A call for Interdiciplinarity

“A specialist is somebody who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing”

This is a saying which I have always found humorous because unfortunately it can very easily become true. I doubt any of us have reached this level of academia, and I really hope we can all avoid it. One article which I was reading last week mentions the American Heritage Dictionary definition of ‘academic’ as “scholarly to the point of being unaware of the outside world”. I found this rather hilarious, and of course scary. Is this seriously the definition of academic? I looked up the word at dictionary.com:

1. pertaining to areas of study that are not primarily vocational or applied, as the humanities or pure mathematics.
2. theoretical or hypothetical; not practical, realistic, or directly useful: an academic question; an academic discussion of a matter already decided.
3. learned or scholarly but lacking in worldliness, common sense, or practicality.

So apparently we are going to school to become “not directly useful” and learning how to be “lacking in worldliness”... great.

I know we have all heard this joke before, most likely from our parents/grandparents or crazy people on the bus who tell you that you are wasting your life because you study religion (ok, and you’re a crazy bus person, I wouldn’t talk!). But it actually being the definition in a dictionary? Well, unfortunately, that gives the issue a little more weight!

Do we really have to be so detached from the world? Isn’t this dangerous? Yes we can be as up to date on all the information in our own field. But shouldn’t’ we also be aware of what is going on in the world OUTSIDE of our specialized area of study? Does this not provide a little more *context* in order for us to make our studies relevant to a world outside of academia? My parents are very supportive of me and tell people I am saving the world because I study trees (they’re environmentally conscious products of Vancouver in the ‘60s/’70s...) But according to the definitions I will fail both them and my dearly beloved earth.

This is why I think interdiciplinarity is important to our studies in this world of academia. It’s important to step outside of our little box we create for ourselves with our “specialization”. It gets us talking to other scholars, other academics, creating discourse in which our ideas will expand and grow. I liked the quote by Mikhail Bakhtin which Callanan used to preface her article. To paraphrase: ideas become real only once they come into contact with other ideas. This conversation between disciplines is important as it expands ones comfort zone and forces people to think critically about how their work can be applied to other fields, how can non-specialists understand, and hopefully, use the work.

I think with the increasing utilization of interdisciplinary techniques a new understanding of the academic is starting to be formed. In Callanan’s article she mentions how Edward Said “argues that to be an intellectual is to actively embrace the role of amateur and exile” . Intellectuals are not distanced from the “real” world, but instead in order to be a good intellectual, we must remain an informed and engaged watcher of the world, the line between academic and public needs to be broken down. (3)

In the same article it is mentioned how Giroux discusses “leaving behind the concept of “academic” as a disengaged and esoteric category” How it is our “responsibility to foster hope, the belief in the possibility of relevance and change” (11).

These definitions and understandings of what an academic or intellectual is are much better than the previous ones, which made us completely irrelevant. In the world in which we live in today it is important to leave behind the stuffy image of the useless academic, the specialist who knows everything about nothing. Instead we should be engaged in our world, in our surroundings.

I especially believe taking an interdisciplinary approach is imperative when studying cultures other than one’s own. How can one (who is not of South Asian decent, for example) study the politics of South Asian without knowing about the religion? How can one study the religion without understanding the geography and social conditions of the people? Etc. etc. And this goes for everyone studying a culture that they are not living in, be it ancient or foreign.

We all study different cultures, different religions. This cross-cultural knowledge is important in today’s globalized world, where discourse between different groups of people is becoming more and more prevalent and is now an important part of understanding the reality in which we live.

Hopefully we will all be useful in our own way.

“Save the cheerleader, save the world”