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Competing Politics in Regionalizing the Social Sciences

UNESCO, CODESRIA, and the European Research Council
Les politiques concurrentes dans la régionalisation des sciences sociales. UNESCO, CODESRIA, et le Conseil européen de la recherche
Katja Castryck-Naumann
p. 153-180

Résumés

Cet article analyse la production de connaissances scientifiques de l’anthropologue et sociologue indienne Irawati Karve (1905-1970) dans le contexte de la décolonisation de l’Inde. J’éclaire ses efforts pour discuter les connaissances en sciences sociales validées au niveau international et pour les adapter aux questions et traditions d’enquête locales et nationales. À travers une analyse de la réception de son travail, qui comprend une critique acerbe de Louis Dumont, je discute de la façon dont les efforts de Karve ont été limités non seulement par un système international de validation principalement influencé par les chercheurs des institutions du Nord global, mais aussi par l’héritage colonial omniprésent en anthropologie. En considérant le cas de Karve comme un exemple de double contrainte entre les impulsions nationalisantes/indigénisantes dans la production du savoir scientifique et les inégalités mondiales dans la géopolitique de la science internationale, je réfléchis à la position difficile occupée par les sociologues et les anthropologues du Sud dans leur quête de décolonisation du savoir.

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  • 1 The most comprehensive work on the subject is Hoffmann, 2017; see also Zevounou, 2020; Mourre, 201 (...)

1In 1973 the Conseil pour le développement de la recherche en sciences sociales en Afrique (CODESRIA) was set up in Dakar. Its mission was the creation of a pan-African space of self-directed collaborative social science research to challenge (neo-)colonial conditions and the marginalization of research from the region in international knowledge production. This ambition makes CODESRIA particularly significant for the development of the social science field in Africa and beyond. Although studies are few, the historiography on this research council has addressed several aspects of its development; in particular, the programmatic ideas that were advanced during the almost fifty years of its existence with a special focus on the lasting intellectual and political impact of the group of scholars who set up CODESRIA, including Samir Amin, Herbert Onitiri, and Abdalla S. Bujra, among others.1

2I relate to this literature, although I want to add a perspective less concerned with the history of CODESRIA proper, but which situates it in the broader context of international social science politics. Concentrating on the formative phase of CODESRIA, my aim is to show that its founding should also be seen as a critical response, in fact a countermove, to the politics of UNESCO and its Department of Social Sciences (DSS). Since its establishment, the DSS, based in UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris, promoted the internationalization of social science research and documentation, not the least by initiating or supporting efforts towards new infrastructures for coordination. In the 1960s and 1970s the focus was on regional integration. The department sought to get involved, in fact taking the lead, in the founding of regional social science councils in Latin America, Africa, and Asia as well as in initiating a transregional dialogue between them.

  • 2 Only recently the history of the social sciences in eastern Europe has been studied in a comprehen (...)
  • 3 On the growing literature about scientific collaboration between eastern and western Europe during (...)

3Understanding the competing visions of the Paris-based organization’s regionalization and the rationale that guided CODESRIA enables us to comprehend more fully that building regional cooperation was not a consensual goal of internationalization, but a highly contested process. Recognizing the cleavages and issues over which confrontation emerged also helps to reconnect the South-North constellation with the development of the social sciences in eastern Europe, a topic which has so far received little attention in the literature.2 In 1963, a research council came into being in Vienna, initiated by Polish social scientists and like-minded scholars, which promoted collaboration between eastern and western European scholars at a time when the political divides of the Cold War impacted heavily on the scientific realm in Europe.3 Commonly called the Vienna Centre, its full name was the European Coordination Centre for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences. The scientific-political agenda of the center is in some ways strikingly similar to the one of CODESRIA. There might have been little direct exchange, but we will give an example of meeting points and tacit communication. Yet just recognizing their shared interests, which included the challenge of UNESCO’s DSS politics—albeit to different degrees—helps to reach a more global understanding of the international negotiations about the direction of the social sciences in the 1960s and 1970s, a period shaped by processes of decolonization as well as by the spirit of détente and the policy of peaceful coexistence in the Cold War confrontation. Both shifted the grounds on which UNESCO operated, also leading to new demands in the field of science policy to which DSS had to respond.

