discipline |
Prefactory Remarks:
The term, "discipline," ranges in its meaning from the conditions of scientific study to punishment: (1) a field of study or branch of knowledge; (2) training that develops self-control, character, or orderliness and efficiency; (3) the result of such training; (4) acceptance of or submission to authority and control; (5) a system of rules or methods; and (6) treatment that corrects or punishes.
On the one hand, discipline is a concept debated by philosophers of science in the tradition of Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding, Frederick Suppe, The Structure of Scientific Theories, and Feyerabend, Against Method . On the other, discipline is a conception of power and punishment developed by historians who work in the tradition of Foucault, Discipline and Punish .
Working Definition:
a discipline is a systematic study of a conceptual domain associated with a network of researchers.
Disciplinary Definitions:
Disciplines ... are broadly based research programs designed to control the production of knowledge. A subject matter is identified. Various descriptions of it are advanced. These take the form of "models" and, thereby, a subject matter is legitimized as a "field of study." These models presuppose methods. If this model, then that method. By the exercise of the proper method, knowledge is reliably controlled. .... Toulmin [??]
For the institution of criticism to be regarded as a discipline (whether potential or actual) at least three of the conditions Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding 379ff) elaborates should pertain: that it have (1) its own proper object of study, (2) broken down into "fields" for specialists, (3) to conduct legitimate research (that is, research according to "justificatory arguments."
Stephen Toulmin on discipline:
"A compact discipline, then, has five connected features. (1) The activities involved are organized around and directed towards a specific and realistic set of agreed collective ideals. (2) These collective ideals impose corresponding demands on all who commit themselves to the professional pursuit of the activities concerned. (3) The resulting discussions provide disciplinary loci for the production of "reasons" in the context of justificatory arguments whose function is to show how far procedural innovations measure up to these collective demands, and so improve the current repertory of concepts or techniques. (4) For this purpose, professional forums are developed, within which recognized "reason-producing" procedures are employed to justify the collective acceptance of novel procedures. (5) Finally, the same collective ideals determine the criteria of adequacy by appeal to which the arguments produced in support of those innovations are judged. (Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding 379.)
David Downing on discipline:
In his The Knowledge Contract: Politics and Paradigms in the Academic Workplace, David Downing ties the development of academic disciplines in the American university to what he terms a "knowledge contract," formed by a "bond between the work of the university and the particular society in which it functioned" that set parameters on what counted as knowledge. He examines in detail the socio-economic aspects of disciplinarity, in particular the inclusions and exclusions of fields of study and what counts as "knowledge" at particular moments in the history of the American university.
David Shumway on discipline:
Shumway's work treats discipline as a historically contingent formation and his intention is to thereby deprivilege disciplinarity. . ... [He] identifies five conditions that make a study a discipline: it must have (1) a disciplinary object, (2) a well-defined set of discursive practices which (3) give form to its production of knowledge, (4) a supporting apparatus for the distribution of its researches, and (5) a way of transmitting its accumulation of knowledge to students (149-152). ... in Creating American Civilization[Shumway] investigates how American literature became a "sub-discipline" within the discipline of English literary study.
The sine qua non of a discipline for Shumway is the construction of a language for a specific practice, a "disciplinary object" (1-3). Literature is just such an object of study. American literature's object is a selection of "writings produced in this country" known as "American Literature" and subject to "prior evaluation" owing to its status within the culture (1). It is studied through a well-defined set of discursive practices shared by the persons devoted to the study of the disciplinary object. These are "methods and procedures" which allow for the production of knowledge (152). The knowledge produced is a "body of statements" (152) with a specific form (97).
From "Disciplining" in Modern Skeletons in Postmodern Closets, James Sosnoski
In C-CS, discipline is understood in a "post-disciplinary" sense (see Harkin below). This view modifies the traditional conception of a discipline by shifting from strategies to tactics, from control to empower, from fields to projects, and so on. Note: In the policitics of the academy, it is NOT advisable to abandon the term "discipline." In CR, the phrase "reasearch project" is used more often than discpline.
From "Disciplining" in Modern Skeletons in Postmodern Closets, James Sosnoski
post-disciplinarity
"Disciplines look at what they recognize, or more precisely, see only what they recognize no matter where they look. The irregular, ad hoc procedures of lore are "non-disciplinary," to be sure. But it seems possible to construe them also as "post-disciplinary" in their willingness to use, but refusal to be constrained by, existing institutional rules of knowledge production."
P Harkin, "Post-Disciplinary Politics of Lore"
Comments:
discipline seems equivalent to Dilthey's Wissenshaften (study or science)
Notes
Check:
discipline:
1. PUNISHMENT 2 obsolete: INSTRUCTION 3: a field of study 4: training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character 5 a: control gained by enforcing obedience or order b: orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior c: SELF-CONTROL 6: a rule or system of rules governing conduct or activity [from The electronic edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition]
importantrelated terms: disciplinarity and disciple
disciplinarity:
1 a: of or relating to discipline b: designed to correct or punish breaches of discipline (took disciplinary action) 2: of or relating to a particular field of study disciplinarily \ adverb ; disciplinarity \ noun [from The electronic edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition]
disciple: one who accepts and assists in spreading the doctrines of another: as a: one of the twelve in the inner circle of Christ's followers according to the Gospel accounts b: a convinced adherent of a school or individual 2. capitalized: a member of the Disciples of Christ founded in the U.S. in 1809 that holds the Bible alone to be the rule of faith and practice, usually baptizes by immersion, and has a congregational polity synonym see FOLLOWER discipleship \ noun [from The electronic edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition]
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June 13, 2007
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