I think that there is an important difference between "interdisciplinarity" and "transdisciplinarity". If you take the question of "poverty", in an interdisciplinar perspective, one would try to put together researches in different disciplines (sociology, political sciences, psychology, economic sciences, ...) in order to treat this notion from different point of views.

In an transdisciplinar perspective, it is not so much the specific contribution of a discipline that prevails but much more the idea of the optimal choice of intellectual resources for solving a given problem (in our case: poverty), no matter if these intellectual resources (visions, models, techniques, ...) belong to the one or the other specific discipline.

Do you refer to research activities dedicated to sustainable management of resources ? If it is this case, different approaches may be appropriate for various concrete situations (food security, poverty reduction ...). Anyway, regardless of approach and methods, commitment at the personal level is a key for success in such research activities.

Thanks a lot Ruxandra for the brilliant response. I was referring to research related to food security, poverty, malnutrition among other-development related research issues, and your last suggestion regarding commitment at the personal level seem to address a great deal of the issue. However, with researchers sharing different views on these kinds of issues (based on their disciplines) in relations to causes, implications and corrective measures, I was wondering which of these approaches could best address for example poverty and food-security related issues with insignificant gaps at the end of the day.

I am not an expert in this very topic to give a focused answer. At the same time, your inquiry reminds me that experts in immunology, molecular biology, diet etc, as well as in psychotherapy, spirituality and alike, they all see the root of diseases in their fields, that is, in what they know the best, and believe in. Hence, there is a real need to have different perspectives. Ultimately, the integrating wisdom matters the most. It is what I think now.

Impressive, thanks a lot Ruxandra for the well noted suggestion.

I think that there is an important difference between "interdisciplinarity" and "transdisciplinarity". If you take the question of "poverty", in an interdisciplinar perspective, one would try to put together researches in different disciplines (sociology, political sciences, psychology, economic sciences, ...) in order to treat this notion from different point of views.

In an transdisciplinar perspective, it is not so much the specific contribution of a discipline that prevails but much more the idea of the optimal choice of intellectual resources for solving a given problem (in our case: poverty), no matter if these intellectual resources (visions, models, techniques, ...) belong to the one or the other specific discipline.

Thanks a lot Peter for your clarification on the concepts of "interdisciplinarity" and "transdisciplinarity". From your description of interdisciplinarity, I am tempted to believe putting together ideas from different disciplines precludes a degree of interaction from the respective disciplines, right? if that is the case, how different is it from multidisciplinarity?

And to the transdisciplinarity concept, are you suggesting a joint problem definition by the various disciplines with the problem of interest at heart of the research? If that is the case, would you advise that the transdisciplinarity approach to research be used for handling development related issues rather than any of the aforementioned concepts (disciplinarity, multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity)

Thank you, David, for your so quick reaction. Concerning the opposition between "interdisciplinarity" and "multi-disciplinarity", I think that it is a gradual opposition - you have it also , implicitly, suggested in your comment. Strictly speaking multi-disciplinarity (like, analogically speaking, "multi-culturalism") is the use of visions proposed by several disciplines in order to highlight a question, a problem, a domain, ... Inter-disciplinarity, however, implies some momentum of reciprocal critical conceptual understanding of a notion, a domain, a problem, etc.

Concerning transdiciplinarity, I also think like you (if I have correctly understood your comment), that this kind of "approach" presupposes indeed a (commonly shared and accepted) conceptual definition ("modeling") of the problem (such as "poverty").

As far as the concrete handling of development related issuses is concerned, I think that maybe the most important skill or know-how is that of "problem solving", no matter if these solutions are coming from one or several disciplines or if these solutions are "simply" practically experienced ones (I think that FAO is providing here very valuable guides, concrete studies and best practices).

Impressive, thanks a lot once again Peter for the enlightenment. Your suggestions are well noted

Formal definitions and comments on different approaches are shown here:

http://www.units.muohio.edu/aisorg/pubs/issues/17_%20kotter.pdf

Thanks a lot Ruxandra for the link