Researchers, educators, and practitioners are calling for increased interdisciplinary collaboration in order to promote higher quality research and practice that will support positive social change. Although the term interdisciplinary is often cited as making an important contribution to the production of knowledge, what it entails is often ignored and how best to accomplish it is rarely discussed. The absence of a working definition of interdisciplinary research limits the depth of dialogue on the topic, particularly with respect to identifying those practices that promote collaboration among researchers from different fields and support research with multiple methods, theories, and world-views. The goal of this paper is to expose the formal and informal processes within and between academic disciplines that can inhibit successful interdisciplinary collaboration and to provide a framework for promoting interdisciplinary work that respects the diversity of perspectives each discipline might provide. Specifically, this paper explicates how training, research, and practice within academic disciplines provide a framework from which individuals enter interdisciplinary relationships. As such, we suggest that using a model of cultural competence will facilitate more effective collaboration between disciplines and provide opportunities for new insight. We conclude by providing specific examples of potential pitfalls when power issues inherent when members of different disciplinary cultures interact are ignored in interdisciplinary collaborations.

Understanding culture

In its broadest form, culture describes the concerted activities of a group based on shared ideas and understanding (Becker, 1986). Cultural groups are shaped by race, ethnicity, religion, language, national origin, region, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, political affiliation, education, or profession. Culture provides “a way of thinking and interacting” (Nanda, 1991, p. 67) that is dynamic and contextual (Dean, 2001). Culture can also involve specific worldviews, customs, methods of communication, values, ideas, schemas, and behaviors (Fiske, 2002). Both values—that is, a standard of judgment by which people decide on their goals and desired outcomes—and norms—how people should act and pursue their goals and values—are components of culture. Although often manifested in material ways, culture consists of “symbolic vehicles of meaning, including beliefs, ritual practices, art forms, and ceremonies, as well as cultural practices such as language, gossip, stories, and rituals of daily life” (Swidler, 1986, p. 273).

Culture provides structure to daily life and rules of interaction. Yet, it is not a unified system that propels action in a singular or consistent direction. Instead, culture can be thought of as “a ‘tool kit’ or repertoire from which actors select differing pieces for constructing lines of actions” (Swidler, 1986, p. 277). Individuals employ various tools in shifting combinations to navigate their social worlds and solve different sorts of challenges. However, it is culture that shapes which tools are available and imagined to be of use in any given situation.

Although culture provides similar worldviews, rules of interaction, and approaches to social situations, there is great variability between individuals within the same cultural groups. Members of a group may be similar to one another in some ways, but are typically dissimilar in other ways. Even as norms provide group members with guidelines for behavior, there is great variability within these rules of conduct (Campinha-Bacote, 2002). Additionally, individuals from different cultures may share similar practices, beliefs, and norms with one another.

Disciplinary culture

Like other social groupings, academic disciplines represent different cultures. Kuhn (1970) describes academic disciplines as defined by the shared culture of scholars that work in a given area. The culture of a discipline includes social structure, historical antecedents, values, traditions, procedures, and communication. Academic disciplines have been characterized as academic tribes in which each discipline has its own intellectual values and patch of cognitive territory (Becher & Trowler, 2001). Disciplinary culture dictates how members should behave (conform to professional norms), which methods of inquiry are acceptable, and how and when to discuss issues. Furthermore, disciplines provide a language or vernacular to use when theorizing and discussing relevant issues. Indeed, the cultural variation amongst disciplines includes differences “in epistemology, in what is viewed as knowledge, and in opinion over what sort of knowledge is possible. They differ over what is interesting and what is valuable” (Bauer, 1990, p. 106). As such, people entering a discipline must be socialized into the culture.

Disciplinary training as acculturation

Training and practice within a discipline is part of culture (Purnell, 2002). Graduate education itself is a process of socialization that reinforces and reproduces culture, as throughout graduate training cultural norms for interaction, production, and success are communicated. These disciplinary cultural artifacts are subsequently reinforced at conferences, in courses, in the peer review process for publication, and in the system of rewards (e.g., tenure, merit awards) throughout one's academic career. As Shulman and Silver (2003) note of their discipline, “while one can be labeled a sociologist in name by fulfilling formal institutional requirements, that is only part of the necessary work involved in graduate training. What is also required is mastering the informal professional culture associated with academic sociology” (p. 56). Through the acculturation process, graduate students learn how to be practitioners of their disciplines and to conform to the norms of their culture.

