The local mutation of professional academic organisations and its fragmentising effect under academic globalisation: Evidence from modern China and Japan

In the context of academic globalisation, professional academic organisational formats developed in the West in the 19th and 20th centuries diffuse to local academies across the world. For example, many non-Western nations build their own universities and create local professional academic journals. This study problematises the organisational functional mutation that arises as professional academic organisational formats travel from the West to local academic institutions. It focuses on two kinds of mutation: the appropriation of the boundary-making functions of professional academic organisations by a national disciplinary community or by a subdisciplinary group in the local academy. Both kinds of mutation have a fragmentising effect. The national appropriation of professional academic organisations fragmentises the global disciplinary community. The subdisciplinary appropriation of professional academic organisations fragmentises the national disciplinary community of the non-Western locality. This study analyses these fragmentising effects by observing how they played out in the philosophical discipline of modern China (c. 1900-1950) and Japan (c. 1880-1950).