Transdisciplinarity and Social Innovation Research

This working paper dwells on the relationship between a dialogue-oriented mode of knowledge production in line with transdisciplinarity and the flourishing of a culture of socioeconomic democratisation. These scientific and cultural-political undertakings have in common an effort of bridge-building between fragmented entities, be it scientific disciplines and their mono-logical explanations or single-issue policies which foster micro-efficiency to the detriment of social cohesion and socio-economic effectiveness. The paper starts by presenting emblematically some typical problematics of social innovations which need experience-based knowledge of practitioners as well the structure-aware knowledge of scientific research. In the second section transdisciplinary research is proposed as a research programme focussing on socially relevant problems and a structured dialogue with practitioners. Transdisciplinarity is based on a two-fold-dialogue: First, it is an interdisciplinary dialogue between different disciplines which overcome their respective research programmes and paradigms and contribute their knowledge to joint-problem solving. Second, it is a dialogue of two forms of knowledge: experience-based and analyticalstructural knowledge. In the final section, the potential of this type of research is shown to address the problematics of social innovation as a research programme as well as a socially-transformative practice.