Disciplines as sub-cultures

Disciplines are subgroups of a larger academic culture, united by many overarching priorities, measures of success, and institutional norms. Yet, disciplines maintain their own specific values, processes, world-views and methods of communication. Demonstrating this, Hall, Stevens, and Torralba (2002) analyzed the discourse of interdisciplinary consulting meetings. In doing so, they identified discipline-specific patterns of communication and language as well as disciplinary differences that lead to conflict. They found that topics that ran counter to deeply-held disciplinary objectives or could potentially threaten the wider network of representational technologies contributed to rifts between members of different disciplines. Conflicts emerged over distinctly different work practices and meanings associated with specific words during discussion. For example, the term “distance” was viewed by the entomologists as an independent source of evidence (geography) combined with chemistry while the statisticians treated it as the outcome of a computational process. This miscommunication led to “attempts to edit the statistician's language” (p. 205) which greatly altered the subsequent discourse and productivity of the group. Indeed, cultural differences—and conflicts—emerge in the course of collaborative interdisciplinary work. Yet, the benefits of interdisciplinarity far outweigh the challenges.

The promise of multiculturalism and interdisciplinarity

Interdisciplinary work may be informed and facilitated by efforts to promote multiculturalism.Footnote 1 Multiculturalism—that is, the belief that all groups are of equal value and that no group should dominate—has grown out of an increasingly diverse society that requires more thoughtful policies and practices that allow all members to thrive. Diversity through multiculturalism has allowed for the introduction of innovative pedagogy, illuminated current context and patterns in practice, and promoted growth and innovation (Antonio, 2003; Terenzini, Cabrera, Colbeck, Bjorklaund, & Parente, 2001). These benefits have been described thoroughly in the areas of higher education and business. In education, for example, many administrators and professors have argued that for “students to better understand the diverse country and world they inhabit, they must be immersed in a campus culture that allows them to study with, argue with, and become friends with students who may be different from them. It broadens the mind and the intellect-essential goals of education” (Rothman, Lipset, & Nevitte, 2003, p. 27). In business, diversity promotes new ideas and processes as well as increased commonalities with clients and consumers. As Carlozzi (1999) points out, “the rewards are so great, it just makes good business sense” (p. 85).

The benefits of diversity through multiculturalism are numerous and interdisciplinarity can be viewed as another type of multicultural practice. As such, there are numerous reasons for collaborative work across disciplines. Often, interdisciplinary endeavors are necessary to address complex problems and research areas that cannot be answered by any one discipline alone (Wiles, 2000). For example, a recent meeting sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Institute of Health focused on how the physical space affects human health. This conference concluded that given the complexity of the built environment, a community-based, multilevel, interdisciplinary research approach was essential for understanding the environment's influence on individual health and well-being. This conference called for investigation into housing, transportation, health disparities, social and physical isolation, lifestyles, and sustainability within community settings (Srinivasan, O'Fallon, & Dearry, 2003).

The National Institutes for Health's Roadmap Initiative also recognizes the need for interdisciplinary research to solve large problems in biomedical research. In stating the program goals, the program's website articulates a view of traditional discipline-based science as outdated, noting that “Biomedical research traditionally has been organized much like a series of cottage industries, lumping researchers into broad areas of scientific interest and then grouping them into distinct, departmentally based specialties.” Noting the advancements in science in the past decade that exceed disciplinary divides, the program statement argues against continued discipline-based research, noting, “The traditional divisions within biomedical research may in some instances impede the pace of scientific discovery” (NIH, 2005 accessed on-line).

The NIH defined interdisciplinary research as studies that “integrate the analytical strengths of two or more often disparate scientific disciplines to solve a given biological problem” (NIH, 2005 accessed on-line). In stating the importance of such research, the statement clarified, “By engaging seemingly unrelated disciplines, traditional gaps in terminology, approach, and methodology might be gradually eliminated. With roadblocks to potential collaboration removed, a true meeting of minds can take place: one that broadens the scope of investigation …, yields fresh and possibly unexpected insights, and may even give birth to new hybrid disciplines that are more analytically sophisticated” (NIH, 2005 accessed on-line). Similar to national priorities for interdisciplinary biological research, the scope and magnitude of social issues is multifaceted and requires a diversity of methods, theories, and practices to explore them.

Nissani (1997) provides ten reasons why interdisciplinary research is something for which to “cheer,” many of which can be seen in the aforementioned initiatives. Among them are increased creativity and flexibility from the intersection of different disciplines, the ability of “immigrants” to make important contributions to their new field and detect previously overlooked errors, the power of interdisciplinary work to breach communication gaps in the modern academy, and the potential to bridge fragmented disciplines in a way that might build a foundation for future work. Nonetheless, working across disciplines can be challenging in large part because of the cultural differences that emerge between and within disciplines.

