Environmental Communicators as Transdisciplinary ‘Knowledge Brokers’ Justin King Rademaekers, PhD West Chester University of Pennsylvania ~
[email protected]
Abstract Environmental sciences are by their nature transdisciplinary modes of thought which operate along a continuum with studies of human behavior at one end, and studies of non-human (ecological) behavior at the other, both of which require input from many academic disciplines to address environmental problems (De Groot 1992, p. 60). An effective process of transdisciplinary knowledge-making is vital to affect real change in environmental issues, and the establishment of effective transdisciplinary collaborations, therefore, should be central to improving environmental communication. Yet, significant communicative barriers thwart the effectiveness of transdisciplinary processes, and environmental collaborators face deep struggles reaching collaborative consensus in environmental research. This paper argues that transdisciplinary collaborations fail in part because knowledge-making institutions and social structures privilege disciplinary ways of thinking that position communicators as participants outside the realm of knowledge production—only invited to collaborate after environmental knowledge-making has supposedly occurred. This paper presents a review of five previously published case studies (Jakobsen et al. 2004; Christian Pohl 2005; Robert Evans and Simon Marvin 2006; Eigenbrode et al. 2007; and Tom Hargreaves and Jacquelin Burgess 2009), which all highlight the barriers that emerge in efforts to address environmental issues through a collaborative knowledge-making process. Most interestingly, the authors of each of these studies report a need for professionals adept in the complexities of collaborative knowledgemaking processes to mediate and broker this vital process of transdisciplinary knowledge-making. The author concludes with an assertion that environmental communicators should play a central role in the knowledge-making process itself; not just as recorders of information that requires distribution but as early-integrated “knowledge brokers” in the collaborative process itself. This assertion has implications for the teaching, theoretical exploration, and practice of environmental rhetoric and communication.
Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015
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Exploring Transdisciplinary Collaborations in Environmental Sciences Considerable research has contributed to the identification of epistemological approaches in the environmental science discipline. Generally, environmental science theorists identify the discipline’s core knowledge-making practice as a negotiation between the real or natural world and the human world. The emphasis on negotiation is important because it becomes the basis for rhetorical activity in interdisciplinary and applied sciences. We can use this idea of negotiation to understand other interdisciplinary and applied sciences such as health science (a negotiation between the human and the environment) or engineering (a negotiation between the human and tools). From this premise develops a disciplinary epistemology for the interdisciplinary and applied field of environmental science based on the negotiation and translation between wide varieties of often divergent disciplines. To understand the importance of transdisciplinary work in environmental science it’s essential to think about the epistemology of environmental sciences. Wouter T. de Groot provides the most comprehensive study of the epistemology of environmental science in his book, Environmental
Science Theory (1992). De Groot explains, “environmental problems are discrepancies between what the world is (i.e. facts) and what the world should be (i.e. values, norms)” (p. 60). De Groot’s conclusion positions environmental science along a continuum with human behavior at one end, and non-human behavior at the other. Reinout Heijungs depicts an example of this epistemological continuum in his book, A Theory of the Environment and Economic Systems (2001). When an environmentalist seeks to address the problem of CO2 emissions from an electric power plant, Heijungs explains, that environmentalist must bring into question not just the emission itself and its effect on the climate, but the human actions that require electricity in the first place. Here, the environmental scientist must address “environmental problems” that range from human behavior (i.e. capitalism, electricity use) to non-human behavior (i.e. CO2 molecules, the composition of coal). This condition alone characterizes environmental science with its interdisciplinary and applied epistemology. Additionally, this allows intra-disciplines that address concerns along varying points of this continuum to emerge, such as “environmental communication” or “environmental rhetoric” emerging to investigate the intersection of environmental science and deliberative discourse. At the core of this entanglement between disciplines, materials, and humans is an understanding of environmental sciences and studies as a relatively recent and noteworthy epistemological divergence from pure laboratory sciences that strive for human agency alone in knowledge Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015
