




































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 3 (1): 1–4, January 2020 

 
EDITORIAL 
 

Ecology, Economy and Society through an  
Interdisciplinary Lens 
 

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt  
 
The idea of interdisciplinarity is to create new knowledge by drawing from 
across disciplinary boundaries. Interdisciplinarity has become the buzzword 
of the day; academic researchers appreciate interdisciplinarity and aim to 
pursue it in research-related activities. In 2015, Nature devoted a full issue 
discussing how to approach the ‘grand challenges’ that are facing human 
societies today, challenges involving energy, water, climate, food and human 
health. Understanding complex topics such as nature (or climate change) 
requires us to go beyond discipline-based methods to develop systematic 
analyses that can bring together the explanations and interpretations of 
both the social and natural worlds.  

Disciplines themselves are time- or space-specific constructions, and 
orderings of knowledge and epistemology, offering just one temporally- and 
culturally-grounded explanation of the world. Interdisciplinarity brings to 
the fore the emergent properties of complex systems and the need for 
methodological pluralism to understand that nature and the socio-natural 
contexts in the world that are determined not just by one factor. Scholars 
argue that interdisciplinary research efforts to integrate the social and 
natural sciences have given rise to questions such as whether a knowledge 
practice is too disciplinary, or interdisciplinary, or not disciplinary enough. 
Indeed, each discipline understands and values interdisciplinarity differently, 
and these values differ remarkably across the sciences.  

                                                        
 Coordinating Editor (2019–20). Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU College of Asia 
and the Pacific, The Australian National University, Room 3.25, JG Crawford Building, 
Lennox Crossing, ACTON, ACT 2601, Australia; kuntala.lahiri-dutt@anu.edu.au 

Copyright © Lahiri-Dutt 2020. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v3i1.84  

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v3i1.84


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [2] 

Interdisciplinarity obscures as much as it illuminates the diverse practices 
under its rubric, making it extremely difficult to forge ties between 
disciplines or discipline-based methods. In reality, disciplines have 
continued to remain ‘discrete entities’, presenting their distinct disciplinary 
perspectives, usage of methods, and bodies of knowledge. The organisation 
of higher education is partly responsible for this. Dissemination of research 
outputs to selective audiences through discipline-focused journal venues is 
also to blame. In considering our understanding of pressing ecological 
challenges, a conflicting and confused picture emerges; beyond the 
academe, disciplinary entities are becoming more fluid. Yet, at the same 
time, researchers have increasingly discussed the various possible 
definitions and categories of interdisciplinarity; debating the differences 
between multi-, cross-, inter-, pluri-, trans-, meta-,and other forms of 
hybridities in research methodologies. The complexities and difficulties of 
moving from ‘multidisciplinarity’ to genuine ‘interdisciplinarity’ as well as 
the alternative trajectory of ‘transdisciplinarity’ continue to elude most 
researchers.  

The need, therefore, is to ‘think outside the box’, and creatively, in our 
undertaking of making research on nature and human society 
interdisciplinary. Creative interdisciplinarity involves establishing 
mechanisms and instances through which individual disciplinary 
knowledges can be appropriately translated in order to be articulated in 
interdisciplinary scholarly research that can also effectively converse with 
heterogeneous policy communities. This issue of Ecology, Economy and Society 
offers glimpses into interdisciplinary research on a broad swathe of topics. 
The contributions also show how working across disciplinary perspectives 
appears in reality, and what conversations we could now have to reflect on 
where these theoretical and empirically based activities are taking us. 

The ‘Commentary’ by Marina Fischer-Kowalski on how one of the leading 
religious figures is responding to the global problem of climate change and 
ecological destruction is an example at hand. It resonates with the 
observation in EES (Bawa EES 2 (2), 2) that as academics and researchers 
we are an integral part of the society, and we must work together in order 
to meet the goal of sustainability.  

The thematic essays/research papers published in this issue reflect the 
ongoing conversations between scholars from different disciplines. In his 
article, Chandan Singha treats the question through a study of soil, one of 
the finest-grained elements of nature which sustains almost all life in the 
earth. The study reviews the success and failure of three kinds of action, 
individual, collective and government, in different parts of the world, and 
shows that not all the collective action by development/civil society 



[3] Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt 

agencies and the government have been successful in ensuring successful 
management of the soil quality of a watershed. The research paper by 
Dasgupta, Guha and Wheeler uses regression analysis of survey data from 
the Indian part of the Sundarbans to examine variations in environmental 
risk assessments across socioeconomic classes and localities. It shows that 
locally-oriented collective action, along with local governance that promotes 
non-elite participation, might make collective action easier when elite and 
non-elite households have similar assessments of environmental risks. 

The notes from the field also reflect interdisciplinarity. Thakur and others 
take us to the Himalayan state of Sikkim, where, in the rain-shadow areas, 
freshwater is available only from natural sources. They show that more 
women are concerned about the loss of water availability than men, for in 
most local households, the responsibility of water-collection remains 
gendered. Abraham and Neetha show how differing perceptions of ponds 
and wells make a difference. The perception that ‘wells are like water ATMs 
while ponds are equivalent to saving banks’, had led to a resistance to the 
construction of farm ponds due to the belief that ‘precious land would be 
lost’ without receiving commensurate gains from improved farm outputs. 
However, once the resistance lessened, farm ponds yielded tangible benefits 
even for low-income households practising subsistence agriculture. 

The ‘Conversations’ section in this issue is about mining in India. Large-
scale extractive resource developments are at the heart of controversies 
related to the well-being of the planet, human society, and indeed the 
sustainability of the way economic development has been conceived. Most 
national governments find extractive developments as the quick and easy 
way to earn revenues to improve fiscal health, and justify these 
developments on economic grounds. India is no exception. These 
economic opportunities, however, come with significant environmental 
challenges. There are important challenges regarding local communities’ 
rights as large-scale resource developments rarely, if ever, benefit 
indigenous people and local communities who suffer from the negative 
impacts of mining on their cultures, economies and social fabrics. There is 
no wonder why, in recent decades, indigenous groups and their allies have 
battled to change this situation, sometimes by seeking fundamental changes 
in the way economic benefits and costs of mining are distributed. Globally, 
they have attempted to win greater recognition of indigenous rights in 
international forums, pressurised national governments and global agencies 
to usher in changes in legislation by taking up litigation and directing 
political action, and mobilising new, voluntary (as well as compulsory) rules 
to regulate mining. In talking about sustainability, India’s National Mineral 
Policy of 2019 does not really consider these developments. Instead, it 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [4] 

presents a ‘business-friendly’ face, aimed at making extractive developments 
more streamlined, hoping to invite foreign direct investments. This section 
is devoted to a number of concerns on the extractive landscape in India.   

In providing a selective overview of the contents of this issue of EES, I 
underscore how, any analysis of research questions on ecology, economy 
and the society must involve values, rights and law as well as economic and 
social concerns. The journal is, slowly and steadily moving towards 
reflecting an understanding of working across disciplines.  

 


