Authors

Discussion

In this paper, we* examine Area Studies scholarship (specifically Russian Studies), asking how scholars can achieve a more critically aware and reflexive approach to global knowledge. For us this is encapsulated in the idea of Relational Area Studies (RAS). RAS highlights the need to consider spaces "in here" (i.e. our own practices, existing beliefs, and power structures etc.) almost as much as the objects we study "out there". The research is based on analysis of leading English and Russian-language scholarship on Russia in four scholarly journals. The results of this empirical analysis help us reflect on the “commonsensical” practices, assumptions, and frameworks that often go unchecked in mainstream western scholarship. From our “in here”–“out there” perspective, we use these findings to pose awkward questions about our biases and privileges within global hierarchies of power and geographies of knowledge. Our framework, we argue, helps us move beyond binary conceptualisations of the Global North/South and East/West by including careful consideration of the “in-between” spaces and relational knowledge flows that accompany all global knowledge. In light of Russia’s escalated war on Ukraine, this helps us rethink some of the divisions between “western” and “eastern” perspectives on the war that come from spaces outside Russia. 

*This is a co-authored work with Alina Jašina-Schäfer