Beyond Disciplinary Confinement And Imaginative...

Osazuwa Osayomwanbor 200345160 Sociology/Social Studies Reading Summary (SOST 801) Topic: Beyond Disciplinary Confinement to Imaginative Transdisciplinarity. INTRODUCTION The society today is faced with various problems. Some have always been there, others are new to us, yet others have evolved from their older modes and taken new dimensions. For example we are not strangers to issues of democratization, but certainly are faced with the changing mode of war and terrorism. And then, new issues may include climate change. Whatever the category, man’s eternal struggle is to be able to resolve the issues that confront or threaten its existence. To do this man depends on knowledge gained from studying the problems. However, as problems evolve, they seem to become resistant to existing approaches, or at least, we seem not to be able to resolve them using existing approaches. Thus those problems become wicked problems. In this chapter, we discuss how such problems can be resolved using transdisciplinary approach. WHY TRANSDICIPLINARITY? The relevance of the transdisciplinarity approach is seen in the nature of the problem. Since problems are now multidimensional, then we agree that a single approach will not sufficiently resolve it (Brown 2010:16). Hence we need a transdiciplinary approach. In chapter two of Brown (2010:16), there are some other reasons why we need a transdiciplinary approach to wicked problems. They are: 1. Existing scientific approaches are to specialized or