The Congresses of Russian Naturalists and Physicians and the making of academic communities in the Russian Empire the 1860s-1910s

• Autores: Marina Loskutova
• Localización: The Circulation of Science and Technology: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science. Barcelona, 18-20 November 2010 / coord. por Antoni M. Roca Rosell, 2012, ISBN 978-84-9965-108-8, págs. 1042-1049
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In the 19th century academic congresses, both national and international, became critical institutional means facilitating the traffic of knowledge. Since the ‘Great Reforms’ era scholars in the Russian empire set up two major periodic conventions –the Russian archaeological congresses and the congresses of Russian naturalists and physicians– that served as important sites of academic socialisation and exchange of knowledge. In the early years of the 20th century they were supplemented by a few minor conferences on applied geology, meteorology and applied entomology. The paper examines changing institutional affiliation of congress members (both scholars presenting their papers and their audience) and their places of residence, as these transformations reflected the changing understanding of ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ research, and the rise of professional middle-class strata in the provinces. It compares these processes across a number of disciplinary fields (life sciences, earth sciences, proto-social sciences), thus highlighting different roles played by university faculty, civil servants and professionals, major academic centres and provincial societies in structuring these fields of knowledge. Also the paper compares geographical configuration of emerging academic networks, exploring the impact of various regions and regional centres of research and education within the Russian empire. Finally, the paper examines the historical geography of congresses: it addresses the role of local field sites, leading local practitioners and provincial institutions in attracting the congresses to different urban locations, and considers the reception of congresses in local civic and intellectual context.