dr.microdis-eu.be -

 

‘Integration’ is a current buzzword in both academic and policy contexts. It is also a contested, slippery and ambivalent term, which has, thus far, eschewed uniform definition. Different disciplines and individuals often draw upon divergent understandings of ‘integration’ and such diversity can pose considerable challenges – especially where a range of partners, institutions or organisations are involved in research, policy and social action initiatives. Integration is a term almost wholly considered in positive terms.

 

In many respects, the recent interest in integration has emerged from the past decades’ increasing trends towards ‘interdisciplinary’, ‘multidisciplinary’ and ‘transdisciplinary’ work. Whilst these terms have often been used interchangeably to refer to work which straddles more than one discipline or approach, they do have distinct meanings and associations. In discussing work on the European Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) programme, Buller notes:

 

“One of the particular challenges for the RELU projects, and particularly those that have an interest in how the ‘knowledge’ they produce is constructed, lies in the progression from multidisciplinarity to interdisciplinarity; going beyond a disciplinary parallelism that, rarely – if ever – strays beyond fairly conventional boundaries, yet avoiding the unifying grand project of transdisciplinarity” (Buller, 2008:2).

 

This comment also, indirectly, points at key differences between ‘multidisciplinary’, ‘interdisciplinary’ and ‘transdisciplinary’ work – although, as Robinson (2007) notes, there is a lack of consensus about what ‘interdisciplinary work’ means in practice. Thus, the boundaries are fuzzy and sometimes fluid but the individual terms are almost always regarded normatively.

 

‘Extreme events’ is another term to be considered closely. It is used here in much the same loose way, as a starting point for discussion. For many, the focus on extreme events is too narrowly time bound; missing the underlying socio-political processes and root causes which turn a hazard ‘event’ into a socially constructed disaster. The focus on extreme events is intended to be inclusive of – to integrate - hazards, disasters and climate change.

 

This meeting aims to critically evaluate ‘interdisciplinary’ ideas and approaches. It will take as its starting point the work undertaken by the MICRODIS project (see below), primarily in Europe but also considering the research undertaken in Asia. It will invite further elaboration of interdisciplinarity (using the term loosely and inclusively) by members of other European projects, and others with relevant European experience and knowledge.

 

The Symposium will be a thinking space to struggle with complex problems related to extreme events, aiming to produce a collaborative outcome document which communicates across the science-policy-society interface. The Symposium members are invited to bring to the meeting a short presentation (in any form) on some aspect of complexity/interdisciplinarity in which extreme (or not so extreme) events in a European context are addressed directly or illuminated in some more theoretical way. We welcome contributions that focus on one or more of the social, health and economic impacts and processes which we have been considering.