To Control or Not to Control? Social and Epistemic Dilemmas of Control in Transdisciplinarity

Convening a Double Session at ITD 2017

Any control for complex problems is itself riddled with complexity – this insight is a cornerstone of transdisciplinary research. More pointedly, transdisciplinary methodologies seem to grapple with a control dilemma: On the one hand, they acknowledge the increasing need to control for socio-technical and socio-ecological problems. On the other hand, they face the decreasing capability to legitimate and exercise control. Altogether this puts the issue of control center stage and begs the question: to control or not to control? The session explores social and epistemic dilemmas of control as they undergird transdisciplinary research, specifically adresing three questions:

●How do transdisciplinary researchers seek to gain or surrender control?
●Do transdisciplinary methodologies aspire to control for the uncontrollable?
●May transdisciplinary projects act as countervailing forces against given regimes of control?

Many important notions in transdisciplinarity are rarely discussed as control issues – be it social forms of leadership and non-hierarchical collaboration, the epistemic implications of post-normal science, transformational experiments, or inclusive information infrastructures. Yet public debates currently seem to both challenge and elevate the countervailing potential of transdisciplinary forms of control – be it debates about project-driven research, digital infrastructures, disciplinary hierarchies, the role of science in post-truth politics, or the push for evidence-based research.
Transdisciplinary practitioners and theorists seem divided on the control dilemma. Some argue that transdisciplinary methods promise a more reflexive kind of control. They seek to purposefully re-distribute the liability, accountability, and responsibility to articulate and solve societal problems by means of synthetic ways of knowing or participatory negotiations. Others emphasize that transdisciplinary processes only thrive when transdisciplinary researchers surrender control and question linear regimes of collaboration. There seems to be a need to more explicitly discuss the epistemic and social circumstances that drive transdisciplinary approaches towards control, or away from it.
The contributions therefore contextualize and discuss the methodological situations under which transdisciplinarity can mark a shift in epistemic and social control: A shift towards sharing the social locus of control, towards purposefully controlling for social imbalances, towards controlling for scientists’ political role, towards designing information infrastructures, or towards transformational experiments. A panel discussion on the questions above concludes the session.