Format of the Session:
Our session will include short presentations of three chapters (10x3=30 minutes presentation time in total) of a new PPE textbook, co-edited by Jan Pieter Beetz and Selin Dilli, followed with feedback, questions and a general discussion (30 minutes for general discussion). We are keen to hear feedback from interdisciplinary and educational experts on our textbook.
The title of the presentations in the session are:
Presentation 1. Chapter 2: Interdisciplinary Research Process: How to systematically analyze PPE challenge? (Jan Pieter Beetz)
Presentation 2. Chapter 4: Closing the Gender Equality at Work: How does the diversity of women's work matter? (Selin Dilli)
Presentation 3. Chapter 5: Democracy in Crisis: Is polarization a problem? (Stefanie Beyens)
Content of the Session:
Despite the growing education initiatives on interdisciplinarity between the humanities and social sciences, such as the bachelors (Philosophy Politics and Economics (PPE)), IoS minor and UU-wide courses, teaching materials tailored to interdisciplinary programmes such as PPE are still missing. There are two major issues. First, so far, the standard textbooks on interdisciplinary research and education provide a general framework. Yet, these models of interdisciplinarity remain rather universal models and abstract for students and ‘disciplinary’ teachers with limited experience teaching interdisciplinary courses. For example, the distinction between the last two stages of interdisciplinarity - finding common ground and integration - remains blurry and as a result, is often used interchangeably both in the reference books as well as in our teaching practices. Second, while the literature provides integration tools on how to integrate different disciplines, such as redefinition, transformation or extension, they remain inaccessible without real-life application to PPE related themes. The few standard textbooks on interdisciplinarity are skewed towards with examples from natural sciences and social sciences (e.g, Repko, Szostak and Buchberger 2020; Menken and Keestra 2016), which makes it less suitable for the purpose of PPE like studies drawing upon closely related, yet distinct disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.
This co-edited textbook aims to address these issues. The textbook has three goals:
1) Offer a more simplified and student friendly approach to interdisciplinarity for PPE+ Programmes. In the introduction of the book, we will first provide an innovative interdisciplinary framework. The current literature continues to firmly rely on Repko’s groundbreaking work. However, this approach remains suboptimal for PPE teaching purposes. We present a six-step interdisciplinary research method to systematically integrate insights, while addressing challenges particular to PPE like programs. After presenting this framework, each chapter will demonstrate this approach when applied to PPE related research themes, such as democracy, inequality, and sustainability.
2) Fill the dearth of materials for PPE education. On the one hand, most interdisciplinary textbooks are not tailored to the specifics of PPE programs with their focus on the humanities and social sciences as well as normative and empirical insights. On the other hand, one of the few PPE texts – the handbook on Philosophy Politics and Economics (Melenovsky, 2022) – introduces topics relevant to PPE students but it is silent on the challenges of interdisciplinarity. Moreover, this reference book seems more aimed at advanced students and fellow scholars rather than bachelor students. By bringing interdisciplinary education and PPE strands together, our goal is to address an important gap in the interdisciplinary PPE education.
3) Provide an interdisciplinary teaching book that properly represents the humanities, in particular disciplines such as history and philosophy. As touched upon above, the dominant textbooks on interdisciplinarity remain skewed towards examples from natural sciences and social sciences (e.g, Repko, Szostak and Buchberger 2020; Menken and Keestra 2016). We aim to address this gap in the literature. The book should therefore not only be of interest to PPE educational programmes but also have potential in other interdisciplinary studies that are/will be set up in the humanities and social sciences, such as UCU and PPLE.
Presentation 1:
This presentation introduces our six-step approach to interdisciplinary analysis of societal problems. The chapter aims to walk students through the interdisciplinary research process without requiring any additional resources. In addition, it lays the foundation for the subsequent applications in the thematic chapters (Chapters 3-10). The six steps are: (1) problem definition; (2) disciplinary analysis; (3) perspective taking (4) analyzing common ground; (5) integrating insights; and (6) a comprehensive understanding. We built upon the groundbreaking work of scholars in interdisciplinary studies (e.g. Repko and Szotsak 2016; Repko et al. 2017; Menken and Keestra 2016), however we simplify the existing approach for a tailored problem-driven PPE+ research.
Presentation 2.
Current economic approaches to gender equality primarily focus on women's wage labor, offering limited insights into less 'traditional' forms of work women engaged historically that continues to be relevant globally today. To develop a more comprehensive definition of women’s work, we integrate the disciplines of economics and history, using ‘redefinition’ as an integration technique to define women’s work. This involves considering not only women’s wage work but also their contributions in family businesses as co-workers and business owners where they historically contributed to the economy and continue to do so globally today.
Presentation 3.
This chapter aims to answer these questions through an interdisciplinary approach integrating research from political science and political philosophy. While both literatures offer unique insights into divided democracies, as lone disciplines both also face important limitations. Comparative and quantitative political science research provides an empirically rich description of polarization across various contexts and the impacts of such trends on public attitudes and satisfaction with democracy. However, empirical work often adopts a minimal conception of democracy, which does not always account for the full range of democratic values we may find important. Philosophical research, alternatively, provides a deeper normative account of democracy and how it relates to concepts of difference, disagreement, and identity. By operating at a high level of abstraction, however, this work rarely engages with issues of polarization or the dynamics of party politics. By integrating the insights of both disciplines, the chapter aims to offer a more sophisticated discussion of polarization's relationship to democracy. Combining empirical and normative strands of research, it distinguishes between polarisation based on political preferences on the one hand, and polarisation based on social identity on the other. Through multiple integration techniques, it analyses the implications of these different forms of polarization, arguing that they are likely to have very different consequences for democratic values.
