Abstract
This essay provides a critical decolonial intervention into the prevalent state of racial exceptionalism in mainstream sociological research on contemporary Russia. Following critical race theory's understanding of race as relationally constituted and rooted in discourses of Europeanness, modernity, and civilization, the essay shows that race is highly prevalent but unacknowledged in sociological studies of Russia. It is argued that dismissing race as analytically irrelevant in Russia seriously limits the sociological ability to explain social inequalities, engage with current global challenges and inadvertently gives racism new legitimacy. Drawing on postcolonial and decolonial critiques of sociology as a form of knowledge production, the essay points towards some ways of decolonizing sociological research concerning the inequalities associated with race and ethnicity in Russia and overcoming racial exceptionalism.
Highlights
This essay provides a critical decolonial intervention into the prevalent state of racial exceptionalism in mainstream sociological research on contemporary Russia
It is argued that dismissing race as analytically irrelevant in Russia seriously limits the sociological ability to explain social inequalities, engage with current global challenges and inadvertently gives racism new legitimacy
As is the case in other world contexts characterized by racial exceptionalism, race in sociological research on Russia is replaced with other signifiers such as ‘culture’, ‘ethnicity’ or ‘background.’[5]
Summary
This essay provides a critical decolonial intervention into the prevalent state of racial exceptionalism in mainstream sociological research on contemporary Russia. Drawing on postcolonial and decolonial critiques of sociology as a form of knowledge production, the essay points towards some ways of decolonizing sociological research concerning the inequalities associated with race and ethnicity in Russia and overcoming racial exceptionalism. Historians of Russia, including those in the west, subscribed to the same view, which is still widely present in the scholarship.[1] It is only recently that scholars have begun to pay attention to the role of race in the post-Soviet region and refuted claims that race was irrelevant for understanding Russian/Soviet politics and society.[2] These insights, are rarely used in the mainstream social science research on contemporary Russia. Sociological accounts continue to interpret prejudice towards and discrimination against people of ‘non-Slavic appearance’ (the expression widely used by the media and politicians) and migrants from ex-Soviet regions of Caucasus and Central Asia through the notions of xenophobia, migrantophobia, and ethnic conflict
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