Making Global Knowledge in Local Contexts: The Politics of International Relations and Policy Advice in Russia

This book draws on extensive ethnographic research undertaken in Russia to show how the wider sociopolitical context – the political system, relationship between the state and academia as well as the contours of the public debate – shapes knowledge about international politics and influences scholars’ engagement with the policy world.

Combining an in-depth study of the International Relations discipline in Russia with a robust methodological framework, the book demonstrates that context not only bears on epistemic and disciplinary practices but also conditions scholars’ engagement with the wider public and policymakers. This original study lends robust sociological foundations to the debate about knowledge in International Relations and the social sciences more broadly. In particular, the book questions contemporary thinking about the relationship between knowledge and politics by situating the university within, rather than abstracting it from the political setting. The monograph benefits from a comprehensive engagement with Russian-language literature in the Sociology of Knowledge and critical reading of International Relations scholarship published in Russia.

This text will be of interest to scholars and students in International Relations, Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, the Sociology of Knowledge, Science and Technology Studies and Higher Education Studies. It will appeal to those researching the knowledge-policy nexus and knowledge production practices.

Katarzyna Kaczmarska is a lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the School of Social and Political Science, the University of Edinburgh, UK. Her work on International Relations theory, the sociology of IR knowledge and post-Soviet politics appeared in International Studies Review, Journal of International Relations and Development, International Relations and Problems of Post Communism. Before joining the University of Edinburgh, she was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University (2016-19). She spent two years conducting fieldwork in Moscow and St Petersburg. In Russia, she was affiliated with St Petersburg State University. She obtained her PhD in 2015 from Aberystwyth University for research on the representations of international politics in Anglophone and Russian academic and policy discourses.