Transdisciplinary Understanding Research Articles

Transdisciplinary Art, Technology, and Management for Sustainable Enterprise

This paper presents a transdisciplinary approach to integrating arts, technology, and management to develop a sustainable enterprise. We are living in a crisis society in which most major economic, ecological, social, political and cultural systems have broken down. Sustainability and sustainable development have been proposed as solutions to bring us out of the crisis. However, sustainability requires transdisciplinary knowledge and solutions. We report on our effort to use transdisciplinary understanding of arts, technology, and management in the service of sustainability. The International Research Chair in Sustainable Enterprise and the ARTEM project are discussed as examples of transdisciplinary research and transdisciplinary institutional development. Some lessons from these experiences for research and collaboration are discussed.

A Transdisciplinary Understanding for Economic Rrisk Management

Starting from the assumption that transdisciplinary is becoming a fourth research method (alongside the empirical, interpretive and critical approaches), we believe it is the favorable context for analysis as well as for sustained attempts to understand the sophisticated economy in a new conceptual framework placed at the forefront of knowledge. As a matter of fact, in accordance with the “Charter of Transdisciplinary” (Freitas & Morin & Nicolescu, Convento da Arrbida, [1]), from which we quote Article 12: “The development of a transdisciplinary economy is based on the postulate that the economy must serve the human being and not the reverse”, we will focus on several categories specifically for the economic risk, such as enterprise risk management, financial risk. In an attempt to systematize this approach, we searched to identify in the academic literature similar concerns and formulate some theoretical pillars on which to establish the transdisciplinary understanding and behavior concerning the existence of risks with economic particularity.

Landschaft, Landschaftsbewusstsein und landschaftliche Identität als Potenziale für die regionale Entwicklung – Eine empirische Fallstudie in Glarus Süd, SchweizLandscape, Landscape Awareness, and Landscape Identity as Potentials for Regional Development – An Empirical Case Study in Southern Glarus, Switzerland

A transdisciplinary understanding of landscape – as a geographical space and as a cultural concept – offers a new approach for sustainable landscape development. This case study of a peripheral mountain region in Switzerland empirically investigates physical landscape as well as landscape awareness and landscape identity on the part of the local population. It seeks to make both aspects of landscape useful for sustainable regional development. Physical landscape was described by cultural-geographical methods; landscape awareness and identity were investigated by a quantitative-qualitative survey. The results show great affinity and a positive attitude of the residents towards their landscape. It was also revealed that the population seems to differentiate between "typical" rural landscapes associated with nature and cultural development, and "normal" landscapes associated with settlements and infrastructure. Landscape is thus shown to be both a functional space and an important part of regional identity. Consequently, landscape has the potential to be relevant for sustainable development.Landschaft hat große Bedeutung für die Identifikation der Bevölkerung. Das Beispiel einer Randregion mit Bevölkerungsrückgang und Agglomerisierung zeigt das Potenzial einer landschaftsorientierten Raumentwick lung, die ästhetische und emotionale Qualitäten der Landschaft und ihre Wirkung auf Psyche und Identität einbezieht.

THE ROLE OF CREATIVITY IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

This paper evaluates the contribution of creativity to entrepreneurship theory and practice in terms of building an holistic and transdisciplinary understanding of its impact. Acknowledgement is made of the subjectivist theory of entrepreneurship which embraces randomness, uncertainty and ambiguity but these factors should then be embedded in wider business and social contexts. The analysis is synthesised into a number of themes, from consideration of its definition, its link with personality and cognitive style, creativity as a process and the use of biography in uncovering data on creative entrepreneurial behaviour. Other relevant areas of discussion include creativity's link with motivation, actualisation and innovation, as well as the interrogation of entrepreneurial artists as owner/managers. These factors are embedded in a critical evaluation of how creativity contributes to successful entrepreneurship practice. Modelling, measuring and testing entrepreneurial creativity are also considered and the paper includes detailed consideration of several models of creativity in entrepreneurship. Recommendations for future theory and practice are also made.

The Dark Side of Light: A Transdisciplinary Research Agenda for Light Pollution Policy

Hölker, F., T. Moss, B. Griefahn, W. Kloas, C. C. Voigt, D. Henckel, A. Hänel, P. M. Kappeler, S. Völker, A. Schwope, S. Franke, D. Uhrlandt, J. Fischer, R. Klenke, C. Wolter, and K. Tockner. 2010. The dark side of light: a transdisciplinary research agenda for light pollution policy. Ecology and Society 15(4): 13. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03685-150413

Salvaging the self in adult learning

This paper stems from a dialogue on the subjects of learning and learners: one forged out of experiences in research and teaching, and the application of psychodynamic insights, developmental psychology and recent work in the neurosciences, to thinking about adult learning and subjectivity. We argue that some notion of the self needs to be salvaged, in a poststructuralist and postmodern world, when considering processes of learning, teaching and, fundamentally, what it means to be human. We recognise that this is a complex topic and that we can only touch on limited aspects of it here, but our paper represents an attempt to bring new trans-disciplinary understanding of selfhood into conversations about adult learning. The paper builds on our other recent writing, which explored the border country between psychotherapy and educational processes, and between different epistemological perspectives, including the place of unconscious processes in understanding learners and learning (Hunt and West, 2006).

