Disciplining interdisciplinarity: Infrastructure, identity, and interdisciplinary practice in nanoELSI research

Large-scale interdisciplinary collaboration between natural and social sciences has been advocated by funding agencies for enhancing communication between science and society. However, the actual infrastructure design and operation remain challenging, particularly for social-science-led interdisciplinary centers, which normally do not have core scientific facilities or centralized laboratories to coordinate collaborations among disciplines. Drawing upon ethnographic and interview data, this paper examines how the notion of interdisciplinarity was practiced in two federally-funded Centers for Nanotechnology in Society. We show how federal policies, university cultures, and local organizational structures significantly impacted forms of interdisciplinary practice and identity. In addition, we show that individuals' interdisciplinary rhetoric, epistemic claims, and daily operation of interdisciplinarity require strong infrastructural support in terms of spatial and human resource arrangements to nurture cross-disciplinary coordination and trust as well as softening collaborative tensions while developing complementary projects.