Socio-Territorial Dynamics. The Challenge of Interdisciplinary Studies

Socio-Territorial Dynamics in the Research Agenda 
Territories testify for human intervention as well as for natural phenomena intertwined within socio-territorial dynamics that show evidence of historical transformations and of technology uses, with interactions, power relations and conflicts. Processes of urban growth, deforestation, water and soil pollution, drying bodies of water generated by the increasingly erratic presence of droughts and floods, from both natural and anthropic origin, can be seen in these spaces, all affecting vulnerable social groups. 

Research portfolios focused on main problems at the international, national, regional, and local scales, often exceed disciplinary scopes, which are important for understanding socio-territorial phenomena, but not enough. Knowledge about land relief, weather, continental and maritime bodies of water, living animal and vegetable species, materials and components of the soil and the air, as well as multiple human interactions, define complex scenarios, as it is all about dynamic, intercrossing relations, dependent and interdependent on one another: socio-territorial dynamics that change over time. 

Experimental sciences such as physics, geology, hydrology, chemistry, and biology have provided disciplinary knowledge from their systematic research in each disciplinary field. This information allows us to know more about particularities and phenomena situated in the territory, with specific characteristics. In this sense, “disciplinary research concerns, at most, only one and the same level of reality” (Nicolescu, 1996, p. 38). In a similar way, in the social sciences realm, sociology, economics, political science, anthropology, and history, among others, have generated key information for understanding and analyzing social phenomena by themselves, as well as their interactions with nature, ecosystems, and landscape. 

Research focused on socio-territorial dynamics refers to the generation of knowledge on the transformations of multiple systems of social-environmental interactions as characterized in diverse territorial contexts. The composition of priority areas of attention in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research highlights the study of agrifood systems, hydro-social basins, socio-environmental phenomena-related risk management (such as flooding in cities, pollution of ecosystems, extreme droughts, depletion of rivers and lakes, and others), biocultural systems, displacement of living species, and changes in ecosystems. 

The university’s academic realm is the cradle of interdisciplinary research initiatives, where the relevance of reflections, epistemological debates, agreements, discursive tensions, theoretical and methodological disciplinary contrasts, are put into play to delve into the phenomena of study in a complex level. From these dynamics, the interdisciplinary process is understood as a collaboration level between disciplines that implies reciprocity and mutual enrichment on a studied phenomenon to have a broader understanding of it to the extent of elaborating conceptual frameworks that will exceed disciplinary horizons and, therefore, modify the disciplines in contact while making them dependent on each other, so they share the conceptual and methodological framework (Molina & Vedia, 2016; Araya Crisóstomo et al., 2019). 

In this regard, UNAM has the Research and Technological Innovation Program (PAPIIT, Spanish initials) which grants founding for disciplinary, inter- and transdisciplinary research. The university also has graduate programs where inter- and transdisciplinary approaches have an specific scope, such as the Graduate Program for Sustainability Sciences, “the first program at UNAM which formally integrates natural sciences, social sciences, engineering, and urbanism” (https://sostenibilidad.posgrado.unam.mx). 

The transdisciplinary approach is a radical change in scientific research, distinguished by “generating new ways of producing knowledge and achieving innovative content, involved in different fields: scientific, technical, humanistic, artistic, and formalized knowledge in general, as with tacit, implicit knowledge of everyday life” (Gutierrez Serrano, 2016, p. 106). To set an example: after the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous disciplinary as well as interdisciplinary research projects started within universities, governments, companies, and civil society. Since COVID-19 pandemic is a health problem, inter- and transdisciplinary research is used to generate knowledge and information that will be considered in multiple dimensions such as health, education, economics, society, psychology, culture, environment, and more. 

Environmental and socio-territorial problems such as droughts and floods generate negative impacts since they cause human and material losses. But they are also the cause of diseases, social conflicts, and economic crises. By studying a socio-environmental event from an interdisciplinary perspective it is possible to give account of various aspects that must be considered in order to reduce or eliminate risks and to design wide-ranging public policies and preventive actions. 