4The competing visions of the leading figures of the DSS, on the one hand, and of the initiators of CODESRIA and the Vienna Centre, on the other hand, centered on two critical questions. Firstly, would regionalization follow the government-anchored strategy pursued from Paris that was part and parcel to the DSS’s envisaged global architecture of the field; or would self-directed initiatives by scholars, academics, and intellectuals take the lead, with intellectuals forming non-governmental organizations for their respective regions? And secondly, would cross-regional exchanges between the emerging regional bodies be built and coordinated by the DSS, or would they arise from a transregional network not centered on and run through Paris, but rather animated by CODESRIA, the Vienna Centre, and other similar research councils (the best known and most influential of which is the Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO), established in 1967?

  • 4 Conflicts between French, British and US-American social scientists existed early on in and around (...)

5Who would take the lead in organizing regional cooperation and who would be in a position to initiate and influence transregional collaboration was not a technical-administrative question, but one through which asymmetric relations and marginalization in the field were negotiated, as it was inherited from the field’s Eurocentric origins and renewed through the evolving US-American dominance.4 At stake was the success or failure of a movement towards a decentering of international cooperation, which for most of the regional research councils was a raison d’être.

  • 5 The political decision making was the business of the member states and representatives, while in (...)

6The prime problem of DSS’s rootedness in diplomacy and its government-anchored regionalization—which arose from UNESCO being an intergovernmental institution5—was that it could not take into account that around the world, notably in the state-socialist countries of eastern Europe and in decolonized states of Africa and Asia, relations between the political elites and academia were complicated, often highly ambivalent—oscillating between a common belief in engaged sciences supporting the development of the respective political systems and heavy confrontations due to the suppression of autonomous scientific research. Whether DSS was aware of this tension is a different matter, but formally it had to respond to demands made by UNESCO’s members, including demands for support in regionalizing the social sciences. On the opposite side, quite a few scholars from decolonizing states in Africa were concerned about neocolonial dynamics in the government-planned cooperation under the auspices of UNESCO. Likewise, social scientists from the state-socialist countries in eastern Europe were critical of international work based primarily on official representatives of UNESCO members and on functionaries of the social science organizations in their countries, as these scholars saw themselves confronted with processes of politicization and efforts at political control. Relations between the political and scientific realm were complex in many parts of the world; at many places academic freedom and scholarly autonomy were more a mission than a reality.

7In the following, I zoom in on the international politics of establishing regional research cooperation by briefly outlining in the first part the work the DSS had done until the early 1960s and the challenges it faced thereafter in a changing world political context. This overview will end with the DSS’s support of the creation of the Centre de coordination des recherches et de documentation en sciences sociales desservant l’Afrique sub-saharienne (CERDAS) in 1974 at the request of some African states. CERDAS was meant to become a flagship project for the DSS’s work in Africa. Yet, and this will be the subject of the second part, it was set up at the very time when CODESRIA changed from being a loose conference of directors of social sciences research institutions into a regional coordination body with a distinct agenda. The relations between these two African councils have been tense from the start. This constellation is revealing for the different regionalization strategies that this article aims to highlight. The third part will introduce the Vienna Centre, established in 1961. Here, I want to highlight its similarities with the political ambitions and the operating modus of CODESRIA, which took shape a decade later. The last part will turn to a meeting organized by the DSS in 1976 where representatives from the research councils of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe were invited to discuss possibilities for inter-regional collaboration. It serves as an example for the demands for a decolonization of the international social sciences made by the representatives of CODESRIA, CLACSO, and others, as well as for the rejection of these demands. At the same time, it is also an example of a tacit East-West European dialogue. As we will see, the representative of the Vienna Centre explained the regionalization strategy that was pursued in the European context in a way supporting indirectly, though probably unmistakably for everyone involved, the approach and agenda of CODESRIA. This part will end by examining the ongoing tensions between CODESRIA and UNESCO up to the mid-1990s, as they show that the tensions between a top-down government-based and UNESCO-supported regionalization strategy and a scholarly bottom-up one long remained hard to mitigate.

