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Citizen, Academic, Expert, or International Worker? Juggling with Identities at UNESCO's Social Science Department, 1946–1955

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2013

Teresa Tomás Rangil
Teresa Tomás Rangil*
Affiliation:
Jesus College, University of Oxford E-mail: [email protected]
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Argument

This paper explores the links between the competing scientific, disciplinary, and institutional identifications of social scientists working for international organizations and the nature of the work produced in these establishments. By examining the case of UNESCO's Social Science Department from 1946 to 1955, the paper shows how the initial lack of organizational identification diminished the efficiency and productivity of the Department and slowed down the creation of an international system for research in the social sciences. It then examines how the elaboration of such identification resulted from a period of trial and error during which several national, academic, and scientific models were explored. The paper concludes that only the discourse of “moral sensitivity” kept the Department together at a time when disillusions regarding internationalism, the destabilization of the meaning of nation, and suspicion towards some Western disciplines rendered unacceptable the universalization of a single international social scientific identification.

Type
Research Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 61 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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