Cultural heterogeneity

Disciplinary socialization and the rules it provides serve to promote disciplinary cohesion. Nonetheless, diversity within disciplines, as within any group, is inevitable. Members of disciplines, as with any cultural group, will have a great deal in common with other members of their group, but there is also much heterogeneity within the same discipline allowing for differences between members. Membership in a cultural group may shed light on some characteristics common to group members but cannot provide information that will generalize to all members of that group. In other words, knowing to which discipline a person belongs provides some information about that person, but it is not adequate to allow for prediction of his or her behaviors, beliefs, or actions, and reflects a myth of uniformity (Stuart, 2004). As Zoreda (1997) warns, “culture is a fluid phenomenon that is difficult to enclose within neat boundaries” (p. 1).

This is especially true when viewing specialized training within a discipline as a subculture. For instance, those members of the discipline of psychology include numerous subcultures such as those who study cognition, neuroscience, community, human development, statistics, mental health, social interactions, school counseling, and industry and organizations. Each of these subcultures maintains values, norms, and communication styles that are congruent with the dominant disciplinary culture but specialized as well. Additionally, it is of particular importance to recognize the myriad ways that disciplinary members maintain other—and sometimes competing—memberships in other cultural groups and subgroups, which include but are not limited to ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, region, age, marital status, or even additional professional training or experience. As these intersectional perspectives introduce new challenges for collaborations, it is also these unique combinations of experiences and worldviews that make these relationships especially vibrant.

In understanding both the common culture of members of the same discipline and also the diversity within that membership, it becomes clear that there are no simple or uniform rules for effective interdisciplinary research. Nonetheless, striving toward many of the principles of cultural competence promises to help such collaborations. The following sections discuss both the meanings and applications of cultural competence and some pitfalls to avoid along the way.

Cultural competence

Cross cultural competence, although popularly supported, is not uniformly defined. To borrow from one definition, cultural competence is generally “the ability to understand and constructively relate to the uniqueness of each [individual] in light of the diverse cultures that influence each person's perspective” (Stuart, 2004, p. 6). Some definitions of cultural competence focus more heavily on agency or individual behaviors and attitudes (e.g. Cross, Bazron, Dennis, & Isaacs, 1989), while others concentrate on the ability of those engaged in intercultural interactions to recognize “both the richness and limitations of the sociocultural contexts” in which these interactions occur (Barrera & Kramer, 1997, p. 217). This latter approach prioritizes an awareness of diverse perspectives over any specific skills, but strives towards a view where no singular world-view is normative (Lynch & Hanson, 1998).

Of particular importance to cultural competence is the recognition that one can never achieve cultural competence, as it is a process and not an end-state. The key is to continually value and work towards culturally competent practices. Even as cultural competence cannot be achieved, agencies and service providers who demonstrate consistent efforts towards culturally competent practices have found significant improvements in client satisfaction and behaviors (Wade & Bernstein, 1991). Changes in service provision informed by agency commitment to cross cultural competence have included increased breast cancer screening (Stolley, Fitzgibbon, Wells, & Martinovich, 2004), HIV testing (Kalichman, Kelly, Hunter, Murphy, & Tyler, 1993), and reduced mental illness symptoms (Paz, 2002).

Cultural competence for interdisciplinary research

If a discipline is viewed as a cultural group, then issues of how to conduct interdisciplinary research can be discussed in ways that are sensitive to and appreciative of the diversity between and within disciplines. That means endeavors that involve multiple disciplines working together will need to strive to be culturally competent. As such, each discipline must value diversity, develop the capacity for self-assessment, work towards understanding one's own disciplinary culture, and be sensitive to the dynamics inherent when cultures interact, especially as members of cultural groups in these interactions have different access to power or resource. Suggestions for how to strive to be culturally competent in interdisciplinary interactions can be derived from the writings in medicine, social work, and psychology. Although diverse in their needs for cultural competency, all of these fields stress the need for awareness of the knowledge, attitudes, and skills one brings to intercultural meetings. In the cultural competency literature, knowledge is the information needed to better understand the experiences and patterns of another culture. Attitudes pertain to self-awareness of one's own cultural values, assumptions, and biases. Skills are the practices that are tailored to meet the needs of people from different cultures, such as communication skills (e.g., Greene, Watkins, McNutt, & Lopez, 1998; McPhatter, 1997; Vonk, 2001).

Campinha-Bacote (1998, 2002) describes these attitudes, skills, and knowledge as cultural encounters and cultural desires. A cultural encounter is an interaction between members of different cultures that expands one's view of the group. Most often applied to issues of racial stereotyping, cultural encounters expand previously narrow views of a cultural group. Applied to interdisciplinary work, a cultural encounter might be represented in an anthropologist's contact with various statisticians. Each encounter should help broaden and refine the anthropologist's existing beliefs about statistics and reduce the likelihood of stereotyping. Cultural desire is the want (rather than mandate) to engage in the process of becoming culturally aware, knowledgeable, skillful, and familiar with cultural encounters. Applied to interdisciplinary work it is the desire and motivation to develop the tools needed to work collaboratively with other disciplines.