Page 3 of 19 production--attempting to control all else but the independent variable. The deep epistemological shift that environmental sciences represent has profound implications for rhetoric and communications studies. To explore some of the implications of transdisciplinary work in environmental sciences on rhetoric and communication practices, this paper reviews five case studies on transdisciplinary collaboration. Criteria for selecting these case studies are as follows: 1. Studies of collaborations must define their cases as either inter- or trans- disciplinary. This criteria is important for emphasizing the specific challenges that emerge when researchers from divergent disciplines collaborate on an environmental project. Though interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary have been used interchangeably, the latter tends to indicate collaboration between social scientists and natural scientists at the problem-identification and methodological level. 2. Studies must have been published no earlier than 2004. This criteria is important because environmental research and interdisciplinary research has developed rapidly in the past decade. Investments and interest in interdisciplinary research, establishment of interdisciplinary work in the higher education curriculum, and concern over environmental problems have all increased significantly over the past ten years. 3. Studies must observe environmental science-focused research collaborations. 4. Studies must provide specific recommendations for addressing barriers to collaboration. This criteria alone eliminated many studies from being considered in my review. The identification of specific recommendations and barriers are important for making the collective conclusions of the studies I review actionable. Using the criteria described above I selected five case studies for review. The first study reviewed was Jakobsen et al's “Barriers and Facilitators to Integration among Scientists in Transdisciplinary Landscape Analyses: A Cross-Country Comparison” published in Forest
Policy and Economics (2004). The authors of this study selected two cases they identified as transdisciplinary for analysis: the North American Interior Columbia River Basin Ecosystem Management Project (ICBEMP) and the Danish Boundaries in the Landscape project (BIL). Both studies looked to integrate ecosystems research and public opinion on landscape in a way that could develop improved land management practices and public policy. The authors reviewed both Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015
Page 4 of 19 cases using in-depth interviews, observations, and archival documents to determine the common barriers that emerged in both collaborations and “to improve our understanding of the barriers and facilitators to integration of perspectives across disciplinary and organizational boundaries” (p. 15). One of the focal points of Jakbosen et al.'s study of transdisciplinary collaboration is the level at which integration among researchers occurred. The authors see greater extents of integration as a goal of transdisciplinary work, noting: A high level of integration has traits of holism…and synergy…It solves disagreement and difference in knowledge and scientific approaches through dialectic thinking, not majority rule, tradition, or compromise…In the process of knowledge integration individual disciplinary contributions mingle with others, forming innovative knowledge or solutions that move beyond the individual disciplines’ long-standing assumption and beliefs to accomplish a group task (p. 17). In their study of the ICBEMP and BIL projects, Jakobsen et al. identified what they called "perceived barriers/facilitators," and categorized each as either a boundary to researcher integration, a facilitator to integration, or both a boundary and facilitator to integration. The study authors found a variety of boundaries and facilitators to integration in both projects, including barriers and facilitators that overlapped among both projects. These barriers and facilitators were coded into categories of data, including: individual-based boundaries; group-based boundaries; organization culture-based boundaries; and a mixed category of group and individualbased boundaries. Individual-based barriers identified include lack of incentives for integration, difference in education levels and degree titles, insecurity about career implications for the research, stress levels, technological skill, and high turnover of project personnel. Individual-based facilitators identified include personal character, and familiarity with each other. Group-based barriers identified include illiteracy to divergent disciplinary concepts, differences in terminology, different disciplinary methods and methodological traditions, power hierarchies that developed between disciplinary teams, the stereotyping of other disciplines, and overall different disciplinary backgrounds. Group-based facilitators to integration include a degree of literacy to
