What is an Academic Discipline?
Spring is the season for many things, not the least of which are many national and regional meetings that offer opportunities to see and hear ideas and research from our colleagues around the country. These new ideas are often quite startling and can come from unexpected places. Prior to my coming to Wisconsin in 1993, the only articles that I had received from the University of Wisconsin Family Medicine Department when I was the editor of Family Medicine for nine years, were from Kim Marvel, PhD, who at that time was on the faculty from Wausau. I had to look up Wausau on a map since I thought the University was in Madison. I remember the first time I saw a Palm Pilot was at a STFM meeting in the early 90’s, where a young woman was walking around the meeting asking attendees questions about maternity care in residency programs. She was entering data from the questions into her handheld as she talked. I asked her what she was doing and she said, “A Pilot Study,” and then laughed and sho
Often a discipline is defined either as having a clear object and agreement on the definition of an object or by reproduction of consensus among scholars within a field. Both of these approaches are problematic. Another a third approach consists of seeing disciplines as focused on power and institutions. Here IR scholars are examined from a sociological perspective through which the discipline is treated as a social structure. • Disciplines not only organise knowledge but also scholars and universities. In the 20th century, the university system has developed in such ways that disciplines have become self-reinforcing and, hence, disciplines have remained very stable. • IR has been a very stable self-producing discipline and has a stronger sense of disciplinarity than many other sub-fields of politics. • Academic disciplines are social and intellectual structures. Different sciences vary in their structure and vary over time. • In terms of social structure IR is an American social struc
