In the course of a fascinating discussion on the Interdisciplinary Studies listserv, sponsored by the Association for Integrative Studies (the closest thing to a professional association for interdisciplinarians that exists), Thomas Scheff, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at UCSB, directed the list to a provocative article he had published in 1995. The title of the article is "Academic Gangs," and he has posted the text on his website. Here is an excerpt:
Criminologists have proposed that patterns of behavior in youthful gangs can be understood in terms of what they call "the code of the streets," as in Anderson (1994). The code is a set of understandings between gang members which help them meet both their material and emotional needs. In this essay I describe the codes of academe, the understandings between professors in gang-like groups that function to fulfill their needs.
Most academics belong to one or another group called "a school of thought" or a specialty. For example, a large group of academic psychologists consider themselves to be behaviorists. These academics are loyal to the strict code of behaviorism which bands them together in thought, feeling and behavior. In addition to membership in a specialty, all academics are also members of a super-gang or clan, the discipline.
[ . . . ]
Just as members of street gangs earn most of their livelihood from theft, academics gain most of theirs from careers. Being a member in good standing of a gang and a supergang is crucially important for advancement of one's career. There is little chance of advancement in the academy without hard work, but flaunting membership in gang and clan can certainly supplement or even substitute for talent and intelligence.
[ . . . ]
The emotional function of the gang and clan is to remove the crushing burden of isolation created by esoteric knowledge . . . In essence, academic gangs and clans create an artificial but highly involving round of problems and practices that provide a sense of unity among members . . .
Given the emotional and material needs of professors, much of what goes on in teaching and research becomes a ritual whose main focus is on maintaining gang and clan identity. Given this mesmerizing focus, gang and discipline rather than real world issues take pride of place. This idea explains most of the more obvious scandals in the academy, and some that are not so obvious. It completely explains the shocking distance that most professors maintain from their students, especially undergraduates. The center of the lecturer's interest is in problems of his or her specialty and clan, which mean nothing to undergraduates.
I have already excerpted more of the article than I should, so I am going to stop here. I don't necessarily endorse all of Scheff's perspectives, but there is enough of a ring of accuracy to pay serious attention to what he is suggesting, not least because it may go some way to explaining the liminality of the interdisciplinary scholar. This is not simply my opinion, although it is that, but there is excellent evidence that the overt pursuit of truly interdisciplinary work, as opposed to cross-disciplinary work, is not a likely path to professional success. As another commentator in the listserv discussion put it, the political economy of American universities is not constructed to encourage interdisciplinary studies.
I was also drawn to Scheff's essay because of a series of articles that appeared in a recent issue of Academic Medicine. The lead article was a plea to have more non-physician medical educators ("NPMEs") involved in medical education (full-text access). As a NPME myself, I was intrigued by both the article, and by a commentary prepared by Frederic Hafferty and Janet Hefler (full-text access). Hafferty is the principal figure responsible for bringing the concept of the hidden curriculum into medical education (Good lord -- there's the topic for the next Lexicon entry), which is simply critical, and one I address at some length in my dissertation.
Hafferty, who is a sociologist, and Hefler, who is an educationist, near as I can tell, applaud the effort to include more NPMEs in medical education, but express concern for a variety of reasons. Moreover, they include a warning in terms that I have been unable to forget for some weeks now:
As we look toward the horizon, one major problem we continue to face is medicine's own tribal nature. We are a culture dominated by specialists, a culture in which generalists are devalued and in which outsiders (including educationalists) are routinely (if invisibly to insiders) treated as second-class citizens.
Indeed. One of the most basic tenets of socialization is that key aspects of our beliefs, attitudes, and practices are often invisible to group insiders. Thus, in response to the perspective, one I frequently encounter, that suggests something akin to 'You don't know, because you have not practiced X yourself,' where X can be any one of a number of things health care providers do, I often want to say something akin to 'You don't know, because you have practiced X yourself.' The idea is not that practical experience is irrelevant or unimportant, but simply that there are important aspects of our own practices which are best seen and interpreted by learned outsiders by virtue of their outsider status.
My own perspective is that the legitimacy of this viewpoint is very poorly recognized in medical culture, but perhaps I am mistaken.
Thoughts?
