The ‘paradox of interdisciplinarity’ in Australian research governance
The ‘paradox of interdisciplinarity’ in Australian research governance
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澳大利亚研究治理中的“跨学科悖论”
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发表时间：
2013
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通讯作者：
Victoria Millar
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作者：
P. Woelert;Victoria Millar
本文确定了澳大利亚高等教育研究治理中所谓的“跨学科悖论”（Weingart 2000），并探讨了其构成维度。在澳大利亚的背景下，跨学科的悖论主要涉及政府报告和政府政策和战略文件中跨学科的程序化话语的扩散，通常与创新和适用性的概念联系在一起，与治理模式和相关机制的持续甚至加强相平行，这些模式和机制几乎完全依赖于严格的基于学科的分类系统来评估和资助研究。本文讨论了这一明显悖论的两个相互关联的方面。首先，对澳大利亚政府报告和政策与战略文件中使用学科性和跨学科性概念的知识概念进行了分析。其次，对澳大利亚的研究治理体系及其基本机制进行了分析，因为它们与跨学科的研究形式有关。在这些分析的基础上，我们得出结论：一方面，跨学科的话语和相关的知识概念，另一方面，目前相对缺乏灵活性的政府研究资助和评估实践之间存在显著的不匹配。最后提出，只有在研究治理的更普遍的悖论背景下，才能正确理解澳大利亚背景下这种不匹配的发生和延续，在这种情况下，充满政治色彩的创新修辞与知识自我组织范围日益缩小的实际趋势相冲突。
This paper identifies what can be called the ‘paradox of interdisciplinarity’ (Weingart 2000) in Australian higher education research governance and explores some of its constitutive dimensions. In the Australian context, the paradox of interdisciplinarity primarily concerns the proliferation of a programmatic discourse of interdisciplinarity in government reports and government policy and strategy documents, often tied to notions of innovation and applicability, parallel to the persistence or even reinforcement of modes of governance and associated mechanisms that almost exclusively rely on rigid discipline-based classification systems to evaluate and fund research. Two interrelated dimensions of this apparent paradox are discussed. First, the conceptions of knowledge that underpin the use of notions of disciplinarity as well as interdisciplinarity in Australian government reports and policy and strategy papers are analysed. Second, an analysis of the Australian research governance system and its underlying mechanisms is presented, as they pertain to interdisciplinary forms of research. On the basis of these analyses, it is concluded that there is a significant mismatch between the discourse of interdisciplinarity and associated conceptions of knowledge on the one hand, and current, relatively inflexible governmental research funding and evaluation practices on the other. It is finally proposed that the occurrence and perpetuation of such a mismatch in the Australian context can only be understood properly if placed in the context of a more general paradox of research governance, where a politically charged rhetoric of innovation conflicts with the actual trend toward an increasingly diminishing scope for the self-organisation of knowledge.