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Page 5 of 19 divergent disciplinary concepts, frequent meetings, and a shared problem-complex and projects in common. Organization and culture-based boundaries to integration were largely identified as challenges related to the unnecessary development of hierarchies in response to the lack of internal boundaries in interdisciplinary collaboration (p. 24). The barriers that emerged because of this migration toward hierarchical structures include organizational and academic cultures within the U.S. Forest Service that condoned stereotyping of disciplines, and disciplinary hierarchies based on perceived worth of the discipline which consequently gave social scientists the least power in the collaboration and led to some interviewees labeling social scientists as "second class scientists." In response to this default toward hierarchy, common study areas and a shared culture of science were the only organization and culture-based facilitators to integration that were identified. The mixed category of group and individual barriers identified some barriers based on the collaboration design including barriers associated with limited time and changing deadlines, geographical separation of researchers, group sizes and settings, issued related to authorship and first-author rights, differences in perceptions of assigned tasks, poor group dynamics, and the stereo-typing of disciplines. Perceived facilitators to integration in this category included the use of informal settings, interdisciplinary leadership skills, opportunities for face-to-face interaction, opportunities for interaction with the public, overlaps in shared academic backgrounds. When taken together, Jakobsen et al. provides a comprehensive view of some common barriers that emerge between individual researchers as well as in the design and management of interdisciplinary environmental research collaborations, especially barriers that emerged because of perceived and stereotyped assumptions about divergent disciplines that constantly pressured the collaboration to default to an organizational and hierarchical structure along disciplinary lines. A second study reviewed was Christian Pohl's “Transdisciplinary Collaboration in Environmental Research” published in the journal Futures (2005). Pohl reviewed two collaborative research programs defined as transdisciplinary and containing both social science and natural science researchers: the Swiss Priority Programme Environment (SPPE); and the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA). Pohl conducted twenty-seven interviews over a two year period with researchers and project managers from both studies to determine the challenges they faced in their collaborative work. Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015
Page 6 of 19 Pohl frames his study of the SPPE and MISTRA programs in response to three guiding hypotheses about transdisciplinary environmental research: that collaboration between natural and social sciences takes place as a means to handle complexity of environmental issues and the diverse perceptions of the environment between science and society; that there are specific roles for natural and social sciences which correspond to a theory of "two cultures" in science, the problemdriven, action-oriented research culture and the discussion-driven, contemplation-oriented research culture; and that this ability for transdisciplinary researchers to develop new, and what I identify as "situated" knowledge making concepts is one of the fundamental characteristics of rhetorical activity in interdisciplinary and applied science work. Pohl's study points to several barriers to successful transdisciplinary collaborations among natural and social science researchers addressing applied environmental research projects. These barriers include: divergent disciplinary terminology and concepts, pressures to produce results, natural tendencies to reorganize along disciplinary and hierarchical divisions of labor, the stereotyping of disciplines and their presumed predisposition toward the abstract or problem-specific, and the challenge of getting researchers to understand how transdisciplinary collaboration benefits their practice (rather than merely being a funding requirement). A third study reviewed was Robert Evans and Simon Marvin's “Researching the Sustainable City: Three Modes of Interdisciplinarity” published in Environment and Planning (2006). This study assesses the function of interdisciplinary collaboration by evaluating three United Kingdom research programs focusing on the design of sustainable cities in those countries. The three programs (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council; Economic and Social Research Council; and Natural Environment Research Council) created an interdisciplinary collaboration to share their research and publish the Cities and Sustainability report and form the Local Authority Research Council Initiative. The report authors studied this collaboration as the Cities and Sustainability Report led deeper interdisciplinary collaboration on sustainability, and later attempts to synthesize the interdisciplinary conclusions with local authorities and policy makers. This collaboration was studied by Evans and Marvin through critical reflection on their involvement (they were both participants in these programs); through analysis of what they call “grey materials” consisting of meeting minutes, internal reports, and other notes; and through visual representation of how each research council constructed “the research problematic.”
