Minority Epistemologies: Scientific Knowledge Production Practices in Hungarian Cultural Research in Transcarpathia and Slovakia

Abstract

This study is an anthropological examination of disciplinary knowledge production in minority contexts, focusing on Hungarian scholarship in Ukraine and Slovakia. Its central research question addresses how the social position of the Hungarian intellectual elite beyond the borders of Hungary—particularly in relation to their minority and ethnocultural status—shapes the epistemic practices of the respective communities, and how these, in turn, inform scientific practice and the formation of knowledge structures within the cultural sciences. The empirical basis of the analysis is provided by key minority and ethnonational institutions that structure Hungarian-language cultural research beyond the borders of Hungary. In Western Ukraine, these include the Ferenc Rákóczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian College of Higher Education in Berehove and the Faculty of Hungarian Philology and Natural Sciences at Uzhhorod National University. In Slovakia, the study focuses on the Ethnological Centre of the Forum Minority Research Institute in Komárno. The analysis covers the post-socialist period (1991–2021) and examines the scientific publication output of lecturers and researchers affiliated with these institutions. Drawing on the methodological tools and conceptual frameworks of the sociology of science and the anthropology of knowledge, the study investigates which research topics and analytical models—understood as legitimate questions, problem formulations, epistemic frameworks, and methodological approaches—have been prioritized by Hungarian minority scientific elites abroad. The aim of the study is to describe how these local patterns of knowledge production have been shaped over the past two decades by both disciplinary and extra-disciplinary factors, including broader social, political, and economic dynamics.