Sociologist Mikhail Sokolov (Professor of Practice in Sociology, UW-Madison) will give a lecture on “The Politics of Russian Academics” on Thursday, September 14, 2023 at 4:00 pm in 206 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive.
About the lecture: The politics of academia have been studied from three different perspectives. Firstly, some studies compared the political attitudes of academics with those of the general public. Secondly, an influential tradition in the sociology of knowledge suggests that there is a link between political stances and theoretical/methodological approaches. Thirdly, the intellectual life of academic communities is often viewed as politics on a smaller scale, with groups possessing different capitals struggling for dominance in the academic field. This paper examines Russian social scientists from all three of these angles, using a series of surveys conducted between 2020-2022. The disciplines studied include sociologists (N = 1035), economists (N=6392), political scientists (N = 1062), legal scholars (N=4187), and historians (N=4512). The survey shows that across all social sciences, there is a division between inward and outward-oriented scholars, correlated with political liberalism-conservatism. However, only in economics (and to a lesser extent, history) does this divide correlate significantly with sub-disciplinary specialization or theoretical and methodological preferences. In all disciplines, inward and outward-oriented scholars tend to form isolated communities located in different institutions. Inward-oriented scholars (who outnumber outward-oriented scholars by a ratio of roughly 2:1) hold political views that align with those of the general Russian population, while outward-oriented scholars are much more liberal. In all social sciences, except for economics, younger generations tend to be more outward-oriented. The two political camps have different views on science policy, with outward-oriented scholars being more supportive of using journal publications and citation-based metrics to assess academic performance.
About the speaker: Mikhail Sokolov joined the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia, as well as the Department of Sociology, in 2023. Prior to this, he held a professorial position at the European University at Saint Petersburg, Russia, where he also served as an academic director of the Center for institutional analysis of science and education. In 2003, Sokolov defended his PhD (kandidatskaya) dissertation at Saint Petersburg University, which was based on an ethnographic study of two Russian radical nationalist groups. Since then, he has carried out empirical research on various topics, including history and sociology of social sciences, consumption and artistic tastes, organizational analysis of higher education institutions, scientometrics, science policy analysis, and comparative social stratification. His current theoretical work develops Erving Goffman’s ideas on face, fatefulness, and expression games in light of recent research in epistemic game theory and pragmatics.
This event is part of the CREECA lecture series, which is held on Thursdays at 4:00 pm. Coffee, tea, and cookies served starting at 3:45.