“Humanitarians” and “techies”: reflection on the peculiarities and effects of discursive practices

Antoshchuk, Irina Aleksandrovna
PhD in Cultural Sociology, Research Fellow, the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Senior Lecturer, Humanities and Social Sciences Center, MIPT University. Moscow, Russia
antoshchuk.ia@mipt.ru

“Humanitarians” and “techies”—is an easily recognizable and common cliché mobilized to state, rationalize and explain differences between people and activities, fields of knowledge and educational programs found in academia and beyond. By whom and how are these categories used at Phystech (MIPT University), where natural and technical sciences indisputably dominate organizationally and symbolically?
Reflecting on the discursive practices of students, lecturers, and researchers, I offer an overview of the situations when this cliche is used and reconstruct its meaning, try to trace the underlying social processes and potential effects.

Keywords: discursive practices, humanities in engineering and technical higher education, identity work