One example can be taken from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, a partnership with the National Science Foundation and later with the United States Department of Agriculture, to use interdisciplinary research to solve watershed problems. In defining the need for interdisciplinary collaboration, researchers articulated the change in the nature of the research questions presented, since “environmental problems have become more complex, interdisciplinary research teams, including engineers and social scientists, have become the preferred approach to solving problems at multiple scales” (Levinson & Thornton, 2003, p. 675). Although historically defined in terms of disciplinary-based scientific inquiry, researchers found that because “watershed management is fundamentally social in nature … the social sciences made major contributions to the natural sciences, both in providing analytical techniques and tools, and in providing insight into why various issues arise and how they can be addressed” (p. 676).

As the principal investigators involved with the project reflected, “People and their interactions are key to the success of any research project. They are particularly important in interdisciplinary research where these interactions contribute to creativity and innovation” (Levinson & Thornton, 2003, p. 676). Among the potential issues for cultural conflict, they caution specifically about disciplinary (or culturally) specific language use. They explain, “One of the major obstacles to interdisciplinary research has been disciplinary jargon and terminology. Different disciplines use the same words, but with different meanings and definitions. Initially, these differences interfere with effective communication” (Levinson & Thornton, 2003 p. 677). Applying the concept of cultural competence, members of interdisciplinary teams must recognize the potential for miscommunication. As such, culturally competent efforts would include an awareness of one's own disciplinary vernacular, how this language may differ from other disciplines within the collaboration, acknowledgement where translation is needed, and attempts to find common ways to communicate and avoid misunderstandings. The EPA STAR project suggests that future researchers trained in other disciplinary cultures will be more competent and therefore more successful: “The next generation of scientists and engineers working on interdisciplinary projects will be versed in the language of other disciplines. They will also be knowledgeable about the techniques, procedures, and methods in other disciplines, as well. Information transfer will not only be more efficient, it will be more effective in communicating with stakeholders and other sciences” (p. 677).

The EPA's collective reflection on managing interdisciplinary research projects included suggestions relating to managing personnel through these cross-cultural interactions. Specifically, they note, “all investigators need to park their egos at the door,” with insecurities “parked in the space next to egos.” Doing so, they argue, facilitates “mutual respect for each others’ opinions, information sources, and efforts” (Levinson & Thornton, 2003, p. 677).

Effective interdisciplinary work is predicated on both a value for the diversity of perspectives and practices that each discipline can offer and awareness that each individual of a discipline cannot be characterized solely based upon their membership in a discipline. Successful research endeavors require attentiveness to the ways in which disciplines influence each person's values, worldviews, and practices. This awareness is facilitated by self-assessment and acknowledgment of the potential dynamics of interdisciplinary work. The process of trying to work collaboratively between disciplines requires flexibility and adaptation to the unique needs and development of each party. Culturally competent practice calls for critical evaluation of the methods used to collect culturally relevant data and processes used for determining a person's acceptance of relevant cultural themes (Cross et al., 1989; Stuart, 2004). The process of striving towards culturally competent interdisciplinary practice necessitates continuous self-reflection and sensitivity to how one's own actions affect others. One must be open to learning about the dynamics of interdisciplinary interaction and develop skills to facilitate this process. Bauer (1990) provides a simple example of how disciplinary values are used to judge the merit of an academic talk. He describes how in science, lecturing extemporaneously with few notes is standard whereas in the humanities reading a written text is the standard. Thus, a lecture spoken from memory “arouses admiration in an audience of scientists, but in an audience of humanists, a suspicion that the talk may not be very profound” (p. 108).

Such issues become more obvious when researchers attempt to evaluate the data and methods from other disciplines. For instance, a well-selected and rigorous case study based on interview data may be a contribution to theory and practice in sociology but dismissed as anecdotal and non-replicable to a biologist (Golde & Gallagher, 1999). Graham (1999) refers to conflicts that emerge from differences between disciplinary methodologies and paradigms as clashes between conflicting “thought styles.” The following joke describes how different disciplines may approach the same problem:

A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are all given identical rubber balls and told to find the volume. They are given anything they want to measure it, and have all the time they need. The mathematician pulls out a measuring tape and records the circumference. He then divides by two times pi to get the radius, cubes that, multiplies by pi again, and then multiplies by four-thirds and thereby calculates the volume. The physicist gets a bucket of water, places 1.00000 gallons of water in the bucket, drops in the ball, and measures the displacement to six significant figures. And the engineer? He writes down the serial number of the ball, and looks it up.

