Affect and Effect in Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration

Abstract

Research across disciplines is often described as beset with problems of epistemological hierarchies and incommensurable categories. We recognize these problems working in two large interdisciplinary research projects on obesity and cholesterol lowering medicine in Denmark. We explore the affective tensions that arise in concrete situations when we meet other researchers around a shared research object. We propose that sensitivity towards such differences, and exploration of the affects they foster, can generate new epistemological and political openings. Analysing four interdisciplinary situations we suggest that embodied experiences of amusement, awkwardness, boredom and doubts are signposts of both differences and connections between people and concerns. Inspired by Haraway’s notion of “response-ability” (1997) and Verran’s concept of “generative critique” (2001) we propose that attention to affective tensions in interdisciplinary research collaboration can be generative of effects not only on modes of collaboration, but also on the ways we engage the world as researchers.

Generative Critique in Interdisciplinary Collaborations: From Critique in and of the Neurosciences to Socio-Technical Integration Research as a Practice of Critique in R(R)I

“…Hillersdal et al demonstrate how attention to disconcertment enables generative critique outside of postcolonial contexts [51]. The anthropologists pursued generative critique in Western interdisciplinary research projects on obesity and high levels of cholesterol in the blood.…”

“…The anthropologists pursued generative critique in Western interdisciplinary research projects on obesity and high levels of cholesterol in the blood. They report that 'sensitivity to difference, as when sharing doubts with project colleagues about how to approach a research problem, is a promising starting point for pursuing a generative critique' ( [51], p. 3). Sensitivity for the experience of disconcertment helped Hillersdal and colleagues identify and work through moments in which the object under study was something else for collaborators from different disciplines.…”

“…Such questions also destabilised routine practices, economic and politically strategic agendas, as well as expertise and evidence hierarchies. Critique of the status quo was generative of 'other ways of "seeing and doing" problems' ( [51], p. 3) because it was enacted in moments of collaboration when problem-solving was unsettled for and reconfigured with all parties.…”

“…In the first section of the article, generative critique is developed by drawing on Verran and later work that applies generative critique in the context of interdisciplinary collaborations [49,51]. The second section shows how generative critique has been enacted in the neurosciences and how it paves a middle way between overly detached, deconstructive critique and overly attached, uncritical service.…”

From Affect to Action: Choices in Attending to Disconcertment in Interdisciplinary Collaborations

“…Furthermore, our efforts to capture the fleeting nature of disconcertment contribute to the "affective turn" (Kerr and Garforth 2015, 3) in STS-a renewed interest in affective entanglements and embodied ways of knowing in science (Collins 2010;Fitzgerald 2013;Myers 2012;Pickersgill 2012) dating back to Max Weber, Ludwig Fleck, and Robert Merton (Barbalet 2002;Parker and Hackett 2014). By characterizing the nature and effects of disconcertment, we seek to advance ongoing discussions on the methodological and analytical relevance of affects in research and interdisciplinary collaboration (Boix Mansilla, Lamont, and Sato 2015;Fitzgerald et al 2014;Griffin, Bränström-Ö hman, and Kalman 2013;Hillersdal et al 2020;Parker and Hackett 2012).…”