From Utopian One-worldism to Geopolitical Intergovernmentalism: UNESCO’s Department of Social Sciences as an International Boundary Organization, 1946-1955

World humanities - Towards an ontology of policy

“…Initially UNESCO was to be UNECO - without the ‘S’, and the conference in London of Ministers of Education from 45 allied countries was convened to discuss “proposals for an educational and cultural organisation of the United Nations” (UNESCO, 1945: 1). Indeed, it was not until during the 2-week conference that “science” was included as a central part of the new organisation’s remit (Wisselgren, 2017: 152). Paul Betts (2020: 316) notes that the atomic bomb, two of which the United States had by this point dropped on Japan, was “useful” for the argument to integrate science into the new organization’s brief - war and domination not far away even in this new period of ‘peace’, and lending urgency to the discussions.…”

“…UNESCO’s work in international science beyond STEM has had increased attention recently, for instance Per Wisselgren’s work focusing on the role of UNESCO and its ‘social scientific internationalism’. One aspect of this focuses on how social sciences became separate from ‘philosophy and humanistic studies’ to constitute two of UNESCO’s eight different programme sections (the others then being education, natural sciences, museums, libraries, arts and letters, and mass communication, Wisselgren, 2017: 154–156). In a chapter examining the career of Alva Myrdal, Director of the Office of Social Sciences in UNESCO from 1950 to 1955, Wisselgren quotes from a manuscript she prepared, entitled “The cost of national isolation in the social sciences”.…”