Abstract

DYCK, Noel. Working the boundaries: anthropology and multidisciplinarity in Canada. Etnográfica [online]. 2014, vol.18, n.2, pp.255-273. ISSN 0873-6561.

The pronounced governmental and administrative endorsement in Canada of interdisciplinary and collaborative research raises questions about the purposes and impacts of these approaches upon a discipline such as anthropology. Although Canadian anthropology has a lengthy history of involvement in extradisciplinary undertakings, the conditions that have enabled such voluntary collaborations are being rapidly replaced by a quite different set of arrangements and prescriptions. This paper examines the implications of working within and across disciplinary boundaries in contemporary Canadian anthropology, making particular reference to the field of Aboriginal studies and to the study of sport and childhood. It is argued that the most effective means to defend anthropology against the marginalization threatened by current developments is to rigorously distinguish multi- from inter-disciplinarity and to embrace the former as a means that both permits and requires continuing articulation of anthropology’s distinctive practices and objectives.

Keywords : interdisciplinarity; multidisciplinarity; neoliberalism; Aboriginality; sport; childhood.

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