Determining the Existence of Interdisciplinary Individuals in the Field of Environmental

Determining the Existence of Interdisciplinary Individuals in the Field of Environmental Studies

Alyssa Gao

Abstract: While environmental studies is known for its interdisciplinarity as a field,this may not be so for individuals within this area of study due to the division between the natural and social sciences. To determine whether this interdisciplinary nature manifests on the individual level, this study examined sixteen publications by eight core faculty members of the Environmental Studies program at Dartmouth College.This paper investigatedwhether experts in the field of environmental studies integrate knowledge and rhetorical conventions from the natural and social sciences by examining the use of pronouns, jargon, and citations. The results of this study indicated that, although most experts do not exhibit a notable degree of interdisciplinarity, there are certain individuals within the field who operate across the disciplines. These interdisciplinary agents demonstrate the capacity for experts to cross the boundary in various ways. This paper advocates for a deeperunderstanding ofhow interdisciplinarity paves the way for a more comprehensive study of complex global systems.

Introduction

The field of environmental studies champions itself as an interdisciplinary community. The Environmental Studies program (ENVS) at Dartmouth College prides itself in drawing upon concepts and methods from the natural and social sciences as “complementary lenses” through which to view our complex socio-ecological systems (Undergraduate). A cursory glance at the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) home page reveals that this emphasis on interdisciplinarity is a common trend. The AESS claims to support 1000+ interdisciplinary environmental programs and “improve communication across boundaries that too often divide the traditional academic disciplines” (Home Page).

Despite the emphasis placed on the integrated approach of the field, an array of circumstances and conventions demarcate natural sciences from social sciences. However, as the boundaries are not always easy to discriminate, environmentalists may not operate solely within the confines of their domain. The stress on interdisciplinarity suggests that individuals engage in both the natural and social dimensions, which requires shifting between communication strategies. On the other hand, the flexibility of the boundaries between the natural and social sciences may lead to confusion and instability between the two enterprises. Individuals situated in a natural science sub-discipline such as soil science may not feel obligated to participate in policymaking. Likewise, an individual who specializes in environmental policy may choose to focus exclusively on the application of social sciences. The extent to which individuals adopt the interdisciplinary character of the field of environmental studies is unclear.

Meeting the interdisciplinary needs of readers begins with understanding the activities that create them and their role in the knowledge system. As a product of the natural and social sciences, environmental studies is prone to the same variability in rhetorical strategies witnessed in the comparison across disciplines by composition scholars (Wolfe et al. 2014). A unified synthesis of the field requires understanding the interplay between a broad range of disciplines. Is the interdisciplinary character of the field adopted at the individual level, and if so, how?I studied the publications of professors in the ENVS program to observe differences in writing conventions between the two landscapes. Examining the divergence in writing conventions will improve our understanding of the rhetorical strategies that facilitate the transfer and coordination of knowledge between the natural and social sciences. This knowledge of rhetorical strategies will allow us to understand the ways in which these subsections interact to shape the field of environmental studies.

Background

Because academic disciplines are specialized fields of study, students and scholars alike struggle with communicating across subjects due to differences in language and concepts. As Krishnan (2009) notes, focusing exclusively on the narrow concentration within a single academic discipline may hinder the exchange of ideas and impede the progress of research. To overcome these limitations, researchers must utilize concepts and methods from more than one discipline. Scholars such as Wagner (2010) and Garner (2013) define interdisciplinary research as the integration of concepts, techniques, methods, and data from different fields of established research. In order to successfully engage in interdisciplinary research, experts must first be familiar with the rhetorical processes which create and disseminate facts in texts within their field (Geisler 1994).

Scholars like Krishnan, Garner, and Wolfe support Geisler’s claim, pointing out that effective integration of aspects from multiple academic disciplines requires recognition of the boundaries that distinguish areas of study. Because disciplinary boundaries shape the norms and practices of the field, rhetorical conventions are not universal across academic subjects. In addition, because the definition of disciplinarity is not clearly defined (Krishnan 2009), it is often difficult to identify disciplinary boundaries and when they are crossed (Garner et al. 2013). Wolfe et al. claim that facilitating the transfer of knowledge requires students to identify similarities while familiarizing themselves with the differences.

Major advances in research are often situated at the interface between disciplines. While there is interest in promoting interdisciplinary research, conducting research that spans multiple disciplines faces many challenges. Geisler (1994) states that the domain content, or “what is accepted as true in a given field,” is “intimately related to the rhetorical processes underlying the reading and writing of texts.” However, the differing norms and writing conventions across fields of study impede the integration of knowledge. Natural and social sciences have fundamentally different means of identifying research questions and methods, which gives rise to differences in use of language (Garner et al. 2013). The difference in writing conventions such as use of pronouns, jargon, and citations exacerbate this division.