The Study of Socio-Territorial Dynamics and Interdiscipline 
During the second half of the 20^th century and the first 20 years of the 21^st century, three major agricultural processes have changed the socio-territorial dynamics of several regions in the state of Michoacán, Mexico. These agricultural processes have modified the crop pattern, land use, and the social, economic and environmental dynamics of rural communities. All this has been made under the justification of rural progress and economic development. Avocado crops are being grown in the high temperate zones where forests used to grow, while in the valleys (valued because of the abundant availability of water) corn and sugar cane fields have been replaced by the production of red fruits of the Ericaceae family (blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, and strawberry). The introduction of these crops transformed open-air agriculture into a system of protected agriculture with irrigation technology. These berry crops have three requirements: the first is a natural good, clean water for irrigation; the fruits are packaged when harvested for a quick export process and being ready for direct consumption without risk for the consumer. The second requirement is the occupation of a large workforce during the harvesting season; therefore, it is a crop that is characterized by generating sources of employment. The third requirement is a technological package of intensive and staggered production system intended to be able to produce the fruit all year long with the highest yield at harvest and with protected technology and agrochemical inputs to reduce losses due to diseases and pests. 

Soil and water chemistry studies are essential to ensure good harvests. Agronomy and food engineering are also required, with specialized crop management for international quality standards through good agricultural practices such as preventing and combating crop diseases and pests. To meet export requirements, companies hire personnel with knowledge in business administration and other areas related to production, marketing, and management processes. However, the results of intensive agriculture, such as these agribusinesses, are strongly criticized by academia, communities, and environmental groups because of their polluting impact on land and water, as well as the disruption of local social and cultural dynamics. Studies have been done (although not systematic, nor complete, nor in all affected territories) that provide evidence of environmental damage due to direct and diffuse contamination with risks to living species, damaging ecosystems and human health (Seefoó Luján, 2005; “Producción de berries en México…”, 2019; Janacua Benites, 2020; Enciso L., 2022). There are no known studies or focused actions by agriexport companies to prevent this damages. 

When agriexport companies entered Michoacán state landscape, their accelerated expansion was no secret, as the local consequences of extractivist practices on water by promoting intensive agricultural management on communal land and small farms. This accelerated agriexport process is one of the main causes of socio-territorial changes in Michoacán. In addition, the deforestation of highlands causes rainwater to reach the lowlands, where the population centers are located, causing floods during the rainy season. Oddly, desertification also generates more heat, drought, and low water availability during the dry season, which also affects populations as they do not have the necessary and safe drinking water for basic food and hygiene needs. 

Within the legal field, there are studies dedicated to analyzing environmental and labor laws. Sociology and anthropology have generated research questions that converge with other disciplines such as political ecology and geography. On the other hand, medicine, geology, climatology, hydrology, and meteorology address specific fields of research that converge in conditions, times and spaces for research on complex problems such as environmental pollution, climate change, agroecosystems, agrifood systems, and sustainability. This disciplinary research becomes somewhat diffuse regarding the epistemology and the questions formulated which are not the exclusive competence of a disciplinary field, nor are the answers. When brought together, disciplinary boundaries are porous.

Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Approaches 
The information generated by research on complex problems may have other purposes, such as the creation of solutions, the design of public policies and intervention, educational projects, etc. That is why “besides disciplinary permeability, forms of work installed in the deliberate intertwining or intersection of two or more disciplines, which recognize themselves as interdisciplinary, should be considered.” (Gutierrez Serrano, 2016, p. 53) Following Nicolescu, (1996, p. 38) “disciplinary and transdisciplinary researchers are not antagonistic but complementary.” 

Nicolescu distinguishes three degrees of interdisciplinarity: 

1. A degree of application: for example, the methods of nuclear physics transferred to medicine lead to the appearance of new cancer treatments; 
2. an epistemological degree: for example, transferring formal logic’s methods to law generates interesting analyses in the epistemology law; 
3. a degree of generation of new disciplines: for example, transferring mathematical methods to physics generated mathematical physics. (Nicolescu, 1996, p. 37) 

However, in academic practice, based on research experience in interdisciplinary teams, three situations can be distinguished that constitute challenges when carrying out inter- and transdisciplinary research: 