Internationalizing the social sciences: UNESCO’s Department of Social Sciences

  • 6 Report of the Social Science Committee, Preparatory Commission of UNESCO, 1946, UNESCO Archives, p (...)
  • 7 On this and other aspects of the DSS program, see Maurel, 2010; Selcer, 2009; (2011), Lengyel, 198 (...)

8UNESCO’s Department of Social Sciences, charged with internationalizing the world of social sciences, developed an ambitious agenda early on: building the infrastructure for worldwide research and its planning. This institutional work had several aspects. First, comprised the organization of transnational scientific networks by setting up disciplinary associations for sociology, economy, political science, etc., which would be integrated into the International Social Science Council (1952).6 It also included the publication of international inventories and bibliographies, collecting information on periodicals, reference works, research institutions, etc., to be coordinated by the International Committee for Social Science Documentation (in 1950). Intellectually this organizational work epitomized the universalist belief in worldwide scientific collaboration which were to lead to a universally valid social theory laying the ground for global socio-economic development and a peaceful world order. And for many of UNESCO’s founding fathers, such work also ought to be based on liberal democracy and capitalism.7

  • 8 Marshall, 1965.

9Given the importance of social science research for negotiating the cornerstones of the knowledge order after WWII, it is not surprising that UNESCO was by no means alone operating in this domain. By the mid-1950s, more than a dozen international organizations took part in shaping the social sciences.8 However, UNESCO and its DSS played a substantial role in catalyzing institutional expansion for planning and coordination questions; including underlying ambitions for directing and controlling. Specific for its work was also that—unsurprisingly for an international organization and its secretariat—it was run through its members, sovereign nation-states, and their delegations. The DSS envisaged and co-established a model for research planning based on a division of labor between nationally organized disciplines and their international umbrella organizations on the one hand, and cross-disciplinary integration on the regional and international level on the other. Placing the DSS and the ISSC as its operating arm at the top of this hierarchical scheme recaptured the post-1945 international political order.

  • 9 Rangil, 2013.
  • 10 Agrawal, Aggarwal, 1988, 52-54; Elzinga, 1996; Lengyuel, 1986.

10While the DSS’s program concerning research topics and methodologies remained vague and contested due to internal competing identifications and interests9, its organizational agenda was put into practice from the start. Shortly after its founding, it collaborated in establishing centers, schools, or institutes in Athens, Teheran, Bogotá, and Dhaka, linking them with UNESCO. In 1956, the Research Center on Social Implications of Industrialization in Southern Asia (Calcutta) began its work, and up until 1969 centers in Tunis and Bamako came into being. At that time, the DSS was already engaged in initiating regional coordination points. This began with small offices in Cairo, New Delhi, and Havana, while with the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO, 1957), a training center was opened which sought to coordinate postgraduate programs in Latin America and was followed soon after by the short-lived research-oriented Centro Latinoamericano de Investigaciones en Ciencias Sociales (CENTRO, 1958).10

  • 11 See on the wider process Muschik, 2022.
  • 12 Contrary, for example, to the hope that African scholars would opt in first instance for participa (...)

11In the years to come regional research planning would become a priority. In 1960 the UN had called for a “decade of development”,11 which went along with an increased attention to processes of decolonization and the decolonized countries, which increased membership also on UNESCO. This had a direct impact on the DSS: it brought unexpected possibilities for expanding the international social sciences structures into the newly decolonizing countries, especially since these approached UNESCO seeking support for the postcolonial transformations of their higher education and research systems. Yet, what many at the time imagined to be a good match of interests turned out to be an ambivalent process. The integration of the new members from Africa and Asia into the established global architecture was demanding as it required, among others, the existence of national disciplinary organizations and coordinating bodies. It did not take long until conflicting ideas became apparent.12

  • 13 On the competition between FLASCO and CLACSO and UNESCO’s role in Latin America see Beigel, 2016.