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Page 7 of 19 Of particular interest to Evans and Marvin in their review of collaboration between the three government programs was the problem of the "implicit assumption...that it is possible to triangulate between the various theories and methods that different disciplines bring to the problem...that there is just one problem and...approaching it from many different sides, we can build up a complete picture" (p. 1012). To consider this problem, Evans and Marvin traced the development of interdisciplinary relations using a historical-narrative. At first, the collaboration among researchers in the three government programs was understood as "radically interdisciplinary" in their collaborative development of the Cities and Sustainability report which was produced by researchers from divergent disciplinary backgrounds (natural science, social science, and engineering) to model the pathways of city energy inputs, lifestyle use of those energies, and the subsequent wastes generated through lifestyle use. After the publication of the report, a Sustainable Cities Network formed with an agenda to pursue the conclusion of the report in an interdisciplinary way. Evans and Marvin report that this network, which: drifted apart over time...inevitable given that...no single 'pot' of money would be available...that funds would be distributed by individual research councils...where there was supposed to be a single research programme, jointly promoted by two research councils, there developed a series of parallel research programmes each associated with a specific research council...[which] remained focused on their own core disciplines, so that the key innovations...did not materialise. (p. 1017) Evans and Marvin attribute this inevitable dissolution of interdisciplinary collaborations to "the politics of academic life" with researchers complaining that their portions of money were being diverted to other disciplines, and the absence of dialogue among researchers about the research's "key assumptions, practices, and priorities." For example, social scientists involved in the modeling of transportation routes with engineers experienced a fundamental difference in conceptualizing the problem-premise of travel, with social scientists presuming the demand for travel was a social phenomena that could be altered through policy, and engineers favoring an anthropocentric technological conception in which the infrastructure must accommodate human desire for travel. This fundamental difference between disciplinary dispositions was cited in multiple programs that worked to conceptualize the sustainable city through technological fixes rather than social agency. Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015
Page 8 of 19 In response to the failed collaboration of this interdisciplinary network, Evans ad Marvin report on a third programme which was used "as an attempt to bridge the gap between the different cultures of the academic and local authority communities" (p. 1024). This final attempt to arrive at actionable conclusions from the interdisciplinary collaboration on developing a sustainable city also failed, largely because local authorities lacked the time and specialist knowledge to get any use out of the collaboration's conclusions. Evans and Marvin report that rather than the emergence of any comprehensive model for making cities sustainable, three different views of the city emerged in representation of one physical city space. Evans and Marvin's study of three sustainable cities programs in the United Kingdom concludes with several noted barriers to collaboration among researchers from divergent disciplines on an environmentally-focused topic like sustainability. Issues related to different disciplinary priorities, conceptions, terminology, and the more fundamental social location of knowledge; issues related to shared funding, timelines and deadlines; and issues related to interdisciplinary research's presumed incommensurability with local authorities and policymakers due to the absence of usable research conclusions and researcher's failures to understanding policy making as its own framework of knowledge. Evans and Marvin conclude with a profound question about interdisciplinary work that will be discussed latter in this paper: "Is the task 'simply' one of translating between different paradigms, of adding new elements to existing ones, or is it the much more ambitious one of achieving a single new disciplinary paradigm that includes all others?" (p. 1025) Such a question has important implications for considering rhetoric and environmental communications in collaborative work not as a mediation of inputs from divergent sources that must be defined by translation, but as a mediation of inputs defined by the generation of new knowledge making systems that are dynamic and situated in the context of that research. A fourth study reviewed was Eigenbrode et al.'s “Employing Philosophical Dialogue in Collaborative Science” published in Bioscience (2007). This study aims to develop some robust conclusions about interdisciplinary research collaboration in that their research reviewed seven published studies of inter- and trans- disciplinary environmental research collaboration to determine the common barriers that emerged across all studies. The authors aimed to create a system for classifying the common barriers and outline an approach to help cross-disciplinary collaborators identify the “philosophical structure of their research.” Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015
