The interdisciplinary condition of work in relational professions of the health and social care field: A theoretical standpoint

Abstract

The best-known theories on interdisciplinarity in the health and social care field seek to identify personal characteristics and organizational predispositions favourable to interprofessionnal collaboration. This paper proposes a reversal of this positioning through the theorization of interdisciplinarity in the health and social care field as a condition of the work of its professionals rather than one of their peculiar attributes. To achieve this reversal, we set out the epistemological foundations of the current debate on interdisciplinarity.

Keywords:

• Interdisciplinarity
• relational professions
• work

Notes

1. For instance, the concept of the unconscious, which is derived from psychoanalysis, is employed, here and there, as being somehow natural or self-evident, such that Freud is seldom evoked to back it up.

2. To pursue the analogy, it is important to bear in mind that the Creole language is a stabilized product of hybridization and is characterized by the fact that the two linguistic genitors are not equal: the personal matters may be expressed through the mother tongue or ancestral language, while economic matters are expressed through the language of the conqueror. Here, hybridization is not a simple or logical matter of genetic crossing, but rather the outcome of a power relationship.

3. The etymology of the term refers to the idea of knowledge. We employ it here in Foucault's (1973) meaning, that conceives the episteme as the historic form taken by as a system of discourses that determines, for a given epoch and space, what is true or not, normal or not, object of science or not, etc.

4. The medico-legal kit comprises divers proof gathering tools to be utilized following a sexual aggression. Beyond its instrumental aspect, the kit contains judicial procedures that engage diverse processes. It is a relatively concerted response to the various interprofessional work problems witnessed in sexual aggression cases: low recognition of the feminist interventionists working for non-governmental organizations, aleatoric police and medical treatment, etc.