«Women scientists resemble guinea pigs…» Anecdotes about women-scientists in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia
1The anthropology of professionals, including academics, is a new branch of social and cultural anthropology. It lies at the intersection of ethnology, and qualitative sociology, using in-depth interviews, included observation, and case studies as principal methods and types of research. Although the application of the term "ethnology" to professional academics may seem odd, their traditions can be analyzed in similar terms, with subcultures defined by their presenting features, symbols, attributes and folklore, and social and behavioral norms, forms of communication and stereotypes. I will explore scholars' community, establishing the official standards and the unofficial codes of behavior, lifestyles, forms of routine discourse, symbols, attributes, and practices.
2The gender focus in my research project emphasizes the examination of the practice of power relations in the academic community, rather than a conventional description of the social and professional lives of men and women. By emphasizing power, my project draws upon feminist theory to provide methodological approaches.
3Specifically, my analysis relies upon the opposition between traditional and feminist science, as enunciated by the American cultural anthropologist Renato Rozaldo. Traditional science is marked by: objectivism – the claims of scientific objectivity, political and emotional neutrality; imperialism - the objectivization of the subject, in which the researcher ‘looks down’ upon the observed phenomenon, in the imperialist manner that the ‘white traveller’ observed indigenous people; monumentalism - the assumption that such phenomena as the structural parameters of the social equilibrium and ethnic culture are unsusceptible to change (Rosaldo 400). Feminist anthropology adopts the opposite methodological basis. The claims of objectivity are replaced by empathy and involvement, recognizing that respondents' ethnographic and social-psychological information has its own worth, as do the analysts' personal experiences, even though traditional academic discourse have tried to marginalize them. It eschews imperialism and the denigration of the culture being studied, in favor of an analysis of the superstitions and prejudices the analysts bring from their own culture with the same care as the analysis of the culture under study (Rosaldo, Culture 30).
4Investigation of women academics’ everyday life provides fertile soil for validation of the methods adopted in the feminist anthropology. Responding to the appeal of German historians researching everyday life: “Grabe, wo Du stehst!” (Lindqvist 295). Bulgarian, Belorussian and Russian researchers have developed a project focusing on women scholars’ routine realities in the socialist and post-socialist periods. Specifically, the project focuses on women employed in the institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences who have managed to succeed in their professional advancement and creativity.
5This project is not focused merely on a description of the observed phenomena, but on gaining insight into the mechanisms of change, utilization of time, and modes of the replication of gender asymmetry. For that purpose, the research has compiled both typical and atypical cases. We address these specific questions: What creates women scholars’ routine practices? What are the specific meanings assigned to the women scholars’ activities within specific social interactions? How does academic community treat women’s work and scholarly success? How do other women treat such women?