Page 9 of 19 The first barrier described by Eigenbrode et al. is what they call disagreements in the “level of integration” that occurred across the seven studies they reviewed. The authors describe this barrier as the erroneous tendency to apply the wrong degree of disciplinary integration in crossdisciplinary work. The degrees of disciplinarity are frequently classified as “multidisciplinary,” “crossdisciplinary,” “interdisciplinary” and “transdisciplinary” from order of least epistemologically integrated to most epistemologically integrated. If researchers begin with different intentions for integration, than the discrepancy itself is likely to become a barrier of effective collaboration. For example, initiating a multi-disciplinary approach to an issue that is best suited for a transdisciplinary approach—such as global climate change. The authors confess that an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary approach, in which full integration occurs among a variety of divergent disciplines is the ideal, however a variety of institutional power concerns, such as disciplinary identity, may lead to the wrong level of integration (see for example, Shove 2009). A second major challenge to interdisciplinary collaboration is what Eigenbrode et al. identified as “linguistic and conceptual divides.” The authors describe these divides as disagreements regarding the specialist terminology used in varying disciplines and the different connotations for the same terms across disciplines. The authors present the example of “triangulation” as a linguistic and conceptual divide, noting that “triangulation” in the social sciences refers to an entirely different research principle than it does to specialists in navigation and surveying. As I will discuss later in this paper, the solution to these divides is an open dialogue about these conceptual divides rather than mere agreement. In fact, the idea of “openness” and “reflexivity” in interdisciplinary collaborative research is a frequently mentioned solution to almost every barrier to collaboration identified. In essence, researchers in interdisciplinary research need to be less “disciplined” and more “open” and “reflexive.” Epistemological awareness and reflexivity is what enables successful interdisciplinary collaboration in academic environments. The linguistic divides that Eigenbrode et al. describe are more than semantic divides—they are often at the root of a conceptual divide. For example the divide between what counts as an observable scientific setting—a strictly controlled lab or a natural (and uncontrollable) ecosystem? The word “control” in this example represents more than a linguistic disagreement—it represents a fundamental disagreement on what counts as science. For some, a natural environment totally lacks the control required for information to be repeatable, and therefore scientifically reliable. For others, a controlled laboratory setting is a fantasy of control, and therefore cannot produce results
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Page 10 of 19 that are genuinely applicable to the “real” world. So long as biologists and environmental scientists disagree on such a fundamental idea there will be persistent disagreement in collaborative discourse. Disagreements on what counts as evidence is perhaps the most epistemologically systemic barrier to collaboration in interdisciplinary academic collaborations. Eigenbrode et al. describe this as a “validation of evidence” barrier which is a significant challenge when varying methodological practices are utilized by the disciplines involved in an interdisciplinary collaboration. Because each discipline maintains a different method and conceptual framework for collecting and valuing evidence, this becomes a major barrier for collaborative knowledge making. For example, a social scientist may take citizen input on environmental quality much more seriously as evidence than a chemist might—especially if she can find no “evidence” of the poor environmental quality of which the citizens complain in her chemical analysis of the environment. In this we see a simple, but fundamental, barrier to collaboration with regard to the value of evidence and the methods that can be used to valuate evidence. The social context of research is also an important barrier cited by Eigenbrode et al. because it describes the divides that often occur between pure and applied sciences. The pure/applied divide stems from the value and context of external stakeholders—the notion of scientific objectivity. Researchers working in the pure sciences may be more likely to reduce or eliminate any social (including institutional or governmental) influence on research being conducted. Researchers from the applied sciences are more likely to see social context and stakeholder input as a focal point for the research—for applied researchers the social context helps define the problem to be addressed. Climate change might serve as an example of the most obvious divide regarding the social context of research. Some pure science-leaning researchers might insist that scientific solutions to global climate change be discovered, and only after this discovery should researchers in social science find a way to implement that discovery in a social context. Applied science climate change researchers, however, may be more likely to start such a research project by asking what solutions can be reasonably implemented into the social fabric and give priority to research that provides solution that have practical implementation. The final two barriers cited by Eigenbrode et al. are less common, but essential considerations in interdisciplinary and applied science collaborations. The first is what the authors describe as the scientists’ “perceived nature of the world.” By this the authors refer to the age-old scientific Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015
Page 11 of 19 question of the relation between researcher objectivity and human values, such as morality. The authors argue that divides between researchers on this issue can serve as a barrier to collaboration, but most often the address of these divides is “seldom required” (p. 58). Another cited barrier is what the authors refer to as a “reductionist versus holistic science” barrier. Here, researchers may begin with agreement on integration levels and linguist terms, but may differ on how to best approach scientific problems—by isolating individual components for observation, or by looking at the problem more broadly without dividing out individual components? Once a decision on this issue has been made, such a barrier is less likely to affect the collaboration, however, it is important that this approach be carefully detailed by researchers early in the collaboration. A fifth and final study reviewed was Tom Hargreaves and Jacquelin Burgess's “Pathways to Interdisciplinarity: A Technical Report Exploring Collaborative Interdisciplinary Working in the Transitions Pathways Consortium” published as a working paper for the Centre for Social and
