7/21/2019 In Praise of Theory Transdisciplinarity as Play and Transformation

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Articles from Integral Leadership Review

Transdsciplinary Reflections: Transdisciplinarity asPlay and Transformation2012-11-05 11:11:04 Alfonso Montuori

Alfonso Montuori

 AlfonsoMontuori

 Americans have historically been a very practical people. Delving too much into therealm of theory and ideas, let alone epistemology, has often been viewed askance; asomewhat effete egghead distraction from the business of getting things made anddone. Theory is a complex and problematic term, and it’s also far more pervasivethan we may think—even among those inclined not to be sympathetic to too much,

or even any, theorizing. I suggest that there is a danger in what I see as anincreasing anti-intellectual tendency to dispose of theory or suggest theory is simplyan abstract opinion, as in “it is just a theory,” or some intellectual frameworkremoved from reality: so many castles in the air.

Most inquiry is intra-paradigmatic, meaning it goes on within an establisheddiscipline and theoretical framework. The fundamental disciplinary and theoreticalassumptions remain largely unchallenged. Integral scholarship tends, by definition,to be inter- or transdisciplinary. A central dimension of transdisciplinarity is that it

should be meta-paradigmatic. Transdisciplinarity involves moving across disciplinesand across theories. This means understanding the fundamental assumptionsunderlying disciplines and theories as well as their underlying paradigms. Manyyears ago Magoroh Maruyama coined the somewhat unwieldy but useful term“paradigmatology” in an important paper on cross-disciplinary and cross-culturalcommunication that still deserves a wider readership.

Disciplines and theories create understandings of specific topics through sets of distinctions. In the process of transdisciplinary inquiry we acknowledge that,

because of its complexity, our topic will be studied in a way that goes beyond theboundaries of one specific discipline or theoretical framework. We study how thetopic has already been approached through a plurality of theoretical lenses indiffer ent and probably non-communicating disciplines. It is helpful to understand howthese lenses construct the topic; how they frame our understanding of it; what

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pragmatism becomes anti-intellectualism, and before we know it we’re in the land of Dumb and Dumber .

Recently I read a review of a book in which two chapters were described as entirelytheoretical. The author argued that these chapters had no practical implications or application. This reflects another longstanding coupling in theory’s rather promiscuous history—the debate about theory and practice, or praxis. The

philosophical debate on the relationship between theory and praxis is extensive; butthe complete divorce between theory and practice, as if the two were exactopposites, is problematic. Don’t give me theory! Give me something useful. Give mesomething practical.

I have also been continually struck by the aversion to theory in workshops andmanagement training seminars. While I appreciate the focus on action andpracticality, I am concerned that people are increasingly unable or unwilling to read atheoretical work and consider what its implications and applications might be.

French and American Cultures

Grappling with the infinite play of abstraction may be more of a French thing, but inthe US we like models because models suggest movement, direction, and how toget from A to B. The trend towards “7 steps to . . .” “The 5 ways to. . .” “8 lessons of.. .” type books reflects a process of translation. Somebody takes a complex set of ideas—say chaos theory; or positive psychology; or, more recently, the latestinsights from neuroscience—and frames them in easy to understand steps or lessons—a model. All well and good. The problem arises when we seemingly lose

our ability to make sense of theory independently of the priestly class of professionaltranslators. When we need translators to make sense of theory and show us thefive or seven or eight steps, we move from a sense of the practical to essentiallyasking somebody to tell us what and how to do things. At what point do we just wantto follow orders and not think for ourselves? At what point do we begin to lose trackof our own implicit theories, of our beliefs and assumptions, and the way they shapeour understanding of and action in, the world?

The implications of theoretical anemia are considerable. They go beyond what might

be thought of (tellingly) as the abstruse academic domain inhabited by alieneggheads. There are implications for basic citizenship, for elections, for understanding the different perspectives presented by political parties, for excavating their assumptions, for understanding their implications, and so on. I amwriting this in the days leading up to the 2012 election; and there are a lot of half-baked, undigested theories floating around. The “you didn’t build this” debate, whichis polarizing left and right is essentially about an individualistic, closed system viewof the individual vs. a more communitarian, socially constructed view. For the AynRandian individual, to quote Sinatra and Brown, “I did it my way, and I don’t want

nobody to give me nothing.” To suggest I didn’t do it alone is to attack me as anindividual, to attack hard work, to bring up the specter of dependence, and worse.For the more communitarian view, an individual exists within a social system, in anetwork of relationships, and we need to acknowledge the role of the larger socialand environmental systems including direct and indirect government support. It

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takes a village. Very different perspectives, different assumptions, differentimplications, consequences, etc. These views have become incommensurable, itseems.

What is lacking is a more thoughtful unpacking of the implications of theseperspectives, their theoretical roots, and their implications and applications. It iseasy to remain stuck in slogans and emotional calls about the virtues of the

individual or community. We can easily remain on this surface level if we don notknow how to excavate our theoretical assumptions and if we do not acquire theability to entertain ideas, as John Lilly used to say. We might, therefore, embrace thenotion of being able to play with ideas and appreciate them as creative products or ways of framing the world but holding them lightly without excessive attachment.Particularly if they’re our own.

