Disciplinarity, Cross-Disciplinarity and ‘Performance'

This paper explores various forms of what will be termed cross-disciplinarity (C-D) and the intellectual consequences of the adoption of C-D methods for social scientific analysis (though the moves towards the adoption of C-D methods are not confined just to the social sciences and humanities). C-D is used as a generic category to express a range of what are often labelled interdisciplinary approaches to analytical problems. But for reasons which should become clear later I reserve the term ‘inter-disciplinarity’ for a particular mode of analytical thought that challenges the ubiquity and solidity of traditional disciplinarity as usually understood. Thus the paper explores all those ways that intellectual disciplinary structures have come into critical focus, and the terminologies that are deployed to express the challenges to the homogeneity of the disciplines. It is suggested that we live in a world where C-D is increasingly celebrated, and part of the paper investigates the possible reasons for the rise of this intellectual trend and style of analysis, and its consequences.