By Dr. Nguyen Van Bao
Interdisciplinary research has become increasingly important in aquaculture because environmental, economic and social processes are closely connected. However, bringing several disciplines into the same project does not necessarily mean they have equal influence over how the problem is defined. Knowledge from one field may be incorporated only after being translated into the concepts, variables or standards of another, while the original analytical framework remains unchanged.
This integration describes a process of disciplinary conversion. The concept builds on the subordination-service mode of interdisciplinarity, which draws attention to unequal relationships between disciplines (Barry 2008). Disciplinary conversion explains how such a hierarchy leaves traces in research outputs, including the classification of evidence, the validation of local knowledge and the translation of complex relationships into policy standards.
Aquaculture in the Mekong Delta provides a useful setting for examining these tensions. Shared waterways connect decisions across farms, mangrove-shrimp systems combine ecological and livelihood objectives, and certification and environmental regulations bring scientific knowledge, local experience and policy requirements into the same decision process. These conditions make the region a test case for examining whether interdisciplinary research changes the problem or simply fits additional knowledge into an existing frame.
When Integration Promotes Epistemic Hierarchy
Differences in the status given to evidence make the problem easy to see. Water salinity can enter a project as a measurement that defines an environmental condition, while a farmer’s account that canal water has become unreliable may enter as a perception used to explain behavior. Different forms of evidence clearly require different methods of validation. However, this distinction can also decide which evidence is allowed to define the problem and which evidence is used mainly to explain responses to it.
The same pattern can shape the division of work across disciplines. Environmental research may identify a target; economics may estimate the cost of reaching it; and social research may explain why farmers do not adopt the preferred intervention. Each contribution can be technically strong, yet the target itself may remain outside interdisciplinary discussion. Tenure becomes a variable, power becomes an index and social differentiation becomes heterogeneity in model parameters. More evidence has entered the project, while the original understanding of the problem remains largely unchanged.
This concern has a substantial history in social-ecological research. Power, competing values and different forms of knowledge can shape social-ecological change rather than sit outside an ecological system as additional social factors (Cote 2012). Tensions also exist between systems approaches and social-science traditions (Olsson 2015). Similar problems appear in aquaculture, where resilience thinking, agrarian change and socio-technical transition theory explain different processes and rest on different assumptions about social change (Bush 2014). Bridging results and insights across these approaches can therefore preserve their different explanatory strengths without absorbing them into a single systems framework.
Epistemological pluralism provides a useful alternative because it accepts that several ways of knowing can contribute to the same social-ecological problem. Integration then requires negotiation among different epistemological traditions and some willingness to reconsider disciplinary assumptions (Miller 2008). This does not mean that all evidence has equal quality or that every claim should be accepted. It means that one form of evidence should not automatically determine the questions that all other forms of evidence are allowed to pose. The issue is therefore not only how knowledge is combined, but whether combining it changes how the problem is understood and which intervention follows.
Why It Matters
Shared water in the Mekong Delta illustrates clearly why problem framing has practical consequences. Shrimp farming is connected to environmental hazards, landscape change and household livelihoods, while wastewater management and stakeholder collaboration are important for the sustainability of coastal aquaculture systems (Hua 2024).
Water moving through shared canals changes the scale of the problem. Better pond management can reduce risks within an individual farmer’s control, yet it cannot fully address pollution or poor water quality generated elsewhere in the canal system. Once shared water becomes part of the causal explanation, economic analysis needs to consider externalities and shared infrastructure, institutional analysis needs to examine responsibility for water and discharge, and social research needs to consider differences in exposure and capacity among users. The relevant intervention can therefore shift from individual farm management to collective water governance.
The cost of a narrow frame is that research may direct attention and resources toward the wrong level of intervention. Pond-level monitoring, farmer training or changes in individual behavior may have limited effects when an important part of the problem is produced through shared water systems. More evidence does not solve this problem if each discipline continues to work within the same farm-level frame. The next question is why this change of frame can be difficult even in projects that are explicitly interdisciplinary.
Why Disciplinary Conversion Occurs
The first mechanism is unequal authority over knowledge. Scientific and local knowledge may both enter interdisciplinary research, but they do not always have the same power to define the problem or challenge existing explanations. This imbalance can be seen in mangrove-shrimp research in the Mekong Delta, where local knowledge received limited recognition and one scientific expert considered scientific validation necessary before such knowledge could inform decisions about mangrove conservation and shrimp production (Triyanti 2024). Such one-way validation can produce disciplinary conversion when local knowledge gains authority only after being translated into terms accepted by the scientific framework.
The second mechanism is the pressure to make complex problems manageable. Policy needs rules that can be measured and enforced, so complex social and ecological relationships are often reduced to indicators, thresholds or standards that are easier to use in practice. Some simplification is necessary, but disciplinary conversion can occur when an administratively convenient representation of the problem becomes indistinguishable from the objective it was intended to serve. Important parts of the original problem may then receive less attention simply because they are harder to measure.
The third mechanism comes from project structure. Funded research usually begins with approved questions, methods, milestones and deliverables, so new evidence that challenges the original design can be costly to accommodate. Adding another variable is often easier than changing the unit of analysis, research question or intervention because revision may affect budgets, contracts and agreed outputs. This creates an institutional incentive to transfer new findings into the existing framework instead of revising the framework itself.
What Can Be Done About This
Two practical changes can reduce disciplinary conversion. First, research projects need bounded opportunities to revise their design when new evidence challenges the original framework. Funded projects usually cannot change approved questions, methods or deliverables freely, but limited revision can be built into the original design. Specific review points after pilot work, initial disciplinary analysis and before final synthesis could allow teams to reconsider sampling boundaries, units of analysis or the intervention being evaluated. Funders could pre-authorize these changes within agreed budgets and timelines, giving projects a formal way to respond when findings no longer fit the approved design. Such revision rights cannot remove deeper inequalities in authority, but they can create a clear opportunity for alternative evidence to change the research rather than simply be added to it.
Second, the reasoning behind final policy recommendations should be made traceable. Recommendations still require choices between competing objectives, so interdisciplinary research cannot avoid prioritization. The important step is to make that prioritization visible. One practical tool is a short decision trace attached to the final synthesis or policy brief. It would record the objective given greatest weight, the main distributional consequences, a credible alternative under another legitimate priority, and the evidence that would justify reopening the decision. This allows the project to make a clear recommendation while also showing how the decision was reached and what was given less weight in the process.
Neither measure by itself removes inequalities in epistemic authority. Projects also need explicit procedures through which local or disciplinary knowledge can challenge problem definitions rather than enter only as evidence within definitions established elsewhere.
To Summarize
Disciplinary conversion helps explain why interdisciplinary aquaculture research can collect diverse evidence while leaving the original problem largely unchanged. Three mechanisms make this more likely: some forms of knowledge have greater authority; governance favors rules that are simple enough to measure and enforce; and project structures often make it easier to add evidence than to revise the original design. Evidence from the Mekong Delta shows how these mechanisms can shape the scale of intervention, the treatment of local knowledge and the translation of sustainability into policy standards.
Stronger interdisciplinary research should allow evidence from one field to change the boundary, objective or recommendation established elsewhere. Bounded revision rights create room for such change during the research process, and decision traces make the final prioritization visible when evidence becomes policy advice. Interdisciplinary research becomes consequential when project teams can revise their questions as evidence develops and project leaders must explain how competing evidence and priorities are weighed before a final recommendation is made.