Applying the cultural competence model to disciplines necessitates the acknowledgement that to work effectively with those from different cultures (disciplines) requires sensitivity, appreciation, and respect for differences. In research collaborations across disciplines, interdisciplinary teams could benefit from valuing diversity and striving to be culturally competent. As Bakhtin argues, “growth and dialogical enrichment occurs in the border zone between cultures, disciplines, eras, subjects, and so forth” (cited in Zoreda, 1997, p. 3). The emergent benefits of cultural competence are numerous since “the borders between cultures or persons are both permeable and can be sites of active learning and development” (Zoreda, 1997, p. 4). Hence, by working towards cultural competence, we can promote interdisciplinary research that finds multi-faceted, thoughtful solutions that may help to improve social conditions.

The University of Florida's integrated graduate education and research program in neotropical working forests provides an excellent example of how interdisciplinary practices are necessary and often successful in preparing researchers for international research and employment. This program, which trains students to analyze the biophysical, social, political, and economic conditions that influence the viability and effectiveness of conservation and development of working forests, brings together faculty from anthropology, history, botany, civil and coastal engineering, environmental engineering, forest resources and conservation, geography, geology, Latin American studies, law, natural resources and the environment, sociology, soil and water science, wildlife ecology and conservation, and zoology. Even when a wide range of fields are brought together, it is important to heed the warning of Zarin, Kainer, Putz, Schmink, and Jacobson (2003), who caution that, “disciplinary expertise is a necessary but insufficient condition for professional success” (p. 31). Rather than simply exposing students to various disciplines during training, this program is able to facilitate true interdisciplinarity by training doctoral students in a primary discipline while exposing them to the theories and practices of a variety of other disciplines. Through coursework, fieldwork, conferences, and workshops students are exposed to many other disciplinary cultures and mentored on how to collaborate effectively as well as how to integrate multidisciplinary tools and theories to address the research questions at hand. Further, in taking each disciplinary approach seriously, rather than as a superficial “add-on” to an existing discipline, trainees see interdisciplinary cultural competence modeled. With this grounding, the program expects its graduates to more successfully engage larger global problems that are not disciplinarily confined.Footnote 2

Good intentions and cultural incompetence

All social relationships are rooted in systems of power. In defining power in its simplest terms, Weber suggests, “In general, we understand by ‘power’ the chance of a man or number of men to realize their own will in a communal action even against the resistance of others who are participating in that action” (in Gerth & Mills, 1946, p. 180). Power usually flows from positions of authority and can be used to sanction, control, and promote certain cultural practices over others (Sawicki, 1991), and can determine which forms of and approaches to knowledge are given credence (Foucault, 1978). Manifested on an interactional level, but gaining its legitimacy from institutional structure, power is multifaceted and includes control of decision-making, definitions and values, and resource allocation (Turk, 1969). In any joint venture, power determines how decisions are made and who sets the agenda (Gaventa, 1980). This is especially true in professional interactions, when work product often determines a material system of rewards. Making sense of interdisciplinary work requires attention to how power is often unequally available and how that affects these collaborations. This includes not only considering power in the short-term collaboration but also in how the individuals involved (and their discipline) will be affected in the long-run.

One manifestation might require acknowledging that junior collaborators must maintain some disciplinary credibility in order to advance in an academic institution, while senior collaborators maintain greater freedom to cross disciplinary divides (Levinson & Thornton, 2003). Similarly, it may also mean recognizing the ways that some departments or even campuses or agencies (in cross-institutional collaboration) have greater resources to commit to research endeavors. In doing so, members with more power or influence might not only sympathize with their less powerful collaborator, but can acknowledge the way the power differential gives one party greater privilege in the collaboration as well as broader institutional framework of the university (McIntosh, 1993). Without such acknowledgement and evaluation of the role of such limitations, full participation between researchers or departments as equals may be difficult. Culturally competent efforts should include awareness of one's own power in the interaction as well as that of the other members in the collaboration.

Metzger and Zare (1999) suggest one way to distribute power evenly is through the establishment of interdisciplinary programs that are shared between academic disciplines and/or agencies. They argue that this would enable each discipline involved to set the research agenda and distribute funds while maintaining their own disciplinary strengths.

The increased emphasis on interdisciplinary research by funding agencies, universities, or research units has likely created new incentives for researchers and practitioners alike to seek out interdisciplinary collaborations. Yet, undertaking an interdisciplinary project merely for the sake of interdisciplinarity will likely yield few of the myriad potential benefits. Mason (1994) warns, “it is critical for the members of any given agency or system to know why they are embarking on the path towards cultural competence” (p. 3). The same is true for interdisciplinary research. Those pursuing collaborations with other disciplines should know why they want to conduct interdisciplinary research and should plan and execute projects collaboratively. Indeed, many participants in such collaborations identify their abilities to solve complex problems with new tools. As the members of the EPA STAR watershed program recall, “There was consensus … that these interdisciplinary interactions sharpened the research questions and focus, brought a freshness of perspectives to the research, provided a better appreciation of the complexity of the issues, provided new tools and techniques for studying ecological systems, and contributed to integrated conceptual models … Scientists and engineers from different disciplines taught each other new ways and approaches for investigating problems that each thought they had previously understood” (Levinson & Thornton, 2003, p. 676). However, without identifying the goals of such collaborations, the benefits may remain elusive.