Educating for urban sustainability: a transdisciplinary approach

An understanding of sustainability issues should be a key component of degree programmes. It is widely regarded as being a central attribute to professional practice and responsible global citizenship, arguably more so for the training of teachers since they potentially influence their students. This issue was brought to the fore when responsibility for delivering the ‘design and the environment’ course was transferred to the building discipline at the University of Newcastle in Australia as a result of restructuring. The attractiveness of the subject as an elective, the need to make it accessible to distance learning students and the desirability of applying transdisciplinary approaches to solving environmental problems presented the course designers with both challenges and opportunities, particularly in devising an assessment context within which students from multiple disciplines could be exposed to, and learn from each other's professional environmental evaluation norms. This paper describes an innovative holistic, multi-criteria problem-solving course design that allows a diverse mix of undergraduates to develop a transdisciplinary understanding of sustainability issues through the use of learning contracts. It reports the experiences of staff and students involved with the course, highlighting the beneficial outcomes.

Recreation and Leisure Research from an Active Living Perspective: Taking a Second Look at Urban Trail Use Data

This paper examines recreation and leisure research within the context of active living, and highlights an apparent gap between the current involvement of recreation and leisure researchers and the potential they could offer to this important and expanding area of inquiry. To illustrate this potential, I looked at two previous studies that focused on the recreational use of urban trails and reanalyzed the data from an active living perspective. In Study 1, individual, social and environmental factors helped distinguish between low, moderate, and high activity level trail uses. In Study 2, use patterns helped distinguish between health-motivated trail users and individuals using trails for recreation and other purposes, but perceptual and demographic data were similar among groups. Findings from similar studies can help inform active living research, and recreation and leisure studies can provide leadership and contributions to a transdisciplinary understanding of active living.

The Word “Time”—Voce “Tempo”

This article looks at the prevalent view of time in the history of Western philosophy and science and then contrasts it with the emerging new vision of time as ontologically constructive. Throughout Western history, philosophers and scientists attempted to marginalize and anesthetize the role of time by prioritizing being over becoming. But beginning with the Darwinian revolution in biology, the West could no longer deny the constructive role of time in bringing forth new ontological orders. While the 20th century witnessed the split between the reversible time of physics and the developmental time of biology, the time has now come for this divide to be reconciled. Twenty-first century science is already revealing the constructive role of time in cosmology with the likelihood of multiple universes. In conclusion, the authors speculate that our moment in human cultural development is ripe for a complex, multidimensional, and transdisciplinary understanding of time.

Enhancing transdisciplinary dialogue in curricula development

A crucial step towards realizing transdisciplinary understanding is to address transdisciplinary issues in university curricula, and to train students in critically analyzing and understanding disciplinary metaphors. We present an experimental exercise at Stockholm University with the aim of finding a constructive way to introduce transdisciplinary elements in disciplinary courses and thus increase student awareness of disciplinary metaphors. The exercise required a minimum of formal university decision procedures and thus circumvented the institutional barriers that tend to obstruct the establishment of full transdisciplinary programs.

Trans-scientific frameworks of knowing: complementarity views of the different types of human knowledge

The paper attempts to develop a non-reductionistic and transdisciplinary view on human knowing in the light of the growing development of transdisciplinary practices and sciences. Medicine is one of the oldest; ecology and information science are some of the newer examples of radical transdisciplinarity. I discuss the lack of a recognized place and value of phenomenological knowledge in relation to the general mechanistic scientific ontology that still seems to be the only generally accepted background for the transdisciplinary areas to build on. Ontologically we cannot say much about reality except that it is very complex and dynamic, but still has structures and causal relations of a certain stability, which can be modelled mathematically. We further have to admit that there are aspects of reality that are beyond measuring. I suggest that the dualistic idea of transcendental and eternal mathematical natural laws and an algorithmic programme behind intelligence and language is rejected for its lack of ability to include the phenomenological and existential perspective of science and the practical knowledge beyond words. Instead I am promoting an epistemology, which sees science as only one aspect of our knowledge and sees human knowledge as going beyond language. An opening for the phenomenological aspect is then created in our modern scientistic and mechanistic metaphysics. I suggest a view of knowledge seen as self-organized signification systems based on metaphysical frameworks in social practice. The interpretation of sign in a systematized knowledge framework is actually where the medical sciences started in the classical Greek tradition of Hippocrates. This non-reductionistic framework promises to open towards a non-Cartesian transdisciplinary understanding of the basis for the generation and communication of knowledge in society without giving up what we have gained through the rigour and the methods of the sciences and the logic of philosophical analysis. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Coping with complex and dynamic systems. An approach to a transdisciplinary understanding of coastal zone developments

Complexity and uncertainty play important roles in coastal management. Economic development may push the coastal system beyond its resilience thresholds as a result of interactions between environmental and socio-economic processes. The concepts in this paper link processes of system change, natural evolutionary processes observed in coastal zones, to processes of social evolution. An indicator based on calculating an ecological footprint for coastal zones is presented to guide decision-making in spatial and economic planning. The suggested indicator may support a range of methods linking economic valuation and environmental impact analysis.