Rasma Kārkliņa

The three-year research project „Cultural Change and Life Strategies of Latvian Rural Populations” takes on the challenge of working in an interdisciplinary way. Ten scholars representing the fields of social anthropology, political science, environmental science, literature, and linguistics work together as a research team analyzing socio-economic, political, and cultural trends in Latvia’s rural areas. Each researcher works on an individual sub-project, but parallel work takes place to foster a joint interdisciplinary view of the topic at hand.

The article outlines how the project team understands the value and practice of interdiciplinarity. First of all, team members take as an axiom that broad issues such as developmental trends in rural society can only be analyzed by using a multipronged approach that brings together several disciplinary perspectives. Secondly, interdisciplinary research is understood as evolving in a step by step process, where a variety of scholars engage in continued discourse, contrasting their approaches and insights gained by them.  The joint perspective taken is that a pluralism of paradigms, concepts, and methods enriches our understanding by highlighting the contribution of each discipline, yet interdisciplinarity also means a degree of conceptual and methodological integration. In our case the joint emphasis is on examining rural society from a „perspective from below,” e.g., an in-depth look at the subjective understandings and daily life practices of individuals and small communities. This means that the team emphasizes in-depth personal interviews, participant observation, and other methods of micro-level research. The project is to be concluded by the end of 2012.