On one hand, writing in the natural sciences focuses on the natural aspects of our world. Natural scientists use papers to describe observations and draw conclusions, focusing on hypotheses and experiment outcomes. Writing a natural science paper entails addressing a problem, gathering and analyzing unbiased, relevant information, formulating a hypothesis, conducting an experiment, evaluating the results of this experiment, and arriving at a conclusion (Rhetoric and Composition/Writing in Sciences). The features of writing in the natural sciences stem from a focus on a specialized audience and the collaborative and de-personalized nature of natural science research.

On the other hand, the social sciences are concerned with the study of human behavior, the values of people, and the interactions between people within a society. Writing in the social science requires choosing a topic, making a claim, providing evidence to support your claim, and convincing the reader that your claim is valid. In the social sciences, there is a tension between 1) an objective, scientific voice versus the need for an authoritative, personal voice; and 2) the need for quantitative data versus the desire to qualify data (Writing Conventions in the Disciplines: Writing in the Social Sciences). While both natural and social scientists use a passive voice (Rhetoric and Composition/Writing in Social Sciences), there are significant differences in the use of pronouns and jargon (see Table 1).

Table 1
Writing Conventions in the Natural Sciences / Writing Conventions in the Social Sciences
Highly specialized, discipline-specific jargon / Mingling of discipline-specific jargon and conversational language
Uses the plural “we” / Straddles the boundary between “we” and “I”
Source: Writing Conventions in the Disciplines: Writing in the Sciences / Sources: Writing Conventions in the Disciplines: Writing in the Social Sciences

Interdisciplinary research entails complex intellectual and social structures and processes that synthesize concepts from two or more disciplines. Citation analysis, a common bibliometric technique, is another measure of interdisciplinarity. According to Wagner et al. (2010), citations are the closest reference to the source of knowledge creation and integrative action. The occurrence of discipline-specific citations from other subjects reveal an integration among fields, as the percentage of citations outside of the discipline of the original publication is a common indicator of interdisciplinarity (Wagner et al. 2010). Citation analysis provides another means for measuring comparing interdisciplinary tendencies between natural and social scientists, enhancing the conclusions drawn from the analysis of pronoun use and frequency of jargon use.

Methods

Research Site

I studied publications by eight core faculty members of the ENVS program at Dartmouth College. I gathered a total of sixteen publications, two from each of the professors, and sorted these articles into the natural or social science categories based on the title and the abstract. According to the profiles on the program website, these eight professors cover an eclectic mix of subject areas from the natural sciences and social sciences (see Table 2). The faculty in this program are experts in the field of environmental studies who have each published several peer-reviewed research papers within their niches. Each letter represents one of the professors.

Table 2
Professors Specializing in the Natural Sciences / Professors Specializing in the Social Sciences
A. biodiversity and conservation / E. environmental policy and governance / natural resource management / environmental social science / social-ecological systems
B. forest biogeochemistry / carbon, nitrogen and trace metal cycling / soil science / ecosystem science / energy and the environment / environmental science / F. environmental and ecological economics / discounting, sustainability, and intergenerational fairness / applied growth theory / welfare economics / social norms, well-being, and pro-environmental behavior / economics of climate change / economics of energy efficiency / valuation and governance of ecosystem services
C. sustainability science / sustainable aquaculture / integrated food-energy systems / fish genetic conservation / conservation biology / environmental risk analysis / environmental risk assessment and management of genetically modified fish / environmental policy / G. nature-society relations / transnational river basins / environmental politics / environmental history / politics of scale / political ecology / sustainable development
D. ecosystem ecology and soil biogeochemical cycling / climate change and ecological response in Arctic and Antarctic systems / arctic policy / ecology and environmental law / H. forest ecology and management / human dimensions of wildlife management / tribal natural resource perspectives / tribal resource management systems / traditional ecological knowledge / linking ecological and human dimensions of environmental issues

Questions

While the field of environmental studies is notorious for its interdisciplinary nature, this may not be true on the individual level because of the division between natural and social sciences. In addition, the rhetorical differences between disciplines are entangled with the way domain content is produced by discourse communities. Thus, I decided to study how participants navigate the transitions between these entanglements.

Have natural and social scientists formed separate domains within the field?

Do researchers who specialize in an area of environmental social science focus exclusively on the social science concepts underlying their topic? Or do individuals take the holistic approach that the field is known for, incorporating elements of the “other” side?
Does the tendency to cross these boundaries fluctuate from individual-to-individual and/or from topic-to-topic? How extreme are these fluctuations?

To investigate whether the interdisciplinary nature of environmental studies manifests at the individual level or only as the field, I examined how the writing conventions of these two categories converge and diverge. Using two corpus-analysis procedures and one bibliographic procedure, I identifiedthe boundaries between these two categories and when and how often they are crossed. By pinpointing the perimeters, I was able to work towards understanding how the two halves of this field come together to produce work that is unique to the study of human-environment systems.