For those who feel such a playful approach to ideas is simply not appropriate in anage of great change and potential global disaster, I highly recommend Richard

Bernstein’s work. He draws heavily on hermeneutics and a sophisticated reading of the pragmatist tradition, particularly in his wonderful books Beyond Objectivism and Relativism and The Abuse of Evil: Politics and Religion after 9/11. In the latter, apowerful discussion of pragmatic fallibilism in the face of great danger, and the needfor the ability to engage a serious threat without becoming immobilized byindecision. He convincingly argues that it is possible to be a pragmatic fallibilist, tocontinually question one’s premises and theories, to believe one’s ideas andtheories are fallible, and still take action despite the call of absolutism andunreflective reaction/action.

Leadership

In the field of leadership even a cursory assessment of the literature shows theplurality of theories and models of the mainstream discourse. There is also themovement towards so-called leaderless organizations. There are other recentdevelopments, such as post-heroic leadership, which challenge the very premisesof the ways we think about leadership, down to the unit of analysis and the basiccultural archetype of the leader.

With this great, rich, and yet confusing, pluralism, it is all too easy to either throwone’s hands up in despair or simply salivate when the bell of the newest model or theory emerges, going from one to the next, in an endless quest. Developmentalpsychology offers an interesting way of approaching this issue.

William Perry’s important work on cognitive development was based on 10 years of research on the way undergraduate students changed their thinking based on their college experiences. For the sake of convenience, Perry’s research can besummarized as presenting three main stages.

The first of these stages is dualism. We make a clear distinction between the self and the external world. Knowledge resides in the external world. Knowledge isabsolute truth, and learning involves searching for the appropriate authority. Anydifferences in perspectives are reduced to right-wrong, good-bad. We reject

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ambiguity because it suggests that the proper authority has not been found.

The second stage is multiplicity. Perry’s research suggests that the exposure to apluralistic world breaks down absolute categories of right and wrong as we begin tosee there are many different perspectives and a lot of grey areas. Rather thanbelieving in a single, absolute truth, we believe that there are as many truths asthere are people. The loss of the right answer swings us towards the view that

anything goes—that all perspectives are just a theory—and that one is as good asthe next. The self becomes a source of knowledge; and, in fact, there is a privilegingof subjectivity. “You see it your way, I see it my way.” An anti-authoritarian positioncan develop as a reaction to the conformism of dualism.

Perry’s third stage is contextual relativism. It emerges from an ongoing grapplingwith multiplicity, as well as the realization of the ultimate futility and the nihilism of multiplicity. If everybody is right—or nobody is wrong—how can we make anychoices or commitments? Whereas dualism saw the source of knowledge as

external and objective, and multiplicity as internal and subjective, contextualrelativism reconciles the two in dialogue and appreciates the importance of contextin making choices. It looks for knowledge in the interaction between self and worldas an ongoing inquiry.

Perry’s work points to the kind of complex thought articulated by the Frenchphilosopher Edgar Morin, to Bernstein’s pragmatic fallibilism, and to the work inpost-formal thinking familiar to readers of this journal. It also points to the importanceof cultivating a more complex, post-formal way of thinking in order to do justice totransdisciplinary work. It frames our encounter with a plurality or multiplicity of views,not as a reason for despair, but as a challenge to develop new thinking and creativeinquiry. This would recognize the need to grapple with theoretical perspectives ascreative openings into the world, which are themselves viewed through our own setof, often mostly implicit, assumptions about the world. One way to beginapproaching theory, therefore, is to recognize that we all have our own theories, our own set of creative frames and openings to the world, our own epistemology. AsGregory Bateson put it, anybody claiming not to have an epistemology simply has abad one.

Transdisciplinarity framed in this way becomes more than simply engaging inresearch using a plurality of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. It becomes aninquiry into the nature of knowledge, as well as demanding of the researcher anongoing process of self-reflection and self-inquiry – an elucidation of how weourselves create our understanding of the world, how that understanding emergedthrough our own personal and social history, by being embodied and embedded,and how it (and we ourselves) can be opened and indeed transformed as wedevelop a more nuanced, creative epistemology and way of being in the world.

About the Author 

Alfonso Montuori, PhD, is Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies,where he designed and teaches in the Transformative Leadership M.A. and theTransformative Studies Ph.D. He was Distinguished Professor in the School of Fine

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 Arts at Miami University, in Oxford Ohio and in 1985-1986 he taught at the CentralSouth University in Hunan, China. An active musician and producer, in a former life Alfonso worked in London England as a professional musician. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on creativity and innovation, the future,complexity theory, and leadership. Alfonso is also a consultant in the areas of creativity, innovation and leadership development whose clients have includedNetApp, Training Vision (Singapore), Omintel-Olivetti (Italy) and Procter and Gamble.

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