In 2014, Julie Klein wrote that transdisciplinarity is about imagining futures, highlighting the transformative potential of interdisciplinary collaboration. Transdisciplinary work encompasses problem-solving and transcending narrow disciplinary worldviews. This blog post delves into two crucial elements that have emerged in my transdisciplinary research: positionality and metatheory, emphasizing their crucial role in generating knowledge.
On why you need to know where I come from
Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a black feminist woman who grew up in a white community in Sweden. I understand the significance of representation and its impact on our perspectives. Although I have faced racism, I acknowledge that the hardships experienced by fashion industry workers, particularly those in the global South, surpass my own. I love fashion. I am a trained couture-tailor, patternmaker, and textile artist who can spin raw wool into yarn, dye-, and weave fabrics. This hands-on experience deepened my understanding of the intertwinedness between physical garments and the social aspects they represent.
Cultural, social, and educational experiences play a significant role in shaping perspectives and assumptions. They shape how I perceive the world and approach my research, how I engage with project members, impact the dynamics of power and my privilege within the research process. By openly acknowledging who I am, I can better understand how I perceive and define the problem. Once I gained enough confidence to be transparent about who I am, I could embrace the diversity of knowledges. I could engage in braver conversations with collaborators and foster trust-building.
Positionality in Transdisciplinary Research
Positionality refers to acknowledging our role and personal biases as they influence the relevant data, knowledge prioritization, and objectives. Our identities shape the data we consider relevant, the knowledge we prioritize or disregard, the objectives and the agendas we set. Acknowledging positionality allows for diversity and representation. By being transparent about our backgrounds and perspectives, we comprehend the complexities of the problems we address. I frame my positionality as praxis, integrating the academic, business, and personal spheres. Reflexivity and reflection contribute to the transparency of our research by reflecting on our role in the research process and analysing collected data. Engagement with collaborators - staying informed about real-world events - enhance the relevance of our research.
The Sustainable Textile Project
As an example of transdisciplinary research, I use my doctoral project, the Sustainable Textile Project. This science-business collaboration project aimed to contribute knowledge for a textile and fashion industry operating within planetary boundaries. The project integrated three system views: an Earth system science highlighting human-caused systemic changes at a global level, a business perspective seeing the fashion system in terms of its value chain, and advocates for a circular economy viewing the fashion system through its material flows. We, the researchers, emphasized a social-ecological system perspective, highlighting the intertwined nature of non-material and material aspects within the fashion industry. I also pointed out that the three system views focus on material aspects of fashion missing the human [non-material] element, which plays a significant role in shaping the fashion system.
Metatheory of Transdisciplinarity
I sought a metatheory that could bring these worldviews together. While social-ecological systems research examines the different components of the fashion system, integrating these views alone did not enable me to grasp the underlying intertwinedness inheriting the experienced problématique. Critical realism serves as a suitable metatheory for transdisciplinarity in the context of social-ecological systems, shedding light on areas where theoretical support enhances understanding.
Critical realism contributes with ontological depth, emphasizing the existence of a stratified reality that includes observed events, actual occurrences, and all that is. This strengthens the perspective of social-ecological systems thinking. The global fashion system contributes to human-driven changes that fundamentally alter how our planet functions, simultaneously with complex local impacts worldwide. This problématique of fashion arises from the intertwined nature of various aspects within the fashion system, currently addressed separately. Attention to the concept of emergence becomes crucial as the problématique of fashion emerges from intricate interplay between social and ecological aspects. Identifying a single root cause of the problem is not possible. Recognizing this intertwinedness is essential for an understanding that goes beyond empirical data alone.
The metatheory of transdisciplinarity helps in demonstrating to quantitative-focused academics and businesses that environmental impact numbers serve as material representations of what is observed and experienced. However, numbers alone do not provide insights into the complex factors that determine remarkably low-cost clothes in Sweden. They fail to capture the historical and the current social aspects that underly observed numerical values. Merely focusing on reducing numbers through a materialistic lens is ineffective because, from a metatheoretical perspective, numbers overlook dimensions of a stratified reality and the generative mechanisms driving the problématique of the fashion system.
In addition, our understanding of a social-ecological system's behaviour is not solely shaped by analysing observed phenomena and collected data. Our understanding is also influenced by the missing, excluded or overlooked data and information. Positionality matters because worldviews and choices permeate reality at every level. By recognizing the limitations of a solely empirical approach and embracing a metatheoretical perspective, we gain a more comprehensive understanding of the fashion system and work towards transformative change.
Key take-away
As researchers we are positioned in our research. Who we are influences what a problem is represented to be. We choose what theories to use for understanding what we known. We decide what knowledge we think is required to inform our actions. Positionality is crucial. It exposes knowledge gaps, and it helps to make our influence as researchers transparent. Importantly by pointing out identicalness, positionality opens up for understanding that representation matters, and that embracing diversity is important. To develop new knowledge transdisciplinary research needs incorporation of a diversity of knowledges which have to come from plural perspectives. Metatheory of transdisciplinarity facilitates the integration of different knowledges and understandings of what a problem is represented to be. In summary, I find integration of practice and theory in transdisciplinary work is more effective than relying on either alone, both also require us to embrace diversity.