From network to meshwork: Becoming attuned to difference in transdisciplinary environmental research encounters

Abstract

Transdisciplinary research has been promoted as a means of bringing together certified experts and stakeholders to produce knowledge that is policy-relevant, salient, credible, and legitimate to inform decision-making about complex problems. In this article I discuss the limitations of using the ‘network’ metaphor in transdisciplinary research practice and propose the use of a different metaphor to make transdisciplinary research encounters more attuned to difference. This research is informed by Tim Ingold’s use of ‘meshwork’ as a metaphor for how life is lived along lines of becoming: emergent, indeterminate, contingent, historical, narrative. In this paper, my objective is to explain and illustrate by way of an example of a transdisciplinary climate change adaptation project the need for a new metaphor to convey the open-endedness of transdisciplinary research where subject positions are not conceived in advance of a research encounter, such as in the ‘network’ metaphor, but erupt in the interstices of research methods, objectives and desired outcomes. The meshwork metaphor implies that transdisciplinarity should be reframed as a practice of attunement to difference, becoming skilled in paying attention, witnessing, and responding to differences.

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