Transdisciplinarity: Between mainstreaming and marginalization

Transdisciplinarity has a long history of academic discourse. Promoted as an adequate scientific response to pressing societal problems like climate change, it has recently received common currency in science policy rhetoric. Nevertheless, despite its increasing popularity, transdisciplinarity is still far from academically established and current funding practices do not effectively support it at universities and research institutions. One reason for this deficit is that a universally accepted definition for transdisciplinarity is still not available. Consequently, quality standards that equally guide researchers, program managers and donors are widely lacking. Therefore, a rhetorical mainstreaming of transdisciplinarity prevails which risks marginalizing those who take seriously the integrative efforts creative collaboration requires. The aim of this paper is thus to find common ground in the transdisciplinarity discourse. Based on an analysis of current scientific literature, we first identify main features of an emerging shared framework of transdisciplinarity. Second, building upon this framework, we present a conceptual model of transdisciplinarity that can be used by science and science policy to characterize different types of transdisciplinarity and their corresponding demands on integration. We also address the way in which ecological economics could benefit from adopting this model. To conclude, we propose a general definition of transdisciplinarity. (C) 2012 Elsevier By. All rights reserved.