principles. Scholarly hegemony and disciplinary elitism exist because we are more than minds touting theories and epistemologies. We must acknowledge how we, as researchers, seek cultural prestige and economic well‐being by affiliating with the global North and its mechanisms for knowledge production. Given this, I discuss what scholars in both the global North and South can do to reform the discipline to address May's concerns, in terms of 1 action those in the global South must consistently attempt, and 4 responsibilities of those in the global North.

An Observatory Framework for Metropolitan Change: Understanding Urban Social–Ecological–Technical Systems in Texas and Beyond

In Texas and elsewhere, the looming realities of rapid population growth and intensifying effects of climate change mean that the things we rely on to live—water, energy, dependable infrastructure, social cohesion, and an ecosystem to support them—are exposed to unprecedented risk. Limited resources will be in ever greater demand and the environmental stress from prolonged droughts, record-breaking heat waves, and destructive floods will increase. Existing long-term trends and behaviors will not be sustainable. That is our current trajectory, but we can still change course. Significant advances in information communication technologies and big data, combined with new frameworks for thinking about urban places as social–ecological–technical systems, and an increasing movement towards transdisciplinary scholarship and practice sets the foundation and framework for a metropolitan observatory. Yet, more is required than an infrastructure for data. Making cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable will require that data become actionable knowledge that change policy and practice. Research and development of urban sustainability and resilience knowledge is burgeoning, yet the uptake to policy has been slow. An integrative and holistic approach is necessary to develop effective sustainability science that synthesizes different sources of knowledge, relevant disciplines, multi-sectoral alliances, and connections to policy-makers and the public. To address these challenges and opportunities, we developed a conceptual framework for a “metropolitan observatory” to generate standardized long-term, large-scale datasets about social, ecological, and technical dimensions of metropolitan systems. We apply this conceptual model in Texas, known as the Texas Metro Observatory, to advance strategic research and decision-making at the intersection of urbanization and climate change. The Texas Metro Observatory project is part of Planet Texas 2050, a University of Texas Austin grand challenge initiative.

An Observatory Framework for Metropolitan Change: Understanding Urban Social–Ecological–Technical Systems in Texas and Beyond

In Texas and elsewhere, the looming realities of rapid population growth and intensifying effects of climate change mean that the things we rely on to live—water, energy, dependable infrastructure, social cohesion, and an ecosystem to support them—are exposed to unprecedented risk. Limited resources will be in ever greater demand and the environmental stress from prolonged droughts, record-breaking heat waves, and destructive floods will increase. Existing long-term trends and behaviors will not be sustainable. That is our current trajectory, but we can still change course. Significant advances in information communication technologies and big data, combined with new frameworks for thinking about urban places as social–ecological–technical systems, and an increasing movement towards transdisciplinary scholarship and practice sets the foundation and framework for a metropolitan observatory. Yet, more is required than an infrastructure for data. Making cities inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable will require that data become actionable knowledge that change policy and practice. Research and development of urban sustainability and resilience knowledge is burgeoning, yet the uptake to policy has been slow. An integrative and holistic approach is necessary to develop effective sustainability science that synthesizes different sources of knowledge, relevant disciplines, multi-sectoral alliances, and connections to policy-makers and the public. To address these challenges and opportunities, we developed a conceptual framework for a “metropolitan observatory” to generate standardized long-term, large-scale datasets about social, ecological, and technical dimensions of metropolitan systems. We apply this conceptual model in Texas, known as the Texas Metro Observatory, to advance strategic research and decision-making at the intersection of urbanization and climate change. The Texas Metro Observatory project is part of Planet Texas 2050, a University of Texas Austin grand challenge initiative.

Towards a Framework for Building Community-University Resilience Research Agendas

In this paper, we ask: “How can we scope multiyear, multiscalar community–university collaborations that draw on the university’s diverse resources and contribute to community resilience”? We approach this question by presenting the development and application of the Advancing Collaborative Transdisciplinary Scholarship Framework (the “ACTS Framework”) which we argue has been successful at helping us better understand, foster, and work towards communities’ resilience. The ACTS Framework, informed by our collective expertise in critical community-engaged scholarship (CES) and community resilience, contributes to knowledge and practice in critical CES, in particular by providing guidance for scoping and sustaining complex community–university collaborations. The structured yet iterative process involved in the framework development and application affirms and extends the work of other scholars interested in the links between CES and community resilience. Our contributions offer two other important practices—centring community concerns and facilitating cross-project collaboration—to critical CES knowledge and practice and highlight two promising practices of linking structures that facilitate community–university collaborations—specifically, a well-organized institutional memory and holding and bridging relationships.