12From the 1960s onwards, several regional bodies were channeled through UNESCO. Already before UNESCO became engaged in regionalizing projects in Asia and Africa, the general assembly of 1962 had adopted a resolution, presented by delegations from Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Poland, and Yugoslavia, that charged the ISSC with setting up a European-wide social science regional council, to which we will turn in a later section. It might be that the Vienna Centre became known in UNESCO-circles and was used by others as blueprint. In any case, a few years later—at the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the above-mentioned Center on Social Implications of Industrialization in Southern Asia (by then the UNESCO Research Centre on Social and Economic Development in Southern Asia, Delhi), the Indian Council of Social Science Research contacted UNESCO requesting a grant to convene the first Asian-wide conference on teaching and research in social sciences. It took place in 1973 and saw the setting up of the Asian Association of Social Science Research Councils (AASSREC). At this time there existed already a second regional institution in Latin America, the Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO, 1967).13

13The connections all these institutions had with UNESCO and DSS differ. Outlining the trajectories of these respective entangled histories is beyond the scope of this article. It must suffice to note that during the formative periods, the key actors of CLACSO kept a strategic distance from Paris to preserve their autonomy, while the initiators of the Vienna Centre strategically used UNESCO to secure the needed political support in the Cold War-divided European context for their interests. This is a reminder that UNESCO was both an actor in international science policy as well as an arena for the agendas of other players in this domain.

  • 14 On the main objectives of CERDAS see “Impact Evaluation”, CERDAS, 1986, UNESCO Archives, 125 EX/IN (...)

14The history of regional organization in Africa had another twist. Co-operation in Africa south of the Sahara was initiated by some African member states, who approached UNESCO. After negotiations back and forth, in 1972 the General Assembly asked René Mahou as General Secretary to lend UNESCO’s assistance in establishing a regional body. During 1973, ISSC and DSS, which were charged with the implementation, organized consultations in several African states, as well as with the permanent delegations of member states in Paris, and formulated a set of criteria for a prospective Centre for the Coordination of Social Science Research and Documentation for Africa South of the Sahara. Taking up an offer by the Republic of Zaire (today Democratic Republic Congo), Mahou prepared an agreement between UNESCO and the government in Kinshasa to establish CERDAS. It could draw on premises, equipment and furniture, and service personnel provided by the government of Zaire and it operated through a board of directors with government representatives from Zaire, Togo, and Senegal as well with DSS employees.14 Yet at the time when CERDAS was set up as intergovernmental body, another regional collaboration in Africa had been on the way for about ten years, culminating in transforming CODESRIA into a research council in 1973.

CODESRIA’s formative period: a critical response to UNESCO’s regionalization policy

  • 15 The international history of CODESRIA also included the role of its international donors, especial (...)
  • 16 See Zevounou, 2020, who draws on the works by Manière, 2012; and Cissé, 2018.

15CODESRIA’s history has already been reconstructed in its African dimensions and in view of its close ties with CLACSO. While I highlight the UNESCO-related context15, I briefly recall the wider background of CODESRIA’s scientific-political intervention, which must be seen in efforts to rebuild the higher education systems and academia in West Africa within the post-colonial transformation of the early 1960s. France’s attempts to contain this expression of a pan-African spirit through a series of cooperation agreements that restructured higher education in its former colonies spurred a movement for an “African” future of the French-speaking universities. It caused, among others, the Conseil africain et malgache pour l’enseignement supérieur to be established by ministers of education in West Africa and Madagascar. Yet this intergovernmental body pursued an ambivalent political strategy, supporting what was called an “Africanization” of academia while leaning strongly on French institutional models.16

  • 17 West, 1965; Hoffmann, 2017; Mkandawire 1988.
  • 18 Zevounou, 2020.

16A more immediate context was the experience of marginalization. The Rockefeller Foundation had invited a dozen directors of African-based institutes concerned with social and economic research to Bellagio (Italy) in 1964 to review economic research that had emerged in postcolonial Africa and to discuss future cooperation. Amongst the participants only two had neither French nor British origins: Herbert Onitiri, at the time director of the Nigerian Institute of Economic and Social Research (NISER) at the University of Ibadan, and Omer Osman, then dean of the Faculty of Economics and Social Studies at the University of Khartoum.17 In 1967, in response to this experience, which mirrored the lasting grip of coloniality in research, and seeking to initiate self-directed exchange, Onitiri organized a conference of directors of economic and social research institutes at Khartoum, which brought together African scholars from across the continent. This conference was the first of a series of meetings, which were soon abbreviated as CODESRIA.18 Thus the acronym first referred to an informal event-driven organization whose only stable institution was a documentary center.

