A master framework for a discipline or a language of dependence?

Andrea Asina

 

Photo: The concept of “sovereignty” has become a key meme in state ideology. Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

 

At the end of June 2025, St. Petersburg held the first Time of Change for Russia and the World Sociological Forum, organized by the Russian Academy of Sciences and major state scientific centers. Among its goals are conceptualizing ongoing processes, understanding transformations taking place in modern society in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, and updating the agenda of sociological science.

In response, a new project was proposed: “sovereign Russian sociology.” This project aims to create a new master framework for the discipline, linking the “new reality,” “new governance,” and “new role of sociology.”

 

The Forum as a Stage for Proclaiming the “New Reality”

Sociological forums are significant events in the professional lives of sociologists. The format of the plenary session involves formulating the main conceptual positions that will be presented to the sociological community for discussion.

The speakers at the plenary session were representatives of the sociological elite, defined by their “cushy positions” in the professional and hierarchical structure. These were the heads of academic sociological institutions.

Of particular interest to me is the first report presented at the plenary session. Given by Corresponding Member Professor M.K. Gorshkov (1950-2025), it clearly formulates the thesis of “sovereign sociology.” This report seems extremely significant: in it, the author attempts to integrate the concept of “sovereignty,” which has become a key meme in state ideology, into Russian sociological discourse.

The starting point is the concept of a “new reality.” It has arrived; it is defined as a result of the operation primarily of technological and geopolitical factors. According to Gorshkov, these factors proved so significant that they necessitated “military action, conducting a special military operation in Ukraine.”

Following the same logic, the “urgent task” of the state is formulated as “reconceptualizing the strategy for developing Russian society and reaching a qualitatively new level of governability.”

Sociology is integrated into this structure not as an autonomous critical observer, but as a crucial resource for state policy. The following is expected of it:

• providing “sociological support for the management of society”
• diagnosing the key features of the “new reality”
• developing scientifically sound solutions for government agencies

Sociology is described as a “multidisciplinary science and a valid tool for social diagnosis,” designed to optimize the “management mechanism” and shape the future by creating images and concepts through which mass audiences will perceive what is happening around them.

In other words, the task of sociology is to provide the ruling class with tools that facilitate governance. This is how the familiar “new contract” is publicly formulated: sociology is called upon to participate in the construction of representations of the present and future that are desirable for the state, and to be an integral part of the state’s ideological apparatus.

 

How Is the Image of “Sovereign” Sociology Constructed?

The next step is implementing the “sovereign Russian sociology” project. In order to increase legitimacy, a specific historical interpretation of the discipline’s development is proposed.

• The Pre-Soviet Period (second half of the 19th–beginning of the 20th century) is presented as a period when Russia was “one of the leaders of world sociological knowledge.”
• The Soviet Stage is described as a time of fundamental theories of a “socially just future” and concepts of peaceful coexistence between sovereign states.
• The Post-Soviet Period is characterized as an era of epigones. It is argued that
  “proponents of market ideals and individual success”—elites focused on copying Western models of development—prevailed in the social sciences, turning sociology into a “yes-man science” defined by foreign standards and foreign publications.

The problem is presented not as a lack of institutional autonomy or resource support, but as an excessive dependence on “external” criteria.

The logical next step is to declare that the true sovereignty of Russian sociology has always been “conditioned by the unique realities of society, rooted in its cultural genotype.” And this uniqueness must be restored and strengthened.

It is interesting to recall that in the 1990s, there was an attempt to distance Russia from “Western” sociology using similar approaches. However, the experiment of establishing a special science of “Russian studies” proved fruitless.

 

Three Arguments in Favor of the New Master Framework

The proposal of “sovereign sociology” offers an overarching structure—a master framework—that should enjoy a massive positive response among members of the professional community and administrators of social science. Three types of arguments in support of sovereign sociology are utilized:

1. The Substitution Argument. Sovereignty is equated with distinctiveness—originality, specificity, and independent development. The semantic emphasis on the political and ideological context (state service and control) is shifted to a cultural one: “We are different, therefore our sociology should also be unique.”
2. The Globalization Argument. The project aligns with international trends toward combating Western hegemony through the production of social knowledge and the discussion of “indigenous sociologies.” Essentially, it uses the language of decolonization of knowledge, where the “colonizer” is Western academia and the protected object is not local, often vulnerable communities and their experiences, but rather the state and its scientific institutions.
3. The Timeliness Argument. The assertion is that in the “new reality,” it is especially important to answer the question of what makes Russian sociology unique from other national sociologies and Western approaches. Sovereign sociology is declared to be the main answer to the “imperative of the times,” not merely one of several competing research programs.

