Academic Disciplines: Functions, Dysfunctions and Developments

This paper constitutes of two main sections: the first section examines academic disciplines in the world theoretically. This section deals with issues such as what are academic disciplines, how they emerged and evolved, what functions they have had, and finally, what problems and crisis they have in terms of their functions. The second section of the paper deals with the state of academic disciplines in Iran. To examine Iranian academic disciplines I have studied social and historical context of emergence and development of academic disciplines in Iran. I have also compared similarities and differences of academic disciplines functions in Iran and the west. Finally, I tried to explain Iranian academic disciplines encounter which challenges and difficulties today. This paper examines academic disciplines from sociological and cultural studies approach. It is mainly a theoretical and conceptual analysis of the state of discipline in the academic system. Cultural studies, as Moran (Moran 2001) explains, is a kind of approach rather than a specific discipline. From this point of view, each discipline has its own interdisciplinary field and cultural studies. In addition, cultural studies approach explains and explores social and political context disciplines.