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284Cairns: Eco-Ethics and Sustainability EthicsIn contrast, a member of a truly interdisciplinary team is certain to have his/her ignorance about awide variety of subjects exposed on a regular basis. Most interdisciplinary team problems are externallygenerated by accidents —a spill of hazardous materials (e.g. the Exxon Valdez oil spill), by theunexpected consequences of a technological failure (e.g. the Three Mile Island nuclear plant situation),or by the compounded tyranny of a series of small decisions which individually made sense butwere collectively disastrous (e.g. the multiple diversions of water en route to the Florida Everglades).The boundary conditions (the scope of the study), the time frame for generating information, and thelevel of detail are determined by external needs of some group(s) who requires a particular decisionwithin a particular time frame for an area whose size is determined not by the investigators but by theproblem. Additionally, because the problem is externally rather than internally generated, activitiesare carried out under a public spotlight where every action will almost certainly be questioned.Probably the most upsetting factor for specialists is the apprehension that his or her specialtymay be only poorly understood by the others. Also upsetting is the necessity for each team memberto explain constantly his/her activities to those in other areas of specialization. Thus, the specialistis ‘one down’ in relation to the activities of other team members and intermittently but lessoften ‘one up’ when explaining his/her own area of specialization. Early in my professional career, Iworked on a loosely organized interdisciplinary team (similar to that in the example in the tenureand promotion decision on a physicist) where a long working relationship permitted a gradualexchange of information, so that each member ultimately came to understand quite well what theother members of the team were doing.Unfortunately, the mix of disciplines required for solving environmental problems is different ineach instance, and most problems are dramatically different. Therefore, if the nature of the decisionbeing made determines the array of information to be gathered and, consequently the structure ofthe team, a long working relationship cannot be expected for one team for the resolution of a particularproblem. Specialists who fail to perform adequately as interdisciplinary team members may,and frequently do, return to their home discipline with the statement (to paraphrase ProfessorTannen’s book title), “They just don’t understand discipline X”. To illustrate how pervasive this pointof view may be, I was once asked by an intermediate-level administrator to demonstrate how theactivities of the interdisciplinary center, which I serve as a director, could be made congruent withthe needs and activities of the discipline-based departments. In fact, just the opposite is necessary:the contributions of the discipline-based specialists must be congruent with the informationneeds of the decisions makers resolving a complex multivariate problem.DEPENDENCE, INDEPENDENCE, AND INTERDEPENDENCETannen 1 challenges the assumption that the alternative to independence is dependence. Sheclaims that men’s belief in this supposed dichotomy explains why many men are reluctant tobecome intimately involved with others: humiliating dependence is avoided by insisting on independence.But Tannen notes another possibility: interdependence. The major difference in these issymmetry. Dependence is an asymmetrical involvement, since only one person needs the other, sothe needy person is ‘one down’. Interdependence, on the other hand, is symmetrical, since bothparties rely on each other, and neither is ‘one up’ or ‘one down’. If interactions with colleagues isviewed from the standpoint of symmetry, an interdisciplinary team is superior to the reductionist,non-integrative, academic lone wolf approach.I find the perception that a person is independent in a specialty but dependent on a field teamunpersuasive. The specialist’s supposed independence is not supported by observation. For
Article 34285example, all faculty teaching introductory courses, especially those required as part of a core curriculum,must have a sense of theater if they are to keep students awake, much less appreciative.They faculty member of an institution devoted primarily to teaching ignores student response at hisperil. Even at teaching/research institutions, failure to consider student response can be damaging.As the courses become more advanced, especially at the graduate level, competence alone maycarry the day. The easiest way to retain student attention in introductory courses is a bit of humorfrom time to time. But as Tannen correctly notes, a faculty member’s intention and a student’sperception of a joke may be light years apart. All of us in academe have known teachers whoselecturing styles have had to change in an era of student evaluations, affirmative action offices oncampuses, increased enrollment of women in what were formerly male courses, and the like. Consideringthis, the ‘independence’ of a lone wolf may not be so much greater than that of an interdisciplinaryteam member.As for financial independence, even senior scientists depend on extramural funding (I recognizethis is less so in fields that don’t require instrumentation and the like, such as philosophy). My MSthesis studied the response of freshwater protozoan communities to pollution. This research ledme to an interest in how these communities are structured and changed in sites unaffected by pollutionand to a career-long interest in global transport systems, competition, mutualism and relatedideas.However, my priority list did not always coincide with the priority lists of funding agencies. As thewoman (Dr Ruth Patrick of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia), who became mymentor after I acquired the MS and PhD, once remarked, “People are much more likely to give youmoney to solve problems that interest them than problems that interest you”. This remark seemsobvious and almost platitudinous, if it were not for the large number of unfunded academicianswaiting for their dissertation topics to become ‘hot’ again and liberally funded. Just as real life plotsoften outrun those of the most imaginative fiction writers, so the problems of the real world eclipsethose of specialists, in both scope and complexity. As Will Rogers once put it much more effectively,“It’s hard to make a living as a comedian when the US Congress is in session”.Since the Planet’s major problems are beyond the capabilities of a single discipline, funding maybe easier to obtain for solving problems of general interest than those of specialized interests. Inscience, at least, the ‘haves’ get money for instrumentation, travel, technical assistance, pagecharges, and the like, all of which makes them markedly more mobile than their colleagues amongthe ‘have nots’. In the academic world, there is surely some close correlation between the degreeof independence and the number of options open to an individual! Put in this way, perhaps thecommonly held view of independence should be modified, as appears to be happening in this eraof budget deficits where professional survival is more closely linked to performance than it hasbeen in the past.COMMUNICATION AND PROBLEM SOLVINGThis discussion has focused on communication and status as the dilemma of an environmentalscientist. The kind of communicating among the disciplines to resolve an environmental problembeyond the capabilities of a single discipline is a style attributed to women by Professor DeborahTannen. I have noted the correspondence between the communication style of men, for whombeing understood is less important than establishing status, and ‘communication’ between practitionersin a specialized discipline, who are achieving status within their own discipline. Tannenobserved that men referred to a wish for independence as their primary motive for joining acade-
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