Transdisciplinarity: Between mainstreaming and marginalization

Abstract

Transdisciplinarity has a long history of academic discourse. Promoted as an adequate scientific response topressing societal problems like climate change, it has recently received common currency in science policyrhetoric. Nevertheless, despite its increasing popularity, transdisciplinarity is still far from academicallyestablished and current funding practices do not effectively support it at universities and research institutions.One reason for this deficit is that a universally accepted definition for transdisciplinarity is still not available.Consequently, quality standards that equally guide researchers, program managers and donors are widelylacking. Therefore, a rhetorical mainstreaming of transdisciplinarity prevails which risks marginalizingthose who take seriously the integrative efforts creative collaboration requires. The aim of this paper is thus tofind common ground in the transdisciplinarity discourse. Based on an analysis of current scientific literature,we first identify main features of an emerging shared framework of transdisciplinarity. Second, building uponthis framework, we present a conceptual model of transdisciplinarity that can be used by science and sciencepolicy to characterize different types of transdisciplinarity and their corresponding demands on integration. Wealso address the way in which ecological economics could benefit from adopting this model. To conclude, wepropose a general definition of transdisciplinarity.