MJAAR

The Myth of the Asocial Ascetic: A Critical Examination of Sociology's Role in the Cultivation of Discipline

Dr. Arinaitwe Julius, Musiimenta Nancy


Abstract

This mixed-methods study critically examined sociology's role in constructing understandings of discipline, with particular focus on whether the discipline challenges or reinforces myths of asocial asceticism that obscure the fundamentally social character of disciplinary practices. The research employed a three-phase design integrating systematic literature review of 150 classical and contemporary sociological texts on discipline, ethnographic fieldwork across six institutional sites (two religious communities, two educational institutions, and two professional organizations) involving 450 hours of participant observation and 72 in-depth interviews, and quantitative survey analysis of 800 respondents stratified by demographic and experiential characteristics. The study investigated how sociological theories have conceptualized discipline from Durkheim and Weber through Foucault to contemporary scholarship, documented the specific social mechanisms through which discipline is actually cultivated in diverse institutional contexts, and assessed how sociological insights have been appropriated or distorted in popular self-help discourse. Univariate analyses revealed that while respondents demonstrated moderate awareness of discipline's social dimensions (M=52.3, SD=18.6), they scored significantly higher on individual orientation measures (M=61.7, SD=19.2; t=12.47, p

Keywords

Sociology and Discipline
Metropolitan Journal of Academic and Applied Research

Cite This Article

Dr. Arinaitwe Julius & Musiimenta Nancy (2026). The Myth of the Asocial Ascetic: A Critical Examination of Sociology's Role in the Cultivation of Discipline. Metropolitan Journal of Academic and Applied Research, 5(2). https://journals.miu.ac.ug/pages/article.php?article_id=144

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