In this paper I argue for the superiority of a critical realist understanding of interdisciplinarity over a mainstream understanding of it. I begin by exploring the reasons for the failure of mainstream researchers to achieve interdisciplinarity. My main argument is that mainstream interdisciplinary researchers tend to hypostatize facts, fetishize constant conjunctions of events and apply to open systems an epistemology designed for closed systems. I also explain how mainstream interdisciplinarity supports oppression and gross inequality. I argue that mainstream interdisciplinarity is (...) not true interdisciplinarity and refer to it accordingly as ‘condisciplinarity’. By way of example, I examine the condisciplinarity of the World Health Organization’s ecological model applied to the issue of men’s violence against women. Specifically, I argue that critical realist interdisciplinarity is preferable because it acknowledges inter alia the empirical, actual and real layers of reality, which allows it to develop depth-explanations of phenomena. In practice, this means that critical realist interdisciplinarity can potentially provide explanations that, compared to condisciplinarity, are broader (include more of the human and non-human context) and deeper (include for example individuals’ conscious and unconscious psychological motivations). In the World Health Organization’s example of the causes of men’s violence against women, condisciplinarity resulted in the absence of historical, global and unconscious aspects of the problem. It is also restricted the analysis to reductive, constant-conjunction based theories of the causes of the problem, specifically ‘risk factors’, thereby providing a relatively shallow explanation for the problem. (shrink)

In keeping with the 2021 IACR Conference theme (Re) Envisaging Emancipatory Research, Science and Practice, this paper reviews over fifty instances of critical realist research in Africa which have sought to establish emancipatory research praxis by using critical realism to underlabour a range of applied studies in a diversity of disciplines and countries. The initiators of this research have been drawn to critical realism for several reasons, most notably its return to ontology, its interest in transformed, transformative praxis, and its (...) potential for addressing knowledge and experiences exclusions. The paper ends with a reflection on ‘What's in a Conference Theme', returning to the earlier 2012 IACR conference hosted in Africa, and the 2021 conference’s focus on emancipatory research. It argues both for the deepening of conversations between critical realism and Africana Critical Theory; and for the grounding of these conversations in the voices and power of the people in our communities. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper describes a critical realist intensive case study, which develops and tests a ‘dialectic process model of transformative learning’. The model is inspired by Bhaskar's onto-axiological chain as outlined in his formulation of dialectical critical realism. The study describes transformative environmental learning processes focusing on food security in two primary schools in rural South Africa. The model elaborates on the four links in the onto-axiological chain by describing four knowledge interests across the two cases: knowledge of ‘what is and (...) what is not’, knowledge of ‘what could be’, knowledge of ‘what should be’, and knowledge of ‘what can be’. The model also highlights the emergent nature of epistemic relations in transformative learning processes. The paper discusses the model in relation to a transformative, open-ended and context specific approach to Environmental Education /esd. The paper illustrates that Bhaskar’s MELD is a robust schema for investigating learning-led change in EE and suggests its relevance in other research contexts concerned with societal transformation. (shrink)