Exciting Discipline

Abstract

ISCIPLINES ARE NOT SIMPLE THINGS. THEY ARE MAINLY IDENTIFIED WITH THE IDEAS and methods they produce, but ideas and methods can only be part of their overall constitution. Embedded in various kinds of institution, focussing on objects and topics that continually mutate, disciplines also professionalise and reproduce themselves by creating barriers to entry and hierarchising students. They legitimate themselves by ascribing particular cultural and social functions to themselves. They fracture into differing schools. And, of course, they teach.