RUDN journal of Sociology (Mar 2024)
Humanitarian import substitution: Some results and current tasks of the Russian social science
Abstract
The relevance of the issues under consideration is determined by the recent fundamental social-political transformations associated with the exacerbation of a complex set of cultural, civilizational and, thus, intellectual contradictions between Russia and the West. These contradictions force both the Russian society and the Russian social science to reconsider the results of the last thirty years and to predict future scenarios, including intellectual ones. The article summarizes some results of the development of the Russian social science in the post-Soviet period and discusses (at least invites to a discussion) the possible contours of its further development according to the new logic of social processes. The article considers both the achievements of the Russian social-humanitarian thought in the post-Soviet period and its problems, primarily the loss of intellectual independence due to the uncritical borrowing and dogmatization of many Western intellectual models, some of which were created to understand a different social-cultural reality, and others were initially an intellectual weapon against the USSR (Russia). The author proposes the concept of “humanitarian import substitution” as a possible guideline for further development, which should be implemented on the principle of avoiding extremes: on the one hand, uncritical denial of the generally significant achievements of the Western social science and humanities; on the other hand, dogmatization of the ideas of Russian social scientists. The author considers as a resource for such “substitution” the largely untapped analytical and explanatory potential of the Russian literary tradition that can become a theoretical-methodological basis for many social and humanitarian models and concepts.
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