RATIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND RATIONAL AUTONOMY IN ACADEMIC PRACTICE: AN EXTENDED CASE STUDY OF THE COMMUNICATIVE ETHIC OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE

This dissertation investigates the interaction of rational accountability and
\nrational autonomy in interdisciplinary science within the university sector. It focuses on
\nthe cultural, social, and motivational forces that condition and limit the practices of
\nacademic researchers as they constitute and regulate interdisciplinary inquiry and
\nconduct within the everyday world of the university sector. Findings are analyzed
\nwithin an applied critical social theory framework that attends to the micro-level
\ninteraction of instrumental or purposive rational action and communicative or social
\nrational action within the public spaces that are constitutive of the lifeworld of the
\nuniversity as a central public sphere in society. The research raises questions of how
\nacademics practice interdisciplinary science and how these practices relate to the
\nreproduction of the regulative ideal of the university as a community that practices
\npublic reason.
\nInterdisciplinary science policies and practices are receiving strong endorsement
\nas one
\nresponse to demands for the increased accountability and relevance of academic
\npractice within Canada's public university system. At the same time that the university
\nsystem must respond to external demands for accountability and relevance it must
\nreproduce itself as a public social institution that is open to the discursive redemption of
\ncontested validity claims that are both factual and normative. The study found that the
\nmedium for the discursive redemption of contested normative validity claims is
\nparticipation in processes and procedures of practical argumentation within those social
\ncontexts of the lifeworld of the university that approximate the conditions of
\nparticipation in an ideal public sphere.
\nUsing Burawoy's (1991) extended case study method as a
\nstrategy for
\noperationalizing Habermas' theory of communicative action, two modes of constituting
\nand regulating interdisciplinary inquiry and conduct within the university sector were
\nfound. Instrumental or purposive rational modes of constituting and regulating
\ninterdisciplinary inquiry and conduct were found to dominate in those social contexts
\nwhere consensus on the
\ngoals and purposes of rational academic action were pre­
\nexisting and presupposed by participants in interdisciplinary inquiry and conduct.
\nCommunicative or social rational modes of constituting and regulating interdisciplinary
\ninquiry and conduct were found to emerge to dominance in those social contexts where
\nthe goals and purposes of rational academic action were moved into a contested domain.
\nIn the contemporary historical context, questions concerning the goals and purposes of
\nrational academic action in conditions of uncertainty and complexity have emerged as
\ncrucial issues for members of the university and society in general.
\nAcademics participate in, but also contest the instrumental or purposive rational
\nregulation of academic practice by using their constitutional autonomy and freedom to
\nhold others accountable and demonstrate their rational disposition to realize mutual
\nunderstanding on contested validity claims that are both factual and normative. In
\ndemonstrating a rational disposition to use their rational autonomy and freedom to
\nrealize mutual understanding on contested normative validity claims, public
\nintellectuals realize a capacity to maintain and extend the conditions and limits of the
\npractice of public reason within the university into the constitution and regulation of
\npublic spaces for the practice of reason in the lifeworld of society.

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