Abstract
The goal of the study is to compare the reflection of Latvias and Russias transition to the market economy in economic texts. The object of the research is Latvian and Russian textbooks on economics (N = 61) of three generations (1990s, 2000s and 2010s) in the Daugavpils University library. The first such textbooks were published in 1993, and the last ones - in 2015. Although the starting point of the analysis is the translation of Samuelsons textbook (1964), which is beyond the time scope of the research, this book is necessary for a deeper analysis of the textbooks on economics. The research was conducted with the descriptive analysis and case study method applied in the framework of the linguistic discourse analysis based on Webers methodology of cultural determinism. The results of the research showed that in the 1990s, the economic discourse of the USA was actively borrowed in Latvia and Russia; however, the business culture of the USA differs significantly from the business culture of our countries. The linguistic discourse analysis allowed to reveal the conceptual challenges of the contemporary economic science in Latvia and Russia: despite as if the existence of some general economic theory, in reality even basic economic processes are often explained in different conceptual systems depending on the beliefs of the economic texts authors. Considering the social-economic transformations in the past thirty years and earlier periods, the authors emphasize the special importance of critical thinking in the creation, translation and perception of economic texts. This is especially important since there are no reasons to believe that in the 1990s, the cultural component of the economic discourse of Latvia and Russia changed significantly to the market-oriented. Today readers of economic texts have difficulties in their critical assessment, especially of those texts whose authors use emotional terminology.
Highlights
The social-economic structure and economic science in Latvia and Russia (both were parts of the same country — the Russian Empire until 1918 and the USSR (1940–1990)) have moved from the discourse of the capitalist economy of Mietule I. et al RUDN Journal of Sociology, 2022, 22 (1), 168–185 the late 19th — early 20th centuries to the discourse of the planned socialist economy of the mid-20th century, to the discourse of the transitional economy in the late 20th century and to the discourse of the contemporary market economy in the early 21st century
The research was conducted with the following methods in the framework of the linguistic discourse analysis based on Weber’s methodology of cultural determinism: descriptive analysis [25; 60] — to study the social context of the creation, translation and perception of Latvian and Russian textbooks on economics of the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s; case study [7; 53] — to analyze the social context of the Russian translation and perception of the classical market textbook on economics by Samuelson
Based on the results of the analysis, the following general conclusions can be made on the cultural aspect of the creation, translation and perception of Western textbooks on economics in the Latvian and Russian spaces, which practically coincide with the conclusions of Weber [64]: (1) Western industrial civilization is unique; (2) capitalism, the development of which is determined mainly by social-cultural factors, is endogenous to the West and is the result of an exclusively Western path of development; (3) the modernization of the East is at least hampered
Summary
The social-economic structure and economic science in Latvia and Russia (both were parts of the same country — the Russian Empire until 1918 and the USSR (1940–1990)) have moved from the discourse of the capitalist economy of Mietule I. et al RUDN Journal of Sociology, 2022, 22 (1), 168–185 the late 19th — early 20th centuries to the discourse of the planned socialist economy of the mid-20th century, to the discourse of the transitional economy in the late 20th century and to the discourse of the contemporary market economy in the early 21st century.
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