Knowledge Production under Geopolitical Disruption: Reconfiguring the Field of Slavic, East European, Eurasian Studies after 2022

• In Event: Global and Transnational Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 2. Knowledge and Politics I

Abstract

This paper examines how global political rupture reshapes knowledge production within academic fields. Focusing on the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it analyzes how geopolitical disruption reorganizes the U.S.-based field of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (SEEES). Based on this case, this paper develops a meso-level account of how external shocks are translated into internal struggles over authority, legitimacy, and institutional viability. Drawing on 25 in-depth interviews with SEEES scholars and ethnographic observation at the 2025 ASEEES convention, the paper shows that the war destabilized established hierarchies of epistemic authority long built in Russian institutional prestige and linguistic centrality and opened opportunities for challengers advocating feminist and decolonial approaches. However, epistemic transformation has been uneven and mediated by organizational constraints like enrollment pressures and funding dependencies. Attempts to “decolonize” the field confront institutional market-oriented structures that continue to privilege Russian language and literature expertise, which remains more strongly rewarded by enrollment patterns. By theorizing knowledge production as an organizationally embedded and power-structured process, this study bridges the sociology of knowledge and organizational theory, offering a framework for understanding how academic fields reorganize under geopolitical disruption. Although war represents an acute rupture, the case illuminates broader dynamics through which academic fields adapt under global uncertainty, including shifts in state priorities, funding regimes, and regimes of mobility.

Author

• Mariia Chetverikova, University of Illinois-Chicago