One Hundred and Forty-Two Exemplary Essays on Social Sciences (to Help Those Drowning in an Information Ocean)

Book Review: Fedorov V.V. (2023) Smart as a Whip, Moscow: VCIOM (in Russian).

Abstract

In this article, the author shares his impressions of reading “Smart as a Whip” by the Russian sociologist and political scientist Valery Fedorov. The book includes over a hundred reviews and summaries written in different years. It gives an idea of the diversity of the subject-thematic and conceptual-theoretical agenda of modern social sciences. The author focuses on the issue of changes that have occurred in the production, existence, and circulation of social science literature under the influence of the latest round of the information revolution. The unique role of the review is its genre of scientific publication in a situation of oversaturation, oversupply, and inflation that has characterized “the market of ideas” in recent decades around the world.