Beyond tribes and territories: New Metaphors for New Times

Catherine Manathunga; Angela Brew

doi:10.4324/9780203136935-13

The notion of ‘academic tribes’ from Becher’s 1989 ‘landmark work’ (Bayer 1991: 224) has passed into the discourse of higher education research to such an extent that it is often used without reference to the original text (for example Davies 2006). It was a ‘colourful’ metaphor that was taken up with such acclaim that it has come to dominate discourses around disciplines, disciplinary knowledge, disciplinary affiliation; indeed, everything to do with the ways in which knowledge is defined and organised within universities. The use of the ‘tribes’ metaphor has extended well beyond those who have read the text, to permeate academic practice and policy across the globe. Becher’s book provided a way of thinking about disciplines and about the people who inhabit them which appeared to be intuitively ‘correct’ and provided a framework for further thinking at the time. However, universities have substantially changed since the publication of Tribes and Territories. Notions of knowledge have undergone radical shifts. Research is increasingly called upon to address multidisciplinary questions and modular course structures mean that university study has become more interdisciplinary. There are reasons to suppose that these trends will continue. The question that we set out to explore in this chapter is: what other metaphors might be more appropriate? We first examine theories of the changing context of higher education and their implications for disciplines and disciplinary thinking. Specifically we argue that there is a need to fundamentally rethink the ways in which we talk about disciplinary knowledge. Then we explore in more detail, and from a post-colonial perspective, why the metaphors of tribes and territories are not only no longer helpful but have become highly problematic. We then examine some alternatives that have been suggested and critically examine the usefulness of these. The assumption that there are distinct disciplines that can be classified affects the ways in which academic culture is subsequently interpreted. As Klein (1996: 6) says: ‘As a dominant principle, disciplinarity has the force of necessity, implying that the academic institution could hardly be structured otherwise’. In academia there are different kinds of problems and questions, different epistemologies and different ways of thinking and acting which have their expression in a range of different kinds of formal and informal communities, groupings and networks. A focus on discipline as the main or the key way of understanding academic work and organisation is in tension with the constantly changing dynamic disciplinary and interdisciplinary areas of the contemporary university. It seems fair to say that during much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, disciplinarity was mainstream. Degrees tended to focus on a single discipline, or a limited range of disciplines. Researchers tended to work within disciplinary boundaries and tended not to venture into questions requiring knowledge from different areas. Work that crossed disciplinary boundaries was regarded as deviant, problematic or risky. With the advent of modular degrees and a recognition of the interdisciplinary nature of problems and issues requiring research – and the demand within the knowledge economy for Mode 2 knowledge – the rapid pace of change in the postmodern world has forced researchers increasingly to venture out into the quest for interdisciplinary knowledge (Brew and Lucas 2009). Various theories have been advanced to explain the changes within the nature of knowledge and its relationship to society. Prevalent among these has been the work of Gibbons and colleagues (1994) who coined the terms Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge to characterise the shift from a situation where knowledge was principally defined within universities by academics within well-defined disciplinary domains, to the multitude of ways in which the public interacts with scientific findings. In Mode 2, governments intervene in dictating research agendas through, for example, their funding and evaluation mechanisms requiring researchers to focus on short-term clearly defined project outcomes that have economic benefits. There is critical questioning by an informed public of the practical and ethical implications of particular discoveries and programmes, and public debates about what kinds of research should be pursued, all of which have made problematic the relationship between research and society (Nowotny et al. 2001). It is clear, as Fuller (2002) has argued, that both modes of knowledge have operated simultaneously for a long time and that the distinction between Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge production is an artificial divide. Nevertheless, the greater contextualisation of knowledge within society has had consequences for the ways in which research problems and issues now emerge. Nowotny and colleagues suggest that negotiations among interested individuals and organisations, within what they call ‘transaction spaces’, may grope towards a concept of what is to be explored – for example, the Human Genome Project – or where a chance discovery defines a new field of investigation – for example, the discovery of superconductivity. They call this a Mode 2 object and suggest that it cannot be decided in advance, but once it has been conceptualised, research, and especially funding attention can coalesce around it. In such contexts, discipline, for the purpose of defining a problem or question to be explored, is now completely ignored. It is no longer of relevance. Multidisciplinary teams of experts are likely to be needed to work on these Mode 2 objects and these are likely to come from many different organisations and countries. Another way of conceptualising the changes in knowledge derives from theories of neo-liberalism. Here the notion of disciplinary tribes sits uneasily within a neo-liberal context where goods are traded in a market economy; knowledge being viewed as one of those goods. Hence there is talk of the knowledge economy. Possessing knowledge is an important element of international trade and commerce. In this view, what becomes important is knowledge that will benefit the economy. How and whether it fits notions of disciplinary understanding is less important than whether the ideas are tradable, for example, in the form of patents and products. Knowledge has to be of use. There is within such thinking the recognition of the speed of change.

Beyond tribes and territories: New Metaphors for New Times

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