How do academics perceive themselves and colleagues in their own disciplines, and how do they rate those in other subjects? How closely related are their intellectual tasks and their ways of organizing their professional lives? What are the interconnections between academic cultures and the nature of disciplines? This title maps academic knowledge and explores the diverse characteristics of those who inhabit and cultivate it.
“Disciplines are thus in part identified by the existence of relevant departments but it does not follow that every department represents a discipline,” nor entirely do other insitutational standards (41). an increase in disciplinary bids across the spectrum, from “fast-moving fields” in the sciences to “more reflective and conservative” humanities (43). metaphor of “academic tribes and territories,” to quote the title of their thrice reprinted book, to describe the disciplines. This metaphor serves to emphasize a distinction between the people involved in a discipline (the tribe) and the epistemic focus (the territory). By separating the social from the epistemic, Becher and Trowler hope to show how the community can chose to occupy different territories although they are “in practice […] inseparably intertwined” (23). The metaphor of tribes and territories also gets at metaphor emphasizes that “Boundaries [between disciplines] do no exist merely as lies on a map: the denote territorial possessions that can be encroached on, colonized and reallocated” and “when patriotic feelings within a discipline run high, deviations from the common cultural norms will be penalized (59)