Russian Ethnology at the Beginning of the 21th Century: The Cognitive Structure of the Discipline Based on Journal Co-citation Analysis

Abstract

Boris Wiener — PhD in Sociology, Senior Researcher, Sociological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences. Address: 25/14, 7th Krasnoarmeiskaya St. Petersburg, 190005, Russian Federation. E-mail: wienerras@yandex.ru

Citation: Wiener B. (2017) Russian Ethnology at the Beginning of the 21th Century: The Cognitive Structure of the Discipline Based on Journal Co-citation Analysis. Mir Rossii, vol. 26, no 3, pp. 165–193 (in Russian). DOI: 10.17323/1811-038Х-2017-26-3-165-193

This paper describes the cognitive structure of Russian ethnology using co-citation analysis. The sample includes references from papers in 159 Russian ethnological and sociological journals and 9 periodical collections of papers published between 2005 and 2009. Three types of methods of quantitative analysis are employed: hierarchical divisive cluster analysis, a dense network sub-grouping algorithm for co-citation analysis, and social network analysis. The triangulation of several methods helps distinguish robust research domains from journal references. The findings differ from those obtained by Sokolovsky in his analysis, which was carried out on the papers published in Etnographicheskoe obozrenie between 1975 and 2000. More specifically, the study reveals the existence of additional research domains that correspond to regions unrecognized in Sokolovsky’s research, such as ‘East Slavic Ethnology and Folklore,’ ‘Siberian Ethnology,’ ‘The Ethnology of Uralic Language Family Peoples,’ and ‘Central Asian Ethnology’ (in addition to Sokolovsky’s ‘Soviet and Russian Ethnology as a research discipline,’ ‘Ethnos and Ethnicity,’ and others). Also the study does not confirm the existence of such research domains as ‘The sociology of ethnic relations,’ ‘Ethnic Studies of Gender Studies,’ ‘African Ethnology’ and some others, even though the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology (Kunstkamera) feature corresponding divisions within their structure.