"Knowledge vendors" and "alms-askers": studying scientific and political discourse in Anglo-American and Russian socio-humanities

Abstract

This article analyzes the interaction and mutual influence of the discourse of science and the public authorities in modern Russian and Anglo-American socio-humanities. The aim of the article is to identify the methodological bases of the research on discourse of the public authorities and science in the modern Anglo-American historiography and assessment of their relevance to the analysis of modern Russian administrative and scientific discourse. The authors conducted the analysis of Russian scientific products and revealed a positivist, quantitative bias in the methodology of social sciences, which study scientific and authoritative discourse in modern Russian society. The authors attempted to reflect the diffusion of science and power discourse. By the example of modern Russian realities they illustrated the pattern of how the researches on political discourse and influence of the state order on scientific production are strongly committed to this discourse and cannot go beyond it. An objective study of the experience of Anglo-American Russian studies allows looking at Russian governmental and scientific discourse from the perspective of a new culture, a new empire and a new intellectual history.