Between north and south: decolonial isolationism of Russian social science in the state of war and beyond

ABSTRACT

This paper examines Russian social science in the state of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Post-socialist coloniality of Russian scholars eventually led to the desire to contest the scientific hegemony of the West and to have a unique local sociology, mostly inspired by political context. These ideas became part of the political agenda and Putin constantly claims that Russia is a leader of the anti-colonial world. His claims are accompanied by the desire to epistemicide everything western both in the structure of knowledge and at the institutional level. It nominally interrelates with international discussions about the possible emergence of unique local sociologies outside Western hegemony. Political will and its nominal ‘decolonial’ perspective bring Russian science closer to isolationism, using arguments paradoxically similar to decolonial narratives. The necessity to ‘decolonize’ science and education from Western-centric structures became part of the political and scientific agenda. Being a subaltern empire Russia finds itself in a state of war, which creates two problems for Russian social science: decolonial isolationism, meaning the disguise of epistemicide of western models of knowledge production as decolonial liberation and tuzemnaya nauka, a general rejection of scientific standards of the outer world with an attempt to prove the local agenda’s superiority.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous sociology
• decolonization
• epistemicide
• epistemologies of the South
• subaltern empire

Notes

1 This part of the article is a re-written and re-shaped part of the author’s dissertation (Kislenko 2022).

2 All the translations of the articles written in Russian are provided by the author of this article.

3 It refers to the places where supporters of two politically oriented camps gathered. Adherents of the unique Russian way chose Poklonaia Gora, protesters against the current political regime gathered on Bolotnaia Square in Moscow.

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Ivan Kislenko

Ivan Kislenko holds a double PhD degree in sociology from HSE University (Moscow, Russia) and Ghent University (Ghent, Belgium). His research interests are global production of knowledge, southern theory, national and indigenous sociologies, sociological canon and history of the debates on the decolonization of sociology.