‘Interdisciplinarity’ is an ancient notion in the social sciences, but has acquired both pedagogic and policy popularity in recent decades. Paradoxically, it only makes sense in a disciplinary world. The disciplines have been greatly strengthened in recent decades, and interdisciplinarity can partly be understood as a response by interests threatened by disciplinarity. It is also a strategy used by disciplines in crisis, and by dissidents from disciplinary hierarchies.
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Michael Moran (2006) studied this question.