Returning to the EPA STAR project, the benefits of the collaborations were significant, allowing researchers to bring in stake-holders to dialogue about the current and future watershed research programs of various agencies, with the goal of “integrating science with watershed decision making” (USDA-ARS 2004, accessed on-line).

In order to move towards being culturally competent in interdisciplinary research, one must know the culture of his or her own discipline, be sensitive to cultural differences of other disciplines, and provide a context where each person from each discipline has a voice so that work is truly collaborative. Although the following list is not exhaustive, we have nonetheless provided cautionary tales of a few common pitfalls. In each, we acknowledge the problems that arise, with an eye to the ways that many stem from differences in power between members in interdisciplinary collaboration.

Tokenism

In planning interdisciplinary research, one must be careful to be culturally sensitive and not rely on tokenism. Tokenism involves the representation of different cultural groups without valuing their input or providing them with voice. As Bond and Mulvey (2000) caution, representation does not mean inclusion. The most common way tokenism occurs is when a disciplinary homogenous group invites a member of another discipline to participate in a project in hopes of labeling their group interdisciplinary. In conducting interdisciplinary research, one should ask, does adding an anthropologist and an urban planner to a group of psychologists make the project interdisciplinary? Unless there is a sincere desire to work collaboratively, the goals of the dominant group will inevitably drown out the potential contributions of the minority member. Imagine that a project staffed entirely by white men hires an African American man and a Latina woman; such additions may not ensure cultural diversity. The mere presence of members of a different cultural group is insufficient if they do not have power in the interaction. If the boundaries of the dominant group (discipline) are only permeable enough to allow the presence, but not full participation of a person outside of the group, the situation is one of tokenism (Wright, 2001) or as Kostoff (2002) warns, “interdisciplinary on paper only” (p. 937). As such, the individuals who occupy these token positions tend to experience substantial performance pressure, heightened awareness of boundaries, and perception of entrapment in this role (Kanter, 1977).

In a review of interdisciplinary endeavors, the National Institute for Science Education found that within interdisciplinary teams (e.g. business task forces, health care groups) members of disciplines with lower-status tended to disengage from and resent the process. The reduced participation of the less prestigious group member tended to increase the dominant group's devaluation of that member, thus creating a vicious cycle (O’Donnell, DuRussel, & Derry, 1997). Cultural competence requires an appreciation of the multifaceted characteristics of culture. Interdisciplinary research is not merely the token inclusion of different disciplines but rather the collaboration of members of different disciplines in which all have agency in the research endeavor and respect for the process.

Power and silence

Work groups are often organized hierarchically, with members holding different positions of status, varying degrees of power, and unequal influence on group decisions. Sometimes, these power inequities emerge from institutional rank and access to resources. However, hierarchy also arises from members' own beliefs about the types of people that usually hold high- and low-status positions. These referential beliefs shape expectations about who in the group will have higher status than whom (Ridgeway, Johnson, & Diekema, 1994). This pattern has been documented in interracial, mixed sex, and mixed aged groupings (e.g. Butler & Geis, 1990; Cohen & Roper, 1972) and applies to interdisciplinary groups as well. When the hierarchical structure communicates that the contributions of some members—be it by discipline, rank, or other cultural markers–are more valuable or credible than those of others, members of the low-status discipline are silenced. As a result, the creative potential for new and dynamic solutions may be stymied. Irvine, Kerridge, McPhee, and Freeman (2002) discuss hierarchical issues of power that emerge when a “whole patient” perspective is attempted to address both the physical and social components of individual health. They argue that even when interdisciplinary teams are composed, the medical profession (i.e. doctors) is often “invested with the authority to supervise, direct and coordinate the work of other occupations” (p. 203). This top-down approach limits any meaningful contribution from other, lower status disciplines.

A group leader cannot likely relinquish authority or responsibility. However, he or she can equalize access to power through proactive facilitation that invites individual contribution. By using subtle and consistent measures to create and protect a secure space where all members feel safe, a leader enables greater willingness from the members to brainstorm, share ideas, present new proposals, and challenge existing orthodoxies. Just as social workers and practitioners work with families or clients to identify treatment or service goals (Lynch & Hanson, 1998), leaders of interdisciplinary collaborations that strive for cultural competence allow each member to identify and share his or her reasons for joining the project and to communicate his or her goals. Additionally, leaders who can communicate that all members’ unique contributions to the group are valued are also making headway toward cultural competence. As Pickett, Burch, and Grove (1999) describe interdisciplinary ecological research, “Nurturing an effective group requires much effort. Shared goals, focus on a common problem, a common conceptual framework, integration of knowledge, and integration of group resources is the hallmark of successful group research” (p. 304). As groups identify common and different motives and goals, they should also find space to explore difference.

