The role of Open Value Networks in Catalyzing Transdisciplinarity

• In Event: Exploring Approaches to Catalyzing Transdisciplinary Engagement

Abstract

Transdisciplinarity is a growing non-discipline that seeks to fundamentally re-vision the walls of the academy, but at times when facilitating this growth or change, the walls of the academy (procedures, norms, rules, paradigms) feel immovable and immutable. This paper presents the case study of an informal, experimental community that has grown within the walls of the academy but has spread to include members of the community. The underlying dynamic of the group, an Open Value Network, is to explore how the 'Feminine', Intuition, and other potential anathemas to the academy, but more traditionally accepted in the arts and humanities, can be embodied in the academic, transdisciplinary praxis. Open Value Networks, a relatively new concept with traditional roots in the Commons, and can loosely be described as a group of voluntary participants who seek to develop new processes and norms for shared value creation and social change. OVNs are largely non-monetary and emerged in their latest form within open source, P2P and creative commons communities online and offline. We explore how the intentionally emergent process of an Open Value Network has, and has not, functioned as 'critical infrastructure' for transdisciplinary praxis, for example as legitimizing new ways of being, becoming, and belonging in a transdisciplinary academic space.

Authors

• Ele Jansen, University of Technology Sydney

• Jacqui McManus, Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation, University of Technology Sydney

• Susanne Pratt, University of Technology, Sydney

• Monique Potts, Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation, University of Technology Sydney

• Katie Ross, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney