Causal Mechanisms of the Socio-Ethnic Conflicts within Academe of Russia, Ukraine, Canada, and the USA: Comparative Analysis

The paper we proposed for presentation at the XIX ISA Congress Session “Education at the Margins: Towards Liberation or Subordination?” deals with the causal mechanisms that produce and reproduce discontent, conflicts, and protest behavior within academe in Russia, Ukraine, Canada, and the USA. It is oriented toward comparative analysis of the everyday life practices and inter-ethnic interactions between the faculty members, administration, staff, and students in the respective countries.

The basic research questions are:

1) What are the causal social mechanisms that determine a likelihood of the ethnic/racial tensions and conflicts in the academe?

2) Is it possible to prevent, to control and/or to normalize such conflicts? What are the routines and techniques of the prevention and control?

The problem of the interethnic and international relations in the academic milieu cannot be treated only in the context of the clash of cultures (and associated meanings, value orientations, aesthetic judgements, etc.) connected to the national identity. It is required to highlight at least several possible sources of conflict: class, cultural, rural/urban, local /foreign. Each of these conflict-creating dynamics has a distinct structure and causal mechanisms.

In terms of methodology the paper is oriented towards: a) comparative perspective centering two strategies – qualitative and quantitative and using mixed methods research; b) methodological approaches progressed in Visual Sociology; c) computational social sciences converging most recent tactics of using computers’ and software’s potential as well as computational methods for studying social processes.

The paper is based on specific on data and empirical materials that have been obtained during three years of the field work organized and conducted by the International Research Laboratory TANDEM at St Petersburg State University in 2014-2017.