Young Researchers and Interdisciplinarity in Social Sciences : Practices Questioned

Résumé 0

Individual practice of interdisciplinarity by young researchers is rarely called into question. Yet it is quite specific. Borrowing concepts, methods, and theories from other disciplines is motivated by intellectual curiosity and by a desire to improve the research object and framework. The initial course is, however, often intuitive and follows the researcher’s affinity. The temptation to forge onwards, to achieve exhaustiveness, the lack of appropriatemethodological background are all very real risks. It is thus important that young researchers consider scientific requirements within the original frame of interdisciplinarity. This is all the more necessary in view of pressing societal expectations toward the researcher, notably as an expert or a specialist. The difficulty, then, is to achieve epistemological coherency and in order to do so, acquire crucially important “multicompetence”. Interdisciplinarity is indeed plural. Two interdisciplinarity courses may be distinguished: one based on proximity between two neighbouring disciplines, the other freer andmore open, termed “ dédaléenne” in reference to Deadalus’smaze. Last, we wish to insist on the lack of legitimacy fromwhich young researchersmay suffer confronted as they are by research and education institutions which are strongly structured around disciplines. This should cause us to reflect upon the increasingly eclectic initial training programmes of young researchers who nowadays question their own interdisciplinarity.