Procedure 1: Pronoun Use

As Table 2 notes, natural and social scientists differ in their use of pronouns. Natural scientists tend to use the plural “we,” while social scientists straddle the boundary between “we” and “I.” Thus, I utilizedAntConc to code the publications for the frequency of the words “I,” “me,” “my” and “we,” “our,” and “ours.”I believed that investigating the use of pronouns would allow me to examine the degree to which an individual sticks to the methods of their faction.

Procedure 2: Key Word Analysis

I decided to identify and quantify the use of technical language using AntConc. After importing the publications into AntConc to see which words occur most frequently, I combed through the first fifty words and identifiedinstances of discipline-specific jargon. Words that I could not define within the context of the publications counted as jargon. Key word analysis allowed me to examine how closely individuals adhered to the common trends of their sphere, be it more discipline-specific jargon for the natural science publications or a mix of general and technical language for the social science publications.

Procedure 3: Citation Analysis

In addition to coding the publications, I analyzed the citations of two publications from each professor. I used Excel to record:

The main author and title of the citation
The category the citation falls under (natural or social)

I measured the extent to which each publication cites and integrates literature by going through the spreadsheet and noting the number of disciplines cited, the distribution of citations among disciplines, and the disparity between these categories. Mapping these interactions provided a basis for determining the extent to which different authors participate in the interdisciplinary research that environmental studies is known for.

Procedure 4: Profile Analysis

Finally, I referred to each professors’ profile on the ENVS program website. This profile includes the professor’s:

Biography
Areas of Expertise
Program(s)

Examining the biographies and areas of expertise put forth by each professor allowed me to determine a) the degree to which professors aim towards interdisciplinarity and b) how actively they work towards this goal. Noting the programs that each professorteaches in providedconcrete evidence to supplement the findings of the other procedures. I believed that the claims made in these profiles could potentially serve as rationale for possible boundary-crossings or the formation of two separate camps.

Results

Procedure 1: Pronoun Use

The use of pronouns in natural science writing stems from the de-personalized nature of natural science research. As natural science publications are often written in collaboration, authors tend to rely exclusively on the plural “we” and “our(s).” This trend is supported by the third column of Appendix A: the publications were completely devoid of singular pronouns such as “I,” “me,” and “my.”

The use of pronouns for the social sciences is less clear-cut. Just as the social sciences are situated between the natural sciences and the humanities, social scientists straddle the boundary between plural and singular pronouns. The results displayed in the third column of Appendix B exemplify the murky nature of pronoun use. While E2, F1, F2, G2, and H1 relied solely on plural pronouns (see Figure 1), E1 and G1, which both had only one author, had instances of both plural and singular pronouns (see Figure 2).These results suggest that social scientists tended to lean more towards the natural science norm of favoring collaboration over individuality.

A closer look at the context of the plural pronounsin E1 and G1 indicated that the authors for both publications used “we” to refer to themselves AND the audience. For example, in E1, the author states: “In these situations we can expect many actors to behave as conditional cooperators…” This maneuver allowed professors Eand Gto actively involve the readers by guiding them through the results and conclusions. H2, which had several authors, also had five instances of “I” and one instance of “me” (see Figure 1). Skimming the paragraphs around these instances revealed the culprit: quotations. The authors of H2 used a quote by a representative from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, who “emphasized the value of trails to education: ‘Isee education being …” In addition to offering a complete quotation, the use of “I” clearly indicates a transition from the authors’ ideas to the evidence they are drawing upon.

Procedure 2: Key Word Analysis

Unlike the unmistakable differences in pronoun use, the differences in use of jargon were less explicit. Collectively, the natural science publications had a slightly higher frequency of jargon then the social science publications, with a ratio of 78:56. Figure 3 combined the two data pools, arranged in ascending order, into a scatterplot. As illustrated by the scatterplot, every natural science publication came out above its “equivalent” social science publication. This gap was also noticeably wider after the first three pairs, implying that there is variation within the camps as well. The trends in Figure 3, coupled with the exact numbers in Appendixes A and B, solidify the claim that natural science professors have a slightly higher tendency to utilize technical vocabulary.

However, these patterns were accompanied with variation across and within the boundaries. B2, a natural science publication, had the highest frequency of jargon, with 22 instances in the top 50 words (see Appendix A). However, the first point in the plot indicates that both categories include a publication completely void of jargon: C2 and E2. The nature of the publications in between the two extremes varied, with both data pools distributing works evenly across the spectrum of frequency. Thus, no definite conclusion can be drawn to delineate the tendencies of the two categories, as there was no stark contrast in frequency of jargon use.