Economic Research on the Global Environment (2009). The authors of this study observed the collaborative work of the United Kingdom’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) tasked with developing an evidence-based energy policy that could drastically reduce the UKs output of greenhouse gases from energy production. This project was named “The Transition Pathways to a Low Carbon Economy.” The authors defined the program as interdisciplinary in design, and interviewed 23 out of the 24 members involved. The study’s lead author, Hargreaves, conducted “grounded theory analysis” on the interview transcripts to identify key themes that emerged among interviewees. In this study, failed interdisciplinary collaboration, largely between, what the authors call “natural sciences and engineering” and the “social sciences” are deemed to be one of the great contributors to stagnancy between Climate Change research and public policy. The authors identify several barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration, which closely resemble the conclusions of other studies under review. Among these are “border troubles” such as the lack of a “common language,” disputes over the “division of labour,”…“particularly between social [sciences] and natural/engineering sciences,” and “the institutional ‘hard-wiring’ of mono-disciplinary approaches” such as peer-review and assessment (p. 6) In addition to these “border troubles” Hargreaves and Burgess also detail the “more challenging…conceptual troubles” citing “negotiations of academic identity”; “questions over the applied or conceptual nature of interdisciplinary research”; and “issues relating to the Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015
Page 12 of 19 epistemological structure and culture of distinct disciplines” (p. 6). Citing Petts et al.’s (2008) resourceful study, Hargreaves and Burgess express substantial concern over what they describe as a problem-identification problem in interdisciplinary collaboration: What is designated a ‘problem’ can itself constitute a critical difference between disciplinary cultures, and can cause real communication problems’…The issue would appear to be particularly acute when collaborations are between incognate disciplines (e.g across research domains such as natural, engineering and social sciences) that do not necessarily share assumptions about ontology…and epistemology…problem frames should be carefully and reflexively negotiated on a project-specific basis to encourage meaningful exchange between equal disciplinary partners (p. 7). This problem-identification challenge that Hargreaves and Burgress describe (also Shove (2009)) is easy enough to imagine. For example, science and engineering specialists interested in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions might model electric technology use to determine the feasibility of mitigation (e.g. Williams et al. 2013) while social scientists interested in the problem of mitigating green house might instead argue for an assessment of the current political economy for congressional support of such mitigation (e.g Cragg et al. 2013). While both research teams are interested in addressing greenhouse gas mitigation, their conceptual positioning of the problem is quite different. For Williams et al. (2013) the problem is one of technical feasibility—do we have the technology and capability for an 80% reduction by 2050? For Cragg et al. (2013), the problem is one of political economy—what does technical feasibility matter if political will doesn’t exist? If these authors were to work in an interdisciplinary collaborative setting to address greenhouse gas mitigation this difference of problem identification would become a substantial, perhaps debilitating, barrier to their attempts at collective knowledge making.
A Summary of Why Transdisciplinary Collaborations Fail My aim in reviewing interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary environmental science collaborations among researchers, government agencies, academic institutions, community organizations, and citizens was to identify whether there was a core communicative and rhetorical challenge associated with interdisciplinary work and the mediation of inputs from divergent sources. Though there was substantial variety among the studies reviewed and researchers interviewed, there did emerge some common challenges, and these challenges represent a starting point for Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015
Page 13 of 19 rethinking rhetorical instruction for interdisciplinary work. We can understand these common challenges as the framework of a problem-premise for rhetorical activity in interdisciplinary and applied work. These barriers will be listed individually below and reviewed in greater depth in the remainder of this paper: 1. Barriers that emerge because of divergent conceptual frameworks for thinking about the applied environmental problem. 2. Barriers that emerge because of divergent methodological frameworks for addressing the applied environmental problem. 3. Barriers that emerge because of divergent expectations about the social context of the collaboration or divergent political frameworks for the collaboration. 4. Barriers that emerge because of divergent language or terminology among disciplines. 5. Barriers that emerge because of external issues related to the design and management of the collaboration.
Communicative Barrier 1: Barriers that emerge because of divergent conceptual frameworks for thinking about the applied problem. In every collaboration I reviewed, participants faced communicative challenges that were rooted in the different ways that participants conceptualized their work and the problem being addressed. At the level of research collaboration, social scientists, natural scientists, and engineers, for instance, approach applied environmental problems such as sustainable cities with fundamentally different ways of conceptualizing the problem of sustainability in urban settings. In community-based advocacy work, researchers, policy makers, and citizens experienced difficulty collaborating because they conceptualize the role of research differently. Environmental scientists had to constantly re-conceptualize their work for fellow scientists who questioned integrity, policymakers who needed actionable results, and citizens who wanted definitive answers from the research. Alleviating this communicative barrier requires participants to be open and reflexive about their (often disciplinary) conceptual framework, and to be able to think and sometimes shift their thinking to other participants and audiences.