  • 19 Bayle, 2015.
  • 20 Ibid.
  • 21 Zevounou, 2020.

17While these conferences were taking place, CLACSO aimed to connect with African scholars and in 1970 invited to this end leading figures of research institutions from Latin America and Africa to Canada for a meeting devoted to development issues19; amongst them were Onitiri and Dudley Seers (Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex). Seers was a key person in the emerging field of development studies and a scholar who approached it from a political-economic perspective—shared ground given CLACSO’s work on dependency-related arguments—and who was devoted to linking Latin American and African scholars. One result of the gathering was the establishment of a liaison commission at CLACSO, headed by its general secretary Enrique Oteiza, which prepared a follow-up conference in Nairobi a year later to discuss specifically African development problems. A third conference took place in Dakar in 1972, together with directors of research centers in western Europe, comparing African and Latin American development strategies. These gatherings consolidated ties between CLACSO and CODESRIA, and on these grounds, among other initiatives, an exchange was planned for the years 1974-1976, funded by the Institut africain de développement économique et de planification (IDEP) in Dakar, which was directed in the early 1970s by Samir Amin. According to Paola Andrea Bayle, CLACSO circles knew that UNESCO was busy setting up CERDAS because it was approached by Paris to consider potential exchanges with the new institution20; and Lionel Zevounou notes that Amin and Onitiri were even involved in these consultations.21

  • 22 See Hoffmann, 2017, 101-113.
  • 23 Bujra, 1994, 143.

18It was the making of CERDAS with support from UNESCO that led to the decision to formalize CODESRIA as a research council in 1973 and to broaden its agenda—not limited to conferencing and archiving activities, but charged with the production of original research on a broad range of themes, and of integrating and steering scholarship in the whole of Africa.22 Onitiri and Abdalla S. Bujra (University of Dar es Salaam) who had also been invited by ISSC and DSS to participate in the preparatory meetings of CERDAS in Lomé in 1971, recalled later, that they were “aware and concerned at the potentially negative impact CERDAS could have on the social science researchers in Africa”; their main concern was “that if the UNESCO initiative remained unchallenged, then there was great danger that establishment, i.e. governments, would in effect gain control over social science in Africa. The major worry was over academic freedom and the prospect of a legitimizing rather than influencing role of social scientists.”23 Thandika Mkandawire, later general secretary of CODESRIA, voiced this perception vis-à-vis CERDAS in stronger words:

  • 24 Quoted from Hoffmann, 2017, 107f; excerpt from an interview the author had with Mkandawire in Joha (...)

There was an attempt by the US and UNESCO to set up a counter-CODESRIA – CERDAS. It was based in Kinshasa. At that time Mobuto wanted to pour money into that. And they were trying to argue that African governments would know something about it, would have membership in it. We thought we had to react to that political fact, to argue that CODESRIA is the pan-African organization. We saw this as an attempt to split Anglophones and Francophones…24

  • 25 Ibid.

19The attempt did not work, according to Mkandawire, “[f]or many reasons”. “One reason is that our governments are not tolerant anyway, so if you set up a council that a government is running, it won’t be free, it won’t attract much attention to researchers.”25

  • 26 Amin, 2006, 222.
  • 27 Zenouvou, 2020; on the aspect of data imperialism see: Mkandawire, 1993, 15.

