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bound, constituted by the organisation of knowledge and finding expression in
what we do as knowledge practitioners. Crucially, these injustices are legitimated
by knowledge and are, for the most part, rendered invisible to the academy itself
(see Keet, 2014).

b. Needless to say, the disciplining of knowledge, though particularly associated
with the advancement of the scientific method, has long histories that are
constitutively tied to the history of western and northern hemisphere-based
universities, themselves shaped by the imperial and colonial histories of the states
in which they were formed. Such histories map the production spaces and
locations of epistemologies and the intellectual, economic and social dominance
that ensue from them. Charles Van Doren captures this well in History of
Knowledge in an inclusive account that geographically spans the globe and
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historically extends to the ‘ancient empires’. The mistake made by Van Doren,
although common, is to present ‘coming into epistemic being’ as dependent on
‘discovery’ by the cognitive faculties of the western observer.

c. As argued later, the dynamics inherent to disciplines are part of the intellectual
economies and reproductive machinery of universities. ‘More so than any other
social and intellectual arrangement, the disciplines permeate the life of the
university. Academics and students are streamed; professional, academic and
student identities are constructed; scientific authorities are established and
maintained; social statuses are affirmed; social spaces are mapped out;
recognitions, rewards and sanctions are distributed; and epistemic injustices
legitimated. A series of classes, textbooks, study-guides, tutorials, practicals,
conversations, seminars, journals, conferences and assessment regimes, each
charted according to the status of the disciplines within the university space,
animates the university. Ritual behaviours, symbolic expressions, ceremonial
practices, triumphal architectures and artifacts add to this picture of the
university as an institution steeped in the self-referential logics produced within
the disciplines. Lenoir suggests a useful definition for disciplines: Disciplines are
the institutional mechanism for regulating the market relations between
consumers and the producers of knowledge [...] disciplines are political structures
that mediate crucially between the political economy and the production of
knowledge’ (Keet, 2014).

d. Little attention in higher education studies is given to the political construction of
disciplines and the patterns of inclusion and exclusion that inhere in such
constructions. However, it may well be one of the most influential determining
factors in setting up the inequity patterns within the system. The various forms of
networks that emerge around disciplines are also central to the social structure of
the academy, amongst others factors.

7 Van Doren, C., 1991. A history of knowledge. Past, present, and future. The pivotal events, people, and
achievements of world history. New York: Random House.
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