Death to Interdisciplinary Research!!!

I think interdisciplinary research is a good thing when you bring people together whom are all knowledgeable about the proposed research topic, however when you bring people together who are not it can become chaotic and frustrating which is what my experience with the group proposal and abstract was. Our panel abstract is discussing the relevance of using micro financing as a means to alleviate poverty within low income neighborhoods in the United States. The importance of this panel is micro-financing projects are being utilized in developing countries to create sustainable economic growth however in the United States low income areas are typically void of financial institutions that are willing to lend to low income people. Instead low income neighborhoods are flooded with predatory financial service organizations such as pay day loans and title services etc. My research family believes that by utilizing micro-financing techniques rather than the predatory financial institutions economic growth within impoverished would increase.

It was very difficult and I still do not believe that we have not successfully mapped each of our disciplines into this topic. When our group first decided on this topic I knew for me, it would be an easy project to research because within the past 20 years development economists have spent a lot of time looking at different cash transfer programs effects on the alleviation of poverty, so I immediately THOUGHT I saw the connection/ parallel. However when my group members and I began explaining the parallels and connections to our respective disciplines it immediately became apparent that NONE of us fully understand the connections. I think that this is because none of us (including me!!)  knew/understood the correct terminology of our fields or any prominent discipline specific theories that addressed micro-financing. So we each sat around the table trying to explain something to each other that we our selves did not fully understand. It was like trying to teach spanish when the only words you know are hola and gracias.

(McCoy, S. and Gardner, S. 2012) Discuss the importance of having the right people involved in interdisciplinary research (IDR). According to this paper IDR has a higher probability to be effective in social sciences. While I agree with this, I think that having the right people also means having knowledgeable people and since we are all incoming graduate students clearly we are not knowledgeable enough about our own fields to be embarking into IDR and trying to explain our field parallels to other people in other disciplines.

So to conclude this blog post I AM NOT ENJOYING this IDR experience. I believe if I were presented with this research project after my second or third year of graduate school when I have completed most of my core course work I would enjoy it more for now I am saying DEATH to IDR!!!!