20The quotations speak for themselves, illustrating plainly that CERDAS, and with it UNESCO, was opposed by CODESRIA’s leading group because of the government-anchored regionalization policy they embodied and pursued. To prevent the expected impact of CERDAS and the marginalization of its own scholarly-driven regional work, Onitiri, Amin and Bujra drafted a charter for CODESRIA that transformed it in 1973 into a research council, modelled along the lines of CLACSO26, namely as a non-governmental and pan-continental organization. In this form, CODESRIA would operate on equal footing vis-à-vis CERDAS in the nascent group of regional social science organizations. The non-governmental character was understood as a forceful alternative to state-centric collaboration and as a strategy to secure CODESRIA’s independence. The pan-African approach sustained this aim. Yet its origins reach back to CODESRIAS’s beginnings as a conference-based meeting point for African scholars. To counter the influence of the former colonial powers on and in universities and research institutes, CODESRIA sought to establish an intellectual arena which would bring academics, researchers, and intellectuals from the anglophone, arabophobe, francophone, and lusophone parts of the continent into a dialogue over the diverse methodological approaches and disciplinary roots they represented, and which would also unite the different thought collectives—Marxist-, pan-African-, Third World-, and nationalist-oriented scholars and thinkers. The larger aim was to create an epistemic community able to transcend language-related, cultural, and political separation for the sake of social science research on African developments based on realities in Africa. This research was conceived as a means to question theory-making in western Europe and the US versus the relegation of African scholars to deliverers of data, and to critique “Western” African Studies—a combination intended to guide the way towards a decolonialization of knowledge production in the social sciences.27

  • 28 On UNECA, see Banks, 2022; on the tedious work of giving the economic interests of the newly decol (...)
  • 29 Zevounou, 2020; Mourre, 2019; Hoffmann, 2020, 108.
  • 30 Hoffmann, 2020, 108, quoting Bujra, 2003.

21Its non-governmental status and the pan-African approach were crucial to secure the autonomy CODESRIA needed to pursue its agenda. Yet its independence depended also on the decision of where to establish its headquarters. Until 1973 IDEP served as CODESRIA’s depository center and also provided some funding. Some saw this linkage as problematic since IDEP had been created by the UN General Assembly in 1963 and served as a subsidiary body of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). Both IDEP and UNECA were under constant pressure and criticism from other parts of the UN, dominated by the US-American government and the policy of the World Bank.28 Therefore a more neutral space than the offices of IDEP seemed desirable. But options were limited if unsympathetic states in Africa were to be avoided. Moving to Lagos was considered, yet it could have involved the danger of being within reach of the Rockefeller Foundation. Dar es Salaam in the socialist Tanzania, another option, could have brought CODESRIA under pressure of Nyerere’s political goals. In this situation, Amin approached Léopold Sédar Senghor, president of Senegal, aware of the latter’s neo-colonial politics. Indeed, behind Senghor’s offer to house CODESRIA was political calculation, not beneficent thinking. In 1968 Senghor had violently suppressed a student strike at the University of Dakar, which had requested among others an “Africanization” of the university. Students and scholars saw this as a targeted move not only against the demands for a thorough decolonization of state and society, but against a transnational network of African universities in Makerere, Dar es Salaam, and Ibadan where Marxist-, pan-African- and “Third-World”-oriented scholars had the lead. To contain the explosive power of his move against the students, which resonated in the academic world at large, Senghor proposed hosting CODESRIA, which in his calculation would provide the academics a sort of playground and prevent their further radicalization.29 The solution was a compromise—CODESRIA’s headquarters moved to Dakar, yet to the offices of IDEP. It was hoped that the organization would be able to recruit a fulltime executive secretary and establish the secretariat as a separate legal entity; but for the time being, the secretariat would be paid by IDEP, on a loan, to be repaid once CODESRIA had raised enough resources.30

22I stressed in this brief outline of CODESRIA’s formative phase the origins of its non-governmental character and pan-African approach—the first resulting from an opposition against the regionalization policy of UNESCO’s DSS which was based on state-support and led to the setup of CERDAS. CODESRIA’s pan-African agenda had its background in the hope that bringing the diversity of social sciences from across the whole of Africa into dialogue and joint action would lead to knowledge production forceful enough to decolonize the international social sciences. I also highlighted the important issue of securing CODERSIA’s intellectual independence, not only by means of building it as non-governmental institution but also in terms of decisions regarding the location and operation of its headquarters. I will also highlight these dimensions in the next part, introducing the Vienna Centre. One interesting line to bring these two research councils into relation would be to look at the role of Marxist approaches, which were prominent in both institutions, yet in a way that would not shatter the often-fragile cooperation across the divided regions. This, however, remains an issue for future research.

