Abstract
All too often, ‘reciprocity’ emerges as the (imagined) organizing logic of interdisciplinary collaboration — with collaborators invited to forms of mutuality, fair exchange, and so on. In this chapter, we show what is missing from this analysis, which is any account of power. The chapter thus takes up an analysis of how power works in an interdisciplinary space — setting out, in particular, some of the different financial, epistemic, and cultural resources that belong to different disciplines. But if the chapter sets itself against one fantasy (fair exchange), it also wants to dispel another — and this is the fantasy of power confronted by the frankly-spoken truth. The chapter argues instead for what it might mean to think interdisciplinary collaboration as a practice of subjugation, which different collaborators may just have to learn to live with.
Chapter PDF
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
This chapter is published under an open access license. Please check the 'Copyright Information' section either on this page or in the PDF for details of this license and what re-use is permitted. If your intended use exceeds what is permitted by the license or if you are unable to locate the licence and re-use information, please contact the Rights and Permissions team.
Copyright information
© 2015 Felicity Callard and Des Fitzgerald
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Callard, F., Fitzgerald, D. (2015). Against Reciprocity: Dynamics of Power in Interdisciplinary Spaces. In: Rethinking Interdisciplinarity across the Social Sciences and Neurosciences. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137407962_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137407962_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-40795-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-40796-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social Sciences CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)