Social Science Research Council

“Designing a World Community: Science at Unesco, 1946-1973”

My work explores the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (Unesco) attempt to use technical expertise to construct a peaceful and prosperous world community during the quarter-century following World War II. At the close of the War, it appeared obvious that science and technology had made the entire world one interdependent society, but had done so with such speed that cultural and political structures lagged dangerously behind. Experts propounded two theories of how science and technology could contribute to the integration of economic, political and cultural patterns into a true world community: social engineering and functionalism. Social engineering promised that international support for social sciences would compensate for their relative immaturity and parochialism, thus enabling them to identify the values, institutional structures and political processes that were congenial to world community. Functionalism argued that attention to political forms and values only intensified ideological conflicts; instead, leaders should focus on solving mundane technical problems that crossed political boundaries to ease into existence functioning transnational communities.

My dissertation investigates sets of projects in both Unesco’s Social Sciences Department (e.g. the Race Program) and Natural Sciences Department (e.g. the Arid Zone project) that corresponded to these two strategies for marshalling science in the service of peace. Grounded in archival research at the UN Specialized Agencies (Unesco, FAO, ILO, WHO) and the papers of key scientists, research institutions and states, I explore the transformation of a predominately imperial into an international world order through the linked exportation of a traditionally European political institution (the nation state) and knowledge system (science) around the globe. In particular, my work tracks the effects of the Cold War, decolonization and the emerging imperative of economic development on Unesco’s programs and practices; the reconfiguration of the institutional matrix of NGOs, universities, foundations, and state bureaucracies through Unesco’s and the United Nations’ activities; and scientists’ struggles to balance multiple loyalties in order to participate in international programs.