Discipline and Disciplines in the Contemporary University

Discipline and Disciplines in the Contemporary University

This lecture is based on the important differences between the idea of “discipline”, which goes back to medieval European monastic traditions and involves rigor, self-restraint and regulation and the idea of “disciplines” which has a much more recent history and refers to the compartments of knowledge in modern Universities since the 19th century. I will try to examine the relationship between these two meanings of the word “discipline” to ask how we can think more deeply about the strengths and weaknesses of scholarly specialization in today’s academic milieu.

Arjun Appadurai• Professor, Humboldt University (Berlim)

Emeritus Professor in Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He also holds honorary appointments at Humboldt University (Berlin) and Erasmus University (Rotterdam). He was previously Senior Advisor for Global Initiatives at The New School in New York City, where he also held a Distinguished Professorship as the John Dewey Distinguished Professor in the Social Sciences. Arjun Appadurai was the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at The New School from 2004-2006. He was formerly the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of International Studies, Professor of Anthropology, and Director of the Center on Cities and Globalization at Yale University. Appadurai is the founder of PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research), a non-profit organization based in Mumbai (India).