Transitional societies and the contemporary sociological research
Eduard Ponarin and Daniel Aleksandrov took part in the round table on the VI Conference ad memoriam of A. Kryshtanovsky.
On the February, 1st 2012 in HSE, department of Sociology, start VI Conference to the memory of AlexanderKryshtanovskiy.
Eduard Ponarin and Daniel Aleksandrov took part in the round table “Transitional societies and the contemporary sociological research: trends and deficits” moderated by Aleksey Bessudnov. During the discussion a lot of aspects of internalization of Russian sociology were raised. According to participants, Russian sociology is underrepresented in the international perspective for a number of reasons, which include the low motivation for this internalization, lack of methodological sophistication and original data. Furthermore, for conducting international comparisons we should not only be good at English but also think in English.
In the second part of the discussion the participants focused more on the possible ways of making Russian social science more international. First, the teachers mainly represent the old generation, hence it is vital to involve young scholars and international teachers into educational process. Second, our graduate and postgraduate students should study abroad for some time and students from other countries should come to Russia. Of course, now Russia is not competitive enough with US and other Western European countries but still it is possible to attract students from Eastern countries. Furthermore, the participants dwelled on problems of postgraduate studies in Moscow. The full-time PhD program (aspirantura) increases to some extent the involvement of young scholars to the research community but still it is not enough. Furthermore we should improve the prospects of sociologists after PhD program. The absence of Postdocs, for instance, is a serious deficiency.
The participants viewed the problem of integration of Russian sociology into international community with a different degree of optimism. However, everybody agreed that it could be achieved only gradually. Russia is not the only country that faced this problem (the same is in France, for instance).
Soboleva Natalia