"Do we or do we not?" vs. "How and why do we...?"

Cross-disciplinary research is important because none of our problems exist in isolation. For example, take a look at an issue in agriculture. If immigrant populations are harvesting the majority of crops, say in California, we've automatically got a web of interdisciplinary needs that spring forth: 

• fair wages for agricultural workers-- That's economics.
• bilingual language needs for cross-cultural communication-- That's linguistics.
• the implementation of sanitation standards-- That's health.

We haven't even begun to address the use of pesticides, their potential toxicity and workers' controversial exposure to them or how climate change may impact/ determine/ influence seasonal hiring, migration and general year-round demand for workers.

It would seem that the only effective way of addressing any and all of our needs is to realize the interconnectedness that exist between them. In a sense, we've got to act as a family with multiple ties and not as individual and independent units.

My field is library science and I can see the importance of interdisciplinarity particularly when it comes to classification of source materials that will be used in research. Librarians are the people that come up with the keywords that are used to find books, articles, reviews and other documents that foment the bases of a wide breadth of publications. We are perhaps the first ones to realize that the "I Have a Dream Speech" needs to be linked to "history," to "rhetoric," to "African American" and to "civil rights" all at once. Or that "malaria" must be found in conjunction with "tropical disease," "mosquito," "Africa"  and perhaps "immunization." We're the ones who determine the associations that appear in databases and what topics, metaphorically speaking, 'rub shoulders with others.' So, an awareness, a respect for and an implementation of interdisicplinarity are of the utmost importance in our field. 

I do 'buy' that interdisciplinarity is important in my field when it comes to classification of materials. Sometimes a patron/ researcher is looking for something that s/he doesn't know exists, and this interdisciplinary "webbing" serves them in revealing sources that they may not have otherwise considered. However, I think that departments in academia are lagging in encouraging students and researchers to start their brainstorming for research from broad perspectives. For example, when a student needs to write a paper on gun control or spanking or prayer in schools, the priorities seem to nest around the paper's length and the deadline by which it must be submitted. Broader questions of interest might include, 

• Who is allowed to carry knives and for what purposes? Must they be visible? 
• Has corporal punishment been proven effective in reprimanding children and reinforcing desired behavior?
• If prayer is allowed, what does it look like? Standing? Kneeling? Heads bowed? Eyes closed? Hand holding? In what language is it to be carried out? Is it a private act in a closed space or a public one done in community?

As you can see, sometimes 'talking around the issue' can invite new lines of discussion and interdisciplinarity is in essence the study of how phenomena fit into our world.

The strength of this approach to research lies in that it leads to a better and deeper understanding of problems. It answers, "How did this problem arise?" and "How do we measure our success in finding a solution?" It eschews the tendency towards a binary paradigm of "I have access to guns or I don't"; "I spank or I don't"; "I pray alone at home or I don't." The structure just described is the easiest to understand and the most accessible, but it doesn't address the questions of "How?" and "Why?" 

So, one of the limitations of this approach is that 'the public' wants "yes or no" answers and solutions that don't exist to questions and problems that are best addressed differently. In other words, "How?" and "Why?" can't be answered with "yes" or "no." But they can be used to "dig deep" and to usher us toward more profound progress in problem-solving.