Of disciplines and their derivatives

Academia's complex landscape blurs boundaries between disciplines, leading to a surge in market-driven "discipline derivatives" lacking theoretical rigour.

Academia has been always been a fraught landscape, where diverse streams of knowledge vie for recognition, and legitimacy. Recently, this terrain has become increasingly complex, as the boundaries between disciplines and their proliferating derivatives get alarmingly blurred. The commodification of knowledge under late capitalism has led to a surge in what can be termed “discipline derivatives” or fields of study that emerge from core disciplines and function largely as applied or market-driven offshoots. While these derivatives present themselves as new and innovative disciplines, they often lack the theoretical rigour, critical inquiry, and epistemic depth of their parent fields. The result is growing academic confusion, where the line between knowledge and skill, education and training, inquiry and utility becomes dangerously thin.

Take the interesting case of Psychology and its branches as an example. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Applied Behaviour Analysis, Forensic, Educational, Social, Health, Sports, and Clinical Psychology are all pro-structural endeavours, functioning in the interest of the current mode of production. Among the given derivatives, the ones circling around psycho-therapy attract more attention. By using the disciplinary secrets, psychotherapy smartly corrects the strange behaviours of people and puts them back on their previous normal track; in a way, it refits them in the tyre they were part of. The reasons for the psychological anomaly are immaterial to it. Family, school, society, marriage, and the rest are invariably straight-lined in its clinic. For the practitioners of the derivative, the individual is at fault not the institution. So the treatment is to be administered to the individual not the latter. The concerned practitioners are professionals, leaving aside their professional growth they would never stand against tough systems like Culture and Society.

Similarly, psephology is a by-product of Politics, language training of Language, financial management of Economics, industrial chemistry, forensic chemistry, and polymer chemistry of Chemistry, sports Medicine and aviation medicine of Pharmacy, digital marketing of Commerce, data science of Computer Science, and actuarial science of Statistics. All these derivatives depend completely upon their relative parent branches.

The central argument is disciplines and their derivatives are different. By referring to them as specialties, we fail to capture their true nature. Discipline Derivatives is a more accurate term, as they thrive and generate capital by riding on the back of the Organising Structures or Disciplines. If the Organising Structures help create the congenial universe for the on-going mode of production, validating the epistemic universe of their time, discipline derivatives establish themselves as sites of capital-cum-social action, where individuals engage, interact, and shell out money. The moment this happens, a general consent to the entire game is secured.

The proliferation of these by-products in academia has led to universities and colleges worldwide offering courses on these trendy fields and attracting numerous admissions. This has led to a kind of academic confusion. For instance, Data Science, which is a dangerously pro-structural project, is now being offered as a major subject worldwide. Students and their parents pursue these courses, enticed by the promise of lucrative careers. However, the focus on true knowledge, critical thinking, and scientific temperament is often lacking.

In past, disciplines in academia had to work hard to be recognised as scientific. Today, these new fields are readily labelled as sciences without rigorous scrutiny. Under such conditions George Orwell’s quote from his 1945 essay “What is Science?” seems highly relevant: “Scientific education ought to mean the implanting of a rational, sceptical, and experimental habit of mind. It ought to mean acquiring a method— a method that can be used on any problem that one meets — and not simply piling up a lot of facts”. True education should be based on this foundation; otherwise, individuals risk being swept away by the transient trends they are following.

It’s crucial for intellectuals, academicians, and the informed public to recognise this reality. By doing so, they can explore alternative models of social organisation. Remaining vigilant and open-minded will eventually lead to the emergence of new ways of living.