Audre Lorde's (1997) argument for greater exploration of difference in collaborations between women from different racial, ethnic, linguistic, sexual, or disciplinary backgrounds is relevant here as well. She suggests, “Difference must not be merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic… within the interdependence of mutual (non-dominant) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with concomitant power to affect those changes which can bring that future into being” (p. 26). Thus, creating a safe space in which difference can be explored without risk of disapproval or retaliation, a necessity for cultural competence, allows for greater creativity, and we would argue, better research.

Working towards culturally competent practices can help avoid power hierarchies that prohibit effective interdisciplinary collaboration. Special foci placed on the attitudes, stereotypes, and beliefs the dominant group holds about the lower-status discipline will help foster increased understanding and appropriate skills to negotiate these issues of power inequity (Suzuki, McRae, & Short, 2001). Of utmost importance is a continual awareness of the power structure and its dynamics during interdisciplinary endeavors. As Symonette (2004) describes, multicultural collaboration “requires movement beyond tolerance, accommodation, and pressure to fit in toward a focus on changes in policies, processes, and practices in order to genuinely invite and engage in the full spectrum of diverse voices, perspectives, experiences, and peoples” (p. 96). Efforts to fully include members may require various changes including proactive efforts to ensure that all project participants have equal access to information, data, and meetings, or project leaders who model cross culturally competent practices by communicating his or her appreciation for each member or who communicate a commitment to mentor junior scholars across disciplinary lines.

Disciplinary policing

Interdisciplinary collaboration can yield significant results and new insights; it can also represent a threat to disciplinary cultural boundaries. Historically, efforts to close off access between ethnic (cultural) groups have included formal measures like segregation laws and bans on interracial marriage, to less formal sanctions, including social ostracism and unequal allocation of resources (Barth, 1969). As with members of racial and ethnic groups who resent those who choose to cross boundaries, members of existing disciplines may feel threatened and work to police and reinforce those disciplinary boundaries. In titling his article, “my discipline is better than your discipline,” Matthiasson (1968) identified a key barrier to interdisciplinary research: the belief in disciplinary superiority. Indeed, between resource competition as well as proverbial ownership of areas of inquiry, interdisciplinarity may be perceived as posing a threat to traditional academic cultural practices, and as a result, individuals who commit to interdisciplinary collaboration in a culturally incompetent academic world may face professional sanctions.

Tenure and promotion committees, journals, and even one's own agency or department can communicate their disapproval by failing to recognize the significance of the results of such collaborations. For example, the allocation of credit and grant money for interdisciplinary projects may not benefit each contributor fairly. Some institutions may allocate funds and resources among the investigators and others may credit only the principal investigator. The latter penalizes co-investigators from other disciplines by not giving them credit. When determining how and where to disseminate findings, departments may not weight journals equally, thus limiting the ability of some to cross disciplinary boundaries. Such practices enforce monodisciplinary practices and hinder interdisciplinary collaboration. As such, it is important to consider the mechanisms available to disseminate findings or implement change that will not represent a liability to any of the team members, particularly those who may be most junior and therefore most vulnerable, or those who may have become most isolated from their disciplinary homes when crossing the disciplinary cultural divide. Thus, when striving for culturally competent interdisciplinary research, it is important to be aware of these structural barriers to collaboration as well as how interdisciplinary endeavors might violate monodisciplinary norms.

Discussion

Interdisciplinarity has become a larger priority because of the potential it holds to tackle complex problems in innovative ways. Collaboration among different disciplines can facilitate the development of creative approaches, including new methods and analysis of old problems, identify oversights and errors in monodisciplinary practice, and build strong foundations for socially relevant work. However, the very nature of disciplines, with their distinct cultural values, norms, processes, world-views, and methods of communication, has complicated such collaborations. As with all cultural groups, there is tremendous diversity within the group as well as across different groups. In academe, where distinct disciplinary cultures are often masked by the broad adherence to a larger shared academic culture and by the relatively homogenous racial and ethnic composition of the academic workforce, acknowledging these cultural differences can be difficult. As sisters, the two of us share many cultural commonalities; yet, as collaborators, we still continually face the differences between our disciplinary cultures of psychology and sociology. Those wanting to work interdisciplinarily must recognize these cultural differences so they can strive to be culturally competent. As a starting point, those engaged in interdisciplinary collaborations must identify their own motives for entering such relationships and presumptions about them. It is from this self-assessment that researchers—particularly those who are in leadership positions or from the dominant cultural group (or discipline)—can begin the process of attempting cultural competence. Interdisciplinary endeavors must respect the diversity of perspectives each discipline might provide and remain vigilant in addressing the power dynamics at play when members of different disciplines interact. This requires sensitivity, acknowledgement of differences, and an appreciation of the diversity in training, experience, and perspective. Throughout, it also requires a sustained commitment to strive for self-awareness and a willingness to continually learn about the practices, beliefs, and strengths of other disciplines.

