Political ethnography and Russian studies in a time of conflict
Journal: Post-Soviet Affairs
Year: 2022

As reliable and unfiltered access to Russia and Russians becomes a fraught issue for social scientists who wish to conduct surveys, focus groups, do ethnographies, or interview elite actors, the war presents scholars with an opportunity to reflect on questions of what data collection means, and on better communication between quantitative and qualitative scholars. Similarly, it forces us confront the extractive and colonial nature of knowledge production; the war reveals how social science has a