Interdisciplinary research combing different perspectives 2 Desmond Mc

Inter-disciplinary research: combing different perspectives (2) Desmond Mc. Neill

Advice to masters students Start from the problem, not theory or hypothesis. Draw on those disciplines, methods and theories which best relate to the problem. Be ‘reflexive’, critical. Be rigorous with regard to both the collection and use of empirical data and the analysis. Avoid normative statements.

Academic quality and Interdisciplinary Research Academic quality is normally assessed by peer review. The primary criteria of quality are that research should be original and rigorous. Originality At masters level the demand for originality is not very strenuous. Some interdisciplinary research is very original because it draws inspiration from one discipline and uses it in another. But whether or not this is original may depend on whether it is viewed from one or the other perspective.

Rigour What constitutes rigour is decided by those who practice the discipline. Within a discipline, there is generally strong agreement as to what constitutes rigour. Between disciplines, there is often strong disagreement. This can therefore be a problem for researchers who work in the interfaces between disciplines.

• The aesthetic qualities of the writing also matter. • Different disciplines, and even sometimes different journals, develop their own styles. • This may even relate to such things as use of footnotes and acknowledgements.

Rigour: building up an argument. • Building blocks: empirical facts, evidence. • Connections: logical or causal links.

Authoritative sources of information Observation. Statistical office. ‘Recognised’ researchers, institutions Interviews Newspapers? Friends, family?

Logical or causal links Material things This is water. (All) water freezes at zero degrees centigrade. This water freezes at zero degrees centigrade. Living things This is a tree. (All) trees need water to grow. This tree needs water to grow

Individual human beings This is a person. (All) people feel pain. This person feels pain. Groups of human beings This is a Norwegian. (Most) Norwegians like to ski. This person (probably) likes to ski

Compare with: This man is a bachelor. (Therefore), this man is unmarried.

What is the case: facts and evidence How to test the claim that: This is water. This is a tree. This person is in pain. This person is a Norwegian. What is the case – what one person says is the case – what people say is the case.

Causal relations How to test the claim that: Water causes soil erosion. Trees reduce global warming. Tobacco induces addiction in humans Democracies reduce the likelihood of armed conflict.

Example: poverty and rural-urban migration in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Are migrants to cities poorer than residents? If so, why? Economics Anthropology Sociology

Methods (within social science/humanities) Economics: Statistics: correlations based on cross-sectional data and time series. Sociology: Surveys and questionnaires. Interviews Anthropology: Participant observation. Comparative case studies: compare a small number of e. g. villages which are very similar in some respects but very different in others.

Anthropology Loving and forgetting: moments of inarticulacy in tribal India*(p 243 -261) Piers Vitebsky Ultima Thule: anthropology and the call of the unknown (p 789 -804) Kirsten Hastrup Rights violations, rumour, and rhetoric: making sense of cannibalism in Mambasa, Ituri (Democratic Republic of Congo) (p 825 -843) Johan Pottier Spirit possession, power, and the absent presence of Islam: re-viewing Les maîtres fous* (p 731 -761) Paul Henley

Economics Competition and Price Variation When Consumers Are Loss Averse Botond Koszegi and Paul Heidhues Does Innovation Cause Stock Market Runups? Evidence from the Great Crash Tom Nicholas The Power of Focal Points Is Limited: Even Minute Payoff Asymmetry May Yield Large Coordination Failures Vincent P. Crawford, Uri Gneezy and Yuval Rottenstreich Explaining Changes in Female Labor Supply in a Life-Cycle Model Orazio Attanasio, Hamish Low and Virginia Sanchez-Marcos

Political science Global Distributive Justice and the State (p 487 -518) Simon Caney Do Mayoral Elections Work? Evidence from London (p 653 -678) John Curtice, Ben Seyd, Katarina Thomson Towards the End of a Long Transition? Bipolarity and Instability in Italy's Changing Political System (p 138 -149) Maurizio Carbone, James L. Newell The Grimly Comic Riddle of Hegemony in IPE: Where is Class Struggle? * Adam David Morton

Some Masters topics 2008 Eco- tourism, wind power production and sustainable development in Møre and Romsdal Rhetoric and realities of local people involvement in conserving the biodiversity of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda Consuming the Wilderness - Competing for Access to the Last Frontier People and cod: un/sustainability in the making Perspectives on Poverty: The Poor as Human Waste of Modernity