Interdisciplinarity and Cross-Cultural Understanding

It has often been suggested in the literature on interdisciplinarity that the strategies employed for cross-disciplinary communication are likely also useful in cross-cultural communication. The same two challenges – differences in terminology and differences in perspective – arise in the two cases. The literature on transdisciplinarity likewise suggests that the strategies employed within the academy are also useful in achieving communication with diverse stakeholders beyond the academy (and many transdisciplinary projects have been international in scope and thus have necessarily engaged in cross-cultural communication).

If so, then an interdisciplinary education has a further advantage of potentially aiding cohesion both within multicultural societies and internationally. This is important in countries such as Canada and the United States, but may be even more important in many countries of the Global South in which deep cultural divisions threaten to destroy fragile polities.

Hirsch Hadorn, G. et al. eds. (2008). Handbook of Transdisciplinary Research. Springer.