1. Scientists’ refusal in disciplinary work areas to open their theoretical approaches and their procedures on the study of a phenomenon that has already been defined by the very discipline they dominate. It is difficult to move from this area of academic comfort by feeling security over what has been done for years, and fears may appear to work with other researchers with different academic backgrounds (Molina & Vedia, 2016). This case appears also when exact sciences researchers refuse to collaborate with people from the social sciences, assuming a false superiority of exact or experimental sciences over social sciences.
2. The refusal to collaborate in inter- and transdisciplinary teams, when the researcher ignores how to proceed, what to do, or what can be done from the social sciences realm facing technical problems or problems that historically have been in the engineering realm. In some cases I have witnessed that the participation of social researchers is assumed as a consultative and consensus mechanism with local factors, positioning social sciences as a process apart from “serious” research, in which social knowledge is referred to a residual role, to such a degree that the professional in experimental sciences describes it as an anecdotal content, of accessory results to their research, and even to comply institutionally with the contribution of their research to society.
3. It is difficult to equate androcentric visions with alternative ones, when it comes to mixed teams where women researchers collaborate. This is even more visible when they have a young trajectory, because sometimes power relations are present: they can generate uncollaborative work environments and they can risk a plurality of disciplinary approaches on highly complex research.

Disciplinary Overlaps
Seeking interdisciplinarity from the disciplinary experience of social sciences such as sociology took me to the report of the Gulbenkian Commission, which addresses the present and future of social sciences. The commission was leaded by Inmanuel Wallerstein, an American sociologist, who coordinated the report titled Open the Social Sciences, published in 1996 (Wallerstein 2007). 

This report provides a historical construction of social sciences from the 16th century to the early 1990s. In the design of research proposals with interdisciplinary approaches highlights are the processes of institutionalization of natural and social sciences, the studies of geographic areas which integrate researchers from different disciplines, and the incursion of non-Eurocentric research. 

The process of institutionalization of sciences took place in universities during the second half of the 19^th century, a period in which they gradually became disciplines such as history, economics, sociology, and political science. Their recognition as sciences was pointed out by the delimitation of their disciplinary boundaries, their objects of study, and the establishment of their own perspectives and methodologies (Wallerstein, 2007; Gutierrez Serrano, 2016). 

Before 1945 knowledge was separated into two distinct spheres: the natural and the social sciences. The former occupied “a hierarchical status vis-à-vis the other ‘sciences,’ sometimes called humanities, arts, literature, fine arts, philosophy, or culture, because of their apparent inability to present ‘practical’ results” (Wallerstein, 2007, pp. 6:7). 

After World War II, studies referred to large geographical areas (the USSR, East Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central and East Central Europe, Western Europe) that were supposed to have some cultural, historical, and often linguistic coherence, were understood as both a study and a teaching fields and were assumed to be “multidisciplinary”, even though  during practice it was evident that there was a considerable dose of artificiality in the sharp institutional separations of social science knowledge (Wallerstein, 2007, pp. 41-42). 

It was until the 1990s when arguments began to appear about the relevance of interdisciplinary work and the need to integrate or articulate knowledge through dialogue and new horizons of meaning to overcome fragmentation, segmentation of research work, and disciplinary bias (Gutierrez Serrano, 2016, p. 53).  In this regard, Open the Social Sciences notes: 

STUDIES OF SOCIO-TERRITORIAL DYNAMICS ARE A CLEAR EXAMPLE OF THE NEED TO OPEN DISCIPLINARY BOUNDARIES IN UNIVERSITIES AND INSTITUTES
Considering the above, more than twenty years into the 21^st century there are still challenges ahead for the integration of interdisciplinary research groups. Studies of socio-territorial dynamics are a clear example of the need to open disciplinary boundaries in universities and institutes, without losing contributions from exact or experimental sciences nor from the social sciences. 

Final Thoughts 
The complexity of socio-territorial dynamics demands to study critically and in a holistic way from different areas of knowledge. Inter- and trans-disciplinary studies are an opportunity for universities to produce knowledge that should be available to the various stakeholders living in the territories as a means to generate answers and solutions. 

Disciplinary approaches to the study of complex problems have changed from an effort to defend their boundaries to rethinking their epistemological frameworks. There are still challenges to integrate inter- and trans-disciplinary work groups to generate new research constructions and contribute new knowledge.

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