As a result, the framework appears to be both flexible and coercive: it seems to be about simply acknowledging specific characteristics and taking on the tasks of overcoming scientific dependence, but it in fact sets a norm: focusing primarily on state demands and a certain “cultural genotype,” rather than on universal procedures of scientific verification of knowledge and international dialogue.

 

The Political Language of Sovereignty and the Sovereignization of Knowledge

The term “sovereignty” has long played a central role in official political rhetoric. Since the early 2000s, it has been linked to the idea of ​​“sovereign democracy,” emphasizing Russia’s autonomy as a “great power” free from external control and obligations. This ideological meme corresponds to the political processes of autocracy, repressive restrictions on civil society, tightening regulation of the public sphere, and the narrowing of academic freedom.

In this ideological context, the sovereignty of sociology ceases to be merely a metaphor for cultural specificity. It becomes an element of a broader trend—the nationalization of social knowledge (its transformation into a tool used by the state apparatus)—and serves to support isolationist trends and ideological control. International connections, participation in global scientific debates, and an orientation around “foreign” quality criteria begin to be interpreted as signs of insecurity and disloyalty.

 

Imaginary Scenarios for Achieving Sovereignty

What might practical implementation of this master framework look like if it were to be adopted by sociological administrators? At least two possible approaches emerge from this discussion.

 

The first is the development of indicators of sovereignty and their inclusion in professional achievement ratings.

In this scenario, “uniqueness” is transformed into a management metric:

• share of domestic publications
• references to historical Russian sources
• distancing oneself from Western journals and international projects
• demonstrating a refusal to address topics that could be considered a threat to sovereignty, understood in a political sense as well.

It is possible that “sovereignty indicators” will soon become part of the key performance indicators (KPIs) for institutions and individual researchers. Already, some members of the academic community have been forced to abandon their previous international connections, “purging themselves” of anything that could be interpreted as dependence on the foreign scientific community and its criteria.

 

The second is ignoring the pretensions of a master framework.

Another group of researchers is trying to continue their professional work while minimizing direct references to the language of sovereignty but inevitably taking into account the censorship regime. This position is based on the understanding that the production and exchange of knowledge are not reducible to flows of goods: blocking academic ties and isolationism inevitably lead to stagnation, both theoretical and methodological.

“Sociology is not cheese”—it cannot be kept in an airtight container without the risk of spoiling the product.

 

Sovereign Cheese and Import-Substitution in Social Knowledge

Let’s unwrap the cheese metaphor. Years after the introduction of food sanctions, Russian-manufactured “sovereign” blue cheese appeared on the shelves of Russian stores. This was high-quality, according to consumers, and expensive. This cheese is a product of import-substitution and is likely made using a foreign recipe, but with a significant delay and at a price exceeding that of the once-available imported counterparts. The sociological conclusion of this cheese story is clear.

• The sovereignty of the product is deceptive (as the knowledge was imported rather than created from nothing)
• It was manufactured as a reaction (it represents a delayed response to sanctions, rather than domestic development)
• The product is exclusive (availability is limited due to its high cost).

Using this metaphor to clarify our subject, we can suggest that “sovereign sociology,” created within the logic of import-substitution, risks turning out like this cheese: officially “domestically produced,” but in fact dependent on long-established international practices of knowledge production, largely inaccessible to public discussion, and marginal in the context of global sociology.

 

What to Look for Next

Throughout the history of Russian sociology, projects offering a different kind of “sovereignty” have repeatedly emerged, striving for autonomy from party-ideological control, for professionalization, for public accountability, and for resistance to “theoretical impoverishment.” Today’s project of “sovereign Russian sociology” differs in that it originates not from below, from the professional community, but from above—from state institutions—and is offered as a response to the “imperatives of the times” in a soft but binding approach: distinctive identity combined with an orientation toward the demands of an authoritarian state and the tasks of social engineering.

The future of this pretense of a “master framework” for sovereignty, and what exactly it will bring to the discipline, can only be determined through practical application: by how resources are redistributed, which topics prove desirable or undesirable, and how the mechanisms for access to publicity and international formats will function.

The task of the research community is not only to document the new language, but also to analyze its integration into real practices of knowledge production. The answer to the question “How does sovereignty work in science?” will determine whether Russian sociology retains a space for professional integrity and autonomous thinking, or whether it will eventually be transformed into an instrument of a controlled “new reality.”