The sovereign debt crisis - a transdisciplinary approach

We have chosen to adopt an interdisciplinary approach to debt, leading to a transdisciplinary analysis of sovereign debt. Disciplinary fields as varied as logic, accounting, finance, psychology, geopolitics, economics, statistics, ethics, rhetoric and political discourse analysis are mobilised in order to reveal the prejudicial nature of an over-rigid compartmentalisation of knowledge in particular that which is centred on economics alone. This approach comes in sharp contrast to mainstream economic theory, which has often refused any constructive dialogue with other disciplines. We do not praise interdisciplinarity as an end in itself. Our aim is to underline the merits of a plural scientific approach which finds its justification in times of crisis in the very nature of the problems under scrutiny whose complexity and multidimensional character require an in-depth review of the underlying research frameworks. Finally, a textual analysis of four documents will complete and justify our argumentation.