Trouble at the disciplinary divide : a knowledge ecologies analysis of a co-design project with native Alaskan communities

This case of transdisciplinary collaboration raises a range of issues relevant to scientific research on complex twenty-first-century problems associated with water security, energy consumption and climate change impacts. These problems are widely acknowledged to require more than technocentric and resource-centred solutions, and they demand increased engagement with the people impacted by the problem, and with those who will live with the proposed solutions. This suggests a greater role for researchers from humanities and social science (HASS) disciplines in fields conventionally dominated by STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) knowledges. But bringing together positives (quantitatively oriented) and interpretive (qualitative) paradigms of knowledge has its own difficulties, not least the effort to establish ‘a basis of mutual intellectual and professional respect’ that could ground a ‘genuine’ knowledge partnership (Nowotny et al. 2013). These two paradigms have very different ideas about the nature, generalizability and the purpose of knowledge.