Interdisciplinary experiences: working with indigenous knowledge in development

Abstract The problems of poverty are complex, and tackling them demands cooperation between specialists with diverse backgrounds in both the natural and social sciences.Calls for interdisciplinary research in development are therefore siren. Yet facilitating such interdisciplinary work, by for example the current sustainable livelihoods approach, has proved difficult. This paper reflects on personal experiences working with research teams in development contexts in Asia and the Pacific, seasoned with some comments on the British higher education environment from my position as head of a university department, in an attempt to locate problems in interdisciplinary research and suggest ways forward. It eschews talk of solutions, since the forces at work appear simultaneously both to promote and hinder interdisciplinary research. It is more appropriate instead to think in terms of a balancing act – of accommodating different perspectives while facilitating interpenetration, of challenging narrow disciplinary views without threatening intellectual tumult. The emerging approach of indigenous knowledge research, which is evolving from the relatively new participatory approaches to development, is put forward as a promising context in which to advance interdisciplinary research. This is an approach with roots in anthropology, which itself has a long tradition of working in an interdisciplinary way – but in common with other broadbased disciplines, such as geography, it also therefore experiences problems of disciplinary integrity. The discussion concludes by asking why such disciplines have been more effective as engines of interdisciplinary research, and suggests that they encounter problems of squaring depth with breadth. I argue that by focusing on indigenous knowledge, that is by allowing local perspectives to play a prominent role in any project, interdisciplinary research should be facilitated, since such knowledge is inherently holistic in perspective. Even so, problems remain, many of them apparently inescapable given the paradoxes characterising interdisciplinary research, compounded by the conundrums of crosscultural communication.