Multi-Disciplinarity Problem and Challenges of Mainstreaming Peace Studies in Tanzania’s Higher Education System

Thadeus Mkamwa
Additional contact information
Thadeus Mkamwa: St. Augustine University of Tanzania (SAUT)

A chapter in African Peacebuilding, 2026, pp 7-17 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The relationship between higher education and intercultural and epistemic diversity has often been ambiguous. Higher education has developed distinctive ways of organizing, validating, and legitimizing certain forms of knowledge production. The social processes, quality assurance, and economics of scholarly publishing do not typically reward intercultural and epistemic diversity. The Tanzania Commission for Universities (TCU) has a new career path regulation that requires that, for academic staff to qualify to teach in the university, he or she must have studied directly related subjects. This regulation is based on skill-centred specialist approach. The regulation basically is favourable for highly focused professional practitioners because they create a protective boundary around their area of expertise, e.g. medicine and engineering, but to a greater extent not favourable for social sciences disciplines. The idea of favouring a directly related subjects approach of disciplines is rooted in a holism versus reductionism perspective (Smuts 1936). This perspective calls for scholars to study a single line of discipline in order to qualify as teachers in higher learning institutions. The holism perspective “underlies the synthetic tendency in the universe and is the principle that makes for the origin and progress of wholes in the universe” (Smuts 1936: ix). The approach raises questions on whether the interdisciplinary approach, also known as the multidisciplinary approach, poses a problem in the higher education system in Tanzania in the quest for mainstreaming Peace Studies in university programs.

Keywords: Interdisciplinarity; Higher education; TCU; Peace studies; Career development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:aaechp:978-3-032-29966-6_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783032299666

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-29966-6_2

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().