Given the growing attention on interdisciplinary collaboration and the increasing availability of grant support for such endeavors, it is likely that their occurrence will increase as well. Related, there appears to be an accompanying growth in interdisciplinary training opportunities. Yet simply composing teams of interdisciplinary grantees or enrolling students in interdisciplinary training programs will not, by itself, yield the myriad benefits promised by such enterprises. Rather, it is only through deliberate efforts to strive for cross cultural competence might participants gain skills and insight. Susan Stanford Friedman's (2001) analogy of interdisciplinary work as a form of travel from one's “home base” provides a useful framework for both considering the dangers of this journey and possibilities for “culture shock.” As she notes, “The dangers of epistemological and cross-disciplinary travel are great, just as they are for spatial traveling- the tendency to misunderstand the ‘other,’ appropriate the other, misuse the other, or decontextualize the other” (p. 508). Thus, it is not enough that students train in interdisciplinary programs unless the programs stress the skills of self-reflection and evaluation, respect for diversity, and sensitivity to the dynamics inherent when cultures interact. Additionally, until the larger academic culture becomes respectful of cultural differences, those newly minted researchers we might deem multidisciplinary will face challenges in accessing power and resource within academic institutions. As such, the call for cross cultural competence in interdisciplinary work is also a call for reflexivity about power within academic institutions and between disciplinary cultures themselves.

Potential limitations and concerns

Interdisciplinary work, even in the most culturally competent of environments, is not without issues. Among them include questions of how to evaluate research when tools vary between disciplines; while interdisciplinary work promises many important gains, issues of assessing quality and integrity in research remain central. Another question that cannot be adequately addressed here but remains central are broader questions of the meanings to academic culture of the increasingly common practice of interdisciplines evolving into disciplines with their own disciplinary boundaries (that may also become policed). For instance, gender and women's studies, a field more often identified with activism than with research (Caughie, 2003, p. 423) has struggled with many of these questions. This field began as an interdisciplinary endeavor in large part to critique the exclusion of gender analyses in traditional disciplines, but has now grown, in some universities, into a free standing discipline, providing graduate programs in gender and women's studies. As such, the academic cultural meanings of an interdisciplinary field becoming increasingly disciplinary and demanding full participation of faculty who may even be asked to surrender their disciplinary homes, become less clear. Further, if we see academic cultures as metaphors for ethnic cultures, might we view interdisciplinary movements as proactive attempts at assimilation, or might we view them as multicultural communities where difference creates innovation?

A final intractable question is whether the very existence of disciplines makes interdisciplinary collaboration possible, thus underscoring the importance of traditional disciplines as a source for in-depth substantive research and methodologies. As Friedman asks, “Can we have interdisciplinarity without some sense of disciplinary borders being crossed or transgressed?” (Friedman, 2001, p. 506). In asking these questions, we identify many of the larger questions of culture and power that cultural competence requires us to examine.

While viewing disciplines as cultures enables greater understanding of disciplinary difference, and perhaps even defense of those differences, it should not be used to prohibit the development of new disciplinary cultures and processes, such as psychological neuroscience or transdisciplinary research. Respect for diversity should not limit the admixing of fields, worldviews, or methods. Rather, it should provide us with tools and signposts as we move forward in doing so.

Working towards culturally competent research and practice is a demanding and continual process that some caution could detract from other activities. As Naiman (1999) warns, “the commitment of time and energy into understanding other disciplines invariably detracts from the time and commitment put into maximizing one's own mastery of a single discipline” (p. 293). As such, the opportunity costs to professional success within one's own discipline are always present. Nonetheless, the benefits obtained by the interdisciplinary collaboration may rival and even surpass those yielded by monodisciplinary pursuit; striving for cultural competence within these collaborations may mediate many of these risks. Having said that, we fully acknowledge that cultural competency is not a panacea that will end all interdisciplinary discord, but it does provide a useful framework for identifying sources of conflict and addressing them.

We have largely focused on the challenges and potential pitfalls of such collaborations. This should not overshadow the boundless potential of interdisciplinarity to challenge old paradigms and find new solutions through the application of different methods to deeply entrenched social and scientific problems. It is our hope that by providing a framework for thinking about disciplines as driven by culture and as such, as receptive to the principles of cultural competence, this article may provide a new approach to interdisciplinary work and new tools (for the cultural tool kit) for navigating such endeavors.