Thinking with Care: Exploring Interdisciplinarity in a Global Research Project

Abstract

The chapter discusses how regulatory ecology, as an interdisciplinary concept, helps us to ‘do’ interdisciplinarity. The focus will be on how the concept functions as a boundary object. Coming from very different disciplinary backgrounds, we show how we were able to use regulatory ecology to make the ‘translation’ between our disciplines and to work together in an interdisciplinary project.

We explore interdisciplinarity in the context of Sustainable Market Actors for Sustainable Trade (SMART), an interdisciplinary and international research project with participants from a diverse range of research organisations. The overarching objective of SMART is to contribute to greater policy coherence for sustainable development within Planetary Boundaries (Steffen et al, 2015) and in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (United Nations, 2015). This requires an approach, which integrates the planetary boundaries framework and the state-of-the art knowledge on the status of the achievement of fundamental social and human rights in the analysis of the regulatory complexity that sustains the current situation.

Regulatory ecology enables new ways of ordering and structuring information. We propose that it is the performativity of interdisciplinary concepts, such as regulatory ecology, which enable the innovative approach we seek: new questions become possible, through which new responses may emerge.