Collaborative Barrier 2: Barriers that emerge because of divergent methodological frameworks for addressing the applied problem. In nearly every collaboration I reviewed, the methodological Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015
Page 14 of 19 framework through which an applied problem was going to be addressed became a significant communicative barrier. In research collaborations, this problem emerged between social scientists and natural scientists who had different methods of collecting and validating evidence. In public advocacy work, debates about scientific methods, such as where in the community to place air monitors, and about advocacy methods, such as whether to use lawsuits to leverage media attention, all emerged. Alleviating this communicative barrier requires mutual respect among participants, and a genuine relationship of co-learning, and the ability to adapt a traditional disciplinary methodology to the demands of the situational activity.
Collaborative Barrier 3: Barriers that emerge because of divergent expectations about the social context of the collaboration or divergent political frameworks for the collaboration. In nearly every collaboration I reviewed, especially those with an advocacy component, debates emerged about the role of the collaboration and research in relation to the politics and social context of the applied problem. Among researchers barriers emerged between what Pohl categorized as detached specialists and engaged problem solvers--and these divisions were shared among social scientists and natural scientists. In advocacy work, barriers emerged regarding the role of scientists in advocating for particular policies as well as the necessary pace of skeptical science and the necessary pace of environmental advocacy. Alleviating this barrier requires that participants involved in an interdisciplinary collaboration discuss the political framework of the project openly, including central notions of timing, skepticism and urgency.
Collaborative Barrier 4: Barriers that emerge because of divergent language or terminology. In nearly all of the collaborations reviewed, disciplinary or organization language became a communicative barrier. In research collaborations many terminology disagreements were rooted in conceptual and methodological disagreements, such as differences in meaning for the term "triangulation." In advocacy work language became a barrier to collaboration when researchers or community organizations need to rephrase work in lay terms, or terms that policy makers could use. Alleviating this communicative barriers requires that researchers have an open dialogue about operational dentitions of terms, and that all participants involved in an advocacy collaboration understand the value of shifting discussion to lay or policy-oriented terms.
Collaborative Barrier 5: Barriers that emerge because of external issues related to the design and management of the collaboration. These external barriers were cited frequently in most studies reviewed. In research collaborations, barriers included funding pressures, professionalization Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015
Page 15 of 19 pressures, and poor group dynamics due to personality conflicts. In advocacy work some external barriers included transportation challenges for citizens, funding pressures between researchers and community organizations, and limited access to decision makers. Alleviating these barriers requires careful and thoughtful design of interdisciplinary collaborations prior to the start of research. It’s clear that rhetoric and communications specialists can and should play an important role in helping to address these communicative barriers that emerge in these important collaborations. It’s also quite clear that environmental communications should make the success of transdisciplinary environmental collaborations a top priority. The ways in which rhetoric and communications experts can make an impact on these collaborations, however, is murky at present. Carving a space for environmental communicators to act as facilitators of transdisciplinary environmental research will be the focus of what remains of this paper.
The Role of Communicators in Transdisciplinary Collaborations Environmental communicators and others with rhetoric and communications expertise can play a valuable role in collaborative research on environmental issues. Though infinitely complex, the role of the environmental communicator tends to fall into one of two postures. The first posture is one we might presume to call “science communication,” which enjoins the rhetoric and communications specialist into a collaboration once data, results, and conclusions have been reached. In this posture, the environmental communicator becomes the bridge between experts and the public through writing and communications practice—ultimately the mediation of symbols: Science is narrated. Data is visualized. Frames for communicating are determined and enacted through appropriate genres and media outlets. A potential problem with the “science communication” positioning of the rhetoric and communications expert is that integration occurs very late in the process—after data, results, and conclusions have been made and/or collected. In this position, the rhetoric and communications expert can’t harness the most productive elements of transdisciplinary work, which is the opportunity for the actual research methodology, and for the knowledge making process itself to be informed by rhetorical expertise. This posture presumes that rhetoric and communications expertise is of value post-knowledge production, which misses the most innovative and generative aspects of rhetorical theory and communications theory.
Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015
Page 16 of 19 A second posture is one we might presume to call “communications research” in which a rhetoric and communications expert is a participating member of an inter- or trans-disciplinary collaborative. In this posture, a researcher with communications expertise might work with colleagues in environmental sciences and other social sciences to address an applied environmental problem such as sustainability or global climate change. Here rhetoric and communications experts may be integrated into the research very early in the process, eliminating some of the potential problems associated with late integration in the “science communication” posture. However, as a research participant, the rhetoric or communications expert may not be removed from the research process adequately enough to effectively facilitate its success. Additionally, asking rhetoric and communications experts to both participate in transdisciplinary environmental research and facilitate effective collaboration within the group itself might risk inciting some of the communicative barriers related to disciplinary hierarchy, which the group should be trying to avoid. That is, this posture might risk the rhetoric and communications researcher becoming the taker of meeting minutes or press release writer in place of what might be deemed more serious hard science research. Given that the success of transdisciplinary environmental research should be a priority for environmental communicators, and given that neither of these postures appropriately position rhetoric and communications experts to facilitate the success of such collaborations, a third posture for rhetoric and communications experts is worth consideration.
A Revised Role: Environmental Communicators as Transdisciplinary ‘Knowledge Brokers’ One of the most interesting consistencies among the five case studies in interdisciplinary environmental research this paper reviewed were the conclusions reached by authors of the case studies, who each seemed to sense a different kind of role for communicators in these collaborations. Jakobsen et al. conclude, for example that: selection of leaders [for interdisciplinary collaboration] should be based on…the extent to which they will be able to integrate disciplines in their own mind, and their ability to understand and communicate effectively with scientists from multiple disciplines...research paradigms, methods, and concepts which are shared by one discipline but not by all participants, must be openly Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015
Page 17 of 19 discussed and a new shared set of approaches must be agreed upon before the research is initiated if an integrated outcome is the goal. It is not enough to simply agree on the meaning of specific concepts” (pp. 28-29). Similarly, Driscoll et al. conclude: “[we need to train] practitioners skilled in the work of boundaryspanning functions across a range of scales (e.g. local, regional, national, global)" (p. 799). Finally, Evans and Marvin conclude their case study arguing that: “some organisation [sic] must take responsibility for ensuring that different views [in environmental collaborations] are included, even if they start from very different assumptions...there may emerge a new class of experts of intermediaries--knowledge brokers-whose expertise lies in translating between different frameworks and paradigms” (p. 1027). What’s clear from these three conclusions is that a new role for environmental communicators is desperately needed to help transdisciplinary environmental research succeed. In each of these conclusions, what we see is a challenge that is essentially rhetorical and communicative in scope. The need to question philosophical assumptions, to hold open discussion about research and epistemology, to conduct boundary-spanning work that shifts from local, to regional, to national, and even global scales, and to train a new class of expert “knowledge brokers”: these are all challenges that lie at the heart of rhetorical theory and communications theory. As developed societies such as the United States rely more and more on inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge making to address pressing environmental challenges, rhetoric and communications study as academic disciplines and their respective training of knowledge brokers becomes essential. The emergence of transdisciplinary environmental research is a highly important moment for fields like environmental communications (and English Studies and Communications Studies more broadly) to assist in the training of such professionals. A third posture for the environmental communicator might be that of “transdisciplinary knowledge broker” whose goal lies in alleviating the communicative barriers that inevitably emerge in transdisciplinary environmental research, and helping assure the success of these collaborations What roles might transdisciplinary knowledge-brokers fulfill?
Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015
Page 18 of 19 1. Create organizational and leadership structures that promote equal power-relations among participants. 2. Facilitate early conversations about the problem-premise for the research collaboration. 3. Mediate debates among participants about divergent disciplinary concepts and methods 4. Facilitate the creation of a collaborative and situated research methodology for the project 5. Mediate debates about disciplinary terminology and help participants reach consensus on operational definitions for terms. 6. Direct and assist in the creation of publications through collaborative writing. Teaching students interested in environmental communications about some of these common communicative barriers, placing students in active transdisciplinary collaborations, and preparing students to become brokers of knowledge among divergent disciplinary frameworks is an important first step to promoting this important professional role.
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Presented at Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication The Conference on Communication and Environment, Boulder, Colorado, June 11-14, 2015 https://theieca.org/coce2015
