Politics and Patterns of Developing Indigenous Knowledge under Western Disciplinary Compartmentalization: The Case of Philosophical Schools in Modern China and Japan

Abstract

Since the nineteenth century, knowledge has gradually been categorized as falling within distinct academic disciplines. Key elements in this process have been various forms of compartmentalization: some of these forms are cognitive (e.g. bibliographical classification), and others organizational (e.g. departments in universities). This compartmentalization of knowledge has become a major site of intellectual contestation, legitimizing or marginalizing bodies of knowledge (Collins and Ben-David 1966, Gieryn 1983). This compartmentalization has helped to displace pre-modern Western knowledge and marginalize contemporary cross-disciplinary knowledge (Foucault 1970, Messer-Davidow, Shumway, and Sylvan 1993). However, the ways in which disciplinary compartmentalization has affected indigenous knowledge in non-Western cultures remain largely unexplored.