Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Social Science and Neuroscience beyond Interdisciplinarity: Experimental Entanglements

Fitzgerald, D.; Callard, F.

Social Science and Neuroscience beyond Interdisciplinarity: Experimental Entanglements Thumbnail


Authors

D. Fitzgerald

F. Callard



Abstract

This article is an account of the dynamics of interaction across the social sciences and neurosciences. Against an arid rhetoric of ‘interdisciplinarity’, it calls for a more expansive imaginary of what experiment – as practice and ethos – might offer in this space. Arguing that opportunities for collaboration between social scientists and neuroscientists need to be taken seriously, the article situates itself against existing conceptualizations of these dynamics, grouping them under three rubrics: ‘critique’, ‘ebullience’ and ‘interaction’. Despite their differences, each insists on a distinction between sociocultural and neurobiological knowledge, or does not show how a more entangled field might be realized. The article links this absence to the ‘regime of the inter-’, an ethic of interdisciplinarity that guides interaction between disciplines on the understanding of their pre-existing separateness. The argument of the paper is thus twofold: (1) that, contra the ‘regime of the inter-’, it is no longer practicable to maintain a hygienic separation between sociocultural webs and neurobiological architecture; (2) that the cognitive neuroscientific experiment, as a space of epistemological and ontological excess, offers an opportunity to researchers, from all disciplines, to explore and register this realization.

Citation

Fitzgerald, D., & Callard, F. (2015). Social Science and Neuroscience beyond Interdisciplinarity: Experimental Entanglements. Theory, Culture and Society, 32(1), 3-32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276414537319

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Jun 30, 2014
Publication Date Jan 1, 2015
Deposit Date Jul 3, 2014
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Theory, Culture and Society
Print ISSN 0263-2764
Electronic ISSN 1460-3616
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 32
Issue 1
Pages 3-32
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276414537319
Keywords Biology, Collaboration, Critical neuroscience, Critique, Experiment, Methodology, The social.

Files

Published Journal Article (Advance online version) (1.8 Mb)
PDF

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm).






You might also like



Downloadable Citations