Stages of Cultural Research in the World-System Approach. Part 2. The Epistemological Turn

Introduction. By the late 1980s, a strong consensus had emerged within the academic community that the disciplinary boundaries of the social sciences, established during the colonial era, were no longer appropriate for contemporary research challenges and that the social sciences needed to be restructured. An attempt to solve this problem was made through rethinking the system of organizing science and the production of scientific knowledge as elements of the culture of the capitalist world-system. The article reconstructs the key ideas of the world-system approach to the development of scientific knowledge. Methodology and sources. The emergence of world-system studies in the field of social science epistemology is seen as the third shift in problematics in the research program on the culture of the capitalist world-system. The network method was used to substantiate the choice of the Richard Edward Lee’s works as the main source for reconstructing the epistemological turn. Results and discussion. First, the world-system approach proposes to consider the model of production and reproduction of knowledge structures as an integral part of the capitalist world-system. The representatives of the world-system approach thus overcome the antinomy of «past-present» and view science as a sphere of culture within the recurring waves of capital expansion and cycles of world hegemony. From this perspective, they interpret the development of two lines of Cartesian dualism of nature and man, which, in the 19th century, became delineated in the form of the natural and the human sciences. Secondly, the world-system approach asserts that the social sciences, with their claim to objectivity and value neutrality, emerged in the 19th century as a solution to the internal contradictions of European culture, as a response to extreme versions of adaptation to the idea of progress of knowledge structures in the projects of conservatism and radicalism. Thirdly, the systemic decline of hegemony in the current cycle of the world-system is accompanied by a crisis of established structures of scientific knowledge. Conclusion. Research in the field of epistemology opens up prospects for the world-system problematization of the history of Western philosophy and science, sets the task of developing theoretical constructs to explain the dynamics of cultures and processes of cognition in semi-peripheral and peripheral zones of the world system, including Russia.

Authors: Sofia A. Khlynovskaya, Anna A. Izgarskaya

Direction: Philosophy

Keywords: world-system approach, culture, epistemology, disciplinary boundaries, hegemony

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