What Can the (Periodic) Lack of Interest in Eastern Europe Tell Us about Western Social Sciences?

Tomasz Zarycki, University of Warsaw

This paper addresses the neglect of Eastern Europe in Western social sciences not by advocating for the region's relevance, but by asking what this neglect reveals about Western social theory. The central argument is that Western social sciences engage with a given region primarily when it constitutes a real stake for the West—either when it grows competitive and autonomous, or when it enters dependence or Western control, generating demand for new paradigms of governance. The two types have distinct historical instances: the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the 1960s exemplify the first; the post-World War I settlement and the USSR's collapse exemplify the second. Currently, Eastern Europe is visible to Western politics and social sciences primarily through surveillance, reflecting Central Europe's dependence on the Western core. This sustains Orientalist schemas framing the region as inherently backward and prone to nationalist violence. Analyses of Central European populism and the war in Ukraine fit these frames, aiming not at grand theory but at practical management of cultural pathologies. The 1960s—specifically 1956–1968—are instructive: Eastern Europe attracted Western interest as a competing model of modernity and, for critical left-wing scholars, as a potential ally for emancipatory projects. The paper presents cases of social theorists from Poland and Hungary who gained traction in Western academic centers during this period, with examples from the post-communist transition. These patterns reveal how profoundly, if unwittingly, Western social science depends on geopolitical dynamics and participates in reproducing global power relations. Even critical scholarship gravitates toward research objects whose scale and resistance to Western capitalism imply potential challenge to Western dominance. Regions posing no such challenge—Central Europe being paradigmatic—are implicitly marked as incapable of contributing to general social theory, explaining why projects like Müller's "Global East" are unlikely to gain wider traction.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 12. Beyond the Periphery: Eastern Europe and the Complexities of Social and Political Transformation (II)