The Paradox of Subdiscplinization in Kinesiology
by Sasha Chavez
Kinesiology departments today often encompass multiple interconnected subdisciplines that emerged from a need for interdisciplinary scholarship. Yet over time, these areas have come to function as rigid silos, accessible primarily to those who possess the specialized knowledge and skills required to navigate them. This disciplinary fragmentation did not emerge in a vacuum but was shaped by broader political and educational shifts that redefined knowledge, expertise, and legitimacy within the scientific field.
In the early 1960s, amid involvement in the Cold War and the launch of Sputnik 1, concerns about the legitimacy of U.S. education, particularly in the sciences, intensified as the nation appeared academically inadequate in comparison to the Soviet Union. On multiple fronts of the Cold War, the United States appeared to be falling behind, a perception that threatened its standing as a nation defined by both physical prowess and intellectual superiority. The Conant Report responded to this crisis of vigor by advocating for meritocratic and comprehensive educational models that integrated academic and vocational training, ultimately bolstering scientific education to show the intellectual competitiveness of the American people (Conant, 1959, p. 156). Physical education (PE) emerged as a key site for reform, initiating the “scientization” of the field.
Kinesiology can thus be understood as a product of this scientization. Franklin Henry was instrumental in shaping the field, arguing that PE required both scientific legitimacy and an organizational structure capable of integrating multiple disciplines. He proposed subdisciplinization as a means of preventing fragmentation and fostering a unified framework focused on human movement, performance, adaptation, and physical expression (Henry, 1964). With his vision, this required a synthesis of diverse epistemologies or disciplines, bridging together with one another to support the multifaceted project of subdiscplinization.
Although subdisciplinization successfully legitimized physical education as an academic discipline, it also contributed to the bifurcation of the field, with scientific subdomains rarely intersecting (Andrews, 2008, p. 47). Rather than encouraging intellectual openness, aligning with a specialized area of Kinesiology has increasingly led to the disciplinary closure that we see emanating in today’s academic culture. Contemporary scientific inquiry has become entangled with the corporatized universities, reshaping academic priorities (Andrews, 2008, p. 48; Hind, 2007). Neoliberal logics and governance now privilege “high-quality science,” constraining academic freedom, fostering intellectual compliance, and reinforcing specialization often at the expense of interdisciplinary integration (Andrews, 2008, p. 49; Lather, 2006). This has brought fragmentation, such that the subdomains too often act independently rather in concert, leading to internal incoherence and highlighting the paradox of subdiscplinization (Schultz, 2022, p. 47).
Without clearer justification of disciplinary distinctions and greater valuation of interdisciplinary quality over research quantity, Kinesiology risks further isolation from the broader academic and social landscape. Ongoing emphasis on programmatic differences, disordered characterizations of both the professional and disciplinary dimensions of Kinesiology in higher education, as well as debates over the field’s core academic focus, rather than shared foundations continues to create instability within departments across the nation (Newell, 1990; Schultz, 2022, p. 48). This raises enduring questions about whether a more holistic approach to embodiment might foster greater integration, and whether the field can meaningfully bridge its internal divides. If such substantiated questions are left unanswered, we risk losing hope of unification.
References
Andrews, D. L. (2008). Kinesiology’s inconvenient truth and the physical cultural studies imperative. Quest, 60(1), 45–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/00336297.2008.10483568
Conant, J. B. (1959). The American high school today: A first report to interested citizens. McGraw-Hill.
Henry, F. M. (1964). Physical education: An academic discipline. Journal of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, 35(7), 32–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221473.1964.10621849
Hind, D. (2007). The threat to reason: How the enlightenment was hijacked and how we can reclaim it. Verso Books.
Lather, P. (2004). This is your father’s paradigm: Government intrusion and the case of qualitative research in education. Qualitative Inquiry, 10(1), 15–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780040325615
Newell, K. M. (1990). Physical education in higher education: Chaos out of order. Quest, 42(3), 227–242. https://doi.org/10.1080/00336297.1990.10483997
Schultz, J. (2022). A history of Kinesiology. In C.A. Oglesby, K. Henige, D. W. McLaughlin & B. Stillwell (2021). Foundations of kinesiology (2nd ed, pp. 95–108). Jones & Bartlett Learning.