Wiener B.E. (2026) Constructivist reductionism by Evgeny Varshaver: where does his cognitive turn in the study of ethnicity take us? Istoricheskaya etnologiya [Historical Ethnology]. Vol. 11. No. 2: 235–251. https: ...

Текст статьи на сайте журнала URL: https://historicalethnology.org/news/2026-t11-n2-3/ (дата обращения 05.11.2026)

Abstract

The article disputes the theoretical constructs of sociologist Evgeniy Varshaver who studies ethnic phenomena. He claims that ethnical phenomena are constructed around ethnical categories and it is necessary to study the processes of categorization in order to comprehend these phenomena. Varshaver links his theoretical position to the cognitive turn in science. In line with radical constructivism, he believes that the cognitive turn consists of breaking with social groups as ontological objects and suggests focusing entirely on the study of categorization processes. However, there are other positions in social psychology and sociology that are critical of such a separation of mental operations from the social and historical practice. The weak point of Varshaver’s concept is its reliance on Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigms, which is poorly adapted to the social sciences and is outdated in a number of respects. Another weakness of Varshaver’s viewpoint is the separation of theories of ethnicity from the context in which they originated, and the failure to understand the connection between these theories and general sociological theories, as well as their philosophical roots. A more specific issue is affiliation with ethnic categories. Varshaver relies here on political scholar Kanchan Chandra, who believes that there is no reason to separate ethnic identity from other identities based on origin. Therefore, she classifies people united on different grounds as ethnic groups. Thus, Chandra, and following her, Varshaver, blur the understanding of ethnicity as related to groups in which the descendants of intra-group marriages have a stable identity, regardless of class, religious, social or other forms of identity, which can also be inherited, but are subject to changes in the first generation of descendants from intra-group marriages when they move to another social status, religious affiliation, class and other social commonalities.