Higher educational practices in post-Soviet Central Asia remain predicated on an authoritarian conception of expertise rooted in an objective and universal science. While the substance of such education has changed since the Soviet era, the form of education remains rooted in Soviet-era discursive ideological practices, practices that encourage civic passivity outside the classroom. The liberal arts model of higher education represents a significant challenge to prevailing education norms, but it is a model that is honoured more in name than in implementation by domestic and international reformers. The inability to articulate the broader societal significance of the liberal arts suggests a broader act of forgetting the civic inspiration of liberal education in established as well as developing democracies.
M uch has been written about Soviet and post-Soviet science that illustrates the nature of social science within the Soviet project, particularly within Russia. Amsler's work is an important and unique contribution to the practice of science in a society in transition from authoritarianism to liberal democracy in an outermost sphere of the post-Soviet space. Her work is based on the development of sociology as pedagogy, research practice and public discourse in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan. Amsler provides an innovative case study in the sociology of knowledge, and on the practice of sociology in a post-colonial context suffused within a new capitalist agenda. She argues convincingly that Kyrgyzstani sociologists today find themselves 'between Marx and the market' as they re-define their activities, and negotiate a contested space by which the science of sociology can contribute to remaking the post-Soviet space.Amsler's work is based on the practice of Kyrgyzstani sociology as demarcated in late socialism and the first decade of independence to 2001. The use of primary and secondary sources drawn from Soviet sociologists during the era of perestroika and interviews with some of the early pioneers of Kyrgyzstani sociology provide unique and authentic insights into the work and conditions of academics in the late Soviet period. Her research shows the ways in which Soviet science was not monolithic, and that the activities of Kyrgyzstani sociologists illustrate the limits to scholarly autonomy -in terms of intellectual conceptualizations as well as that of the profound challenge of resource deprivation -in the new era of liberal democracy.Amsler's research draws from experiences dating back to 1998, when she began teaching in an educational reform project while based at the newly created Sociology Department of the American University Central Asia in the Kyrgyzstan capital of Bishkek. In examining the 'boundary work' undertaken by sociologists in contemporary Kyrgyzstan, Amsler shows how the scope of sociological practice is being redefined. These discussions and activities are envisaged by practitioners to be of critical import in the liberal democratic project in Kyrgyzstan. As Amsler notes, 'Science matters in Central Asia' (p. 33); social science and sociology are seen to be part and parcel of the knowledge and expertise required in the transition from authoritarianism.The development of this discipline and its boundaries is well told in the narrative. Although initially considered a social scientific endeavour which could provide important insights into the fledgling Soviet society, sociology as a discipline was delegitimized as a bourgeois undertaking by the Soviet academy in the 1920s, and Soviet science developed through the restrictive framework of Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Amsler carefully distinguishes the work of sociology within the centres of power and that of social scientists in the peripheral regions of Central
Smith, Paul Chaat. 2009. Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9780816656011. Cloth: 21.95 US. Pages: 193.
While much has been written on the failure of the Yeltsin presidency and the transformation of Russian society since 1991, little work has been done that illustrates the participation of established liberal democracies in supporting Yeltsin’s authoritarian, politically unresponsive ‘superpresidentialism,’ or linking this support to the authoritarian nature of the modern liberal democratic project itself. By examining Russian trade union culture and history, as well as international trade union representative involvement, this paper argues that the persistent neglect of unions in the 1990s to challenge social relations of production can be understood as paradigmatic of an authoritarian dynamic focused on the political elite rather than on their membership. With international support, the regime’s concern was with the dismantling of Soviet economic relations and social institutions. Working from the culture and history of Russian trade unions, the unions’ efforts to retain a place in the new era through a strategy of ‘social partnership,’ combined with the collapse of the social welfare system, reinforced a top-down inertia characteristic of the unions. The result, predictably, was an era marked by a politics of irresponsibility, a political ethic is not indicative of an inherent Russian authoritarianism, but that of the authoritarian nature of the liberal modernity itself.
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