Vienna Centre

  • 31 See footnote 4.
  • 32 Górny, 2011, 111; Kula, 2010.
  • 33 On Schaff, see Montanari, 2012.

23The first discussions on the establishment of a body integrating European social sciences took place in the UNESCO Secretariat in 1960, initiated by Adam Schaff, Stein Rokkan, Kazimierz Szczerba-Likiernik, and others. The latter, a Polish sociologist, was at that time head of the DSS but would move to BIRISPT31 in 1961, and later become the secretary general of the ISSC. Rokkan was of Norwegian origin, though trained in sociology in the US. He became director of the ISSC, promoting comparative studies, and in the 1970s president of the International Sociological Association. Schaff had a less straightforward career path, not the least since he became controversial during his academic career in Poland. Of Polish origins, he had studied law and economics at the École libre des sciences politiques in Paris and philosophy in Warsaw and Moscow during the interwar period; he received his doctorate in Moscow. Returning after the war to Poland in 1948, he was awarded the first chair in Marxist philosophy at the University of Warsaw, after which his academic stature, as well as his standing in the Communist Party climbed steadily. He quickly gained influence and received political support for his efforts at establishing a Marxist perspective on Polish history and society.32 Established as a Marxist thinker and philosopher, his career path was also shaped by the changing ability of the Communist Party to control the social sciences and philosophy. In his writings from the 1960s, he supported less orthodox positions, and in 1968 he was dismissed from his teaching post and removed from his leading positions in the Communist Party (he was later also excluded). Because of his international standing, however, he was able to leave Warsaw first for the University of Princeton and later for the University of Vienna, where he was given an honorary position as professor of social philosophy.33 In that position, he could devote his energy fully to the research council he had co-initiated and which he directed for about twenty years starting in 1963.

  • 34 On the development of the Vienna Centre, see “Report of Meeting 28.11.1960. Re: A proposed Europea (...)

24The main reason for proposing what would become the Vienna Centre was to overcome the Cold War East-West divide which separated the social sciences in Europe, and to work toward a pan-European understanding of social problems and challenges on each side.34 In a larger sense, the Vienna Centre arose in the context of détente and the policy of peaceful coexistence of the early 1960s in which the integration of western and eastern European research seemed possible.

  • 35 Szalai, Petrella, 1977, ix.
  • 36 See, for this phrase, among others, the report on the inspection of the Vienna Centre by UNESCO in (...)
  • 37 Schaff, 1988.
  • 38 [Castryck]-Naumann, 2018.

25Another motive of the initiators was to Europeanize the international social sciences. In the early 1960s scholars from the US dominated the field. Their access to funding had given them control over field operations and coding in each country. In Europe, this was perceived as “American data imperialism,” leading to “a variety of distortions: too many of the questions were phrased and too much of the analysis was carried out in ignorance of the cultural intricacies and socio-political realities of each of the systems covered.”35 The Vienna Centre came into being as a joint effort of east-central and northwestern European social scientists to establish a Europe-wide regional collaboration directed against the American hegemony in the field. Schaff, Rokkan, and Szczerba-Likiernik did the necessary political networking and negotiations, to ensure that the 1972 UNESCO General Assembly adopted a resolution presented by delegations from Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Poland, and Yugoslavia, giving the responsibility for establishing regional collaboration to the ISSC. In May 1963, the council implemented the resolution, and in early 1964, the Austrian government and UNESCO reached an agreement based on the country’s neutrality that the center would be in Vienna. Although the Vienna Centre came into being in a similar political decision process as CERDAS, it differed organizationally. It was set up as a non-governmental organization and its autonomous operation was secured by its organizational structure and principles of operation. The organizational chart was simple, consisting of the director’s committee and a fairly small administrative and technical staff in the secretariat. Membership was restricted to individuals, neither research institutions nor governmental bodies could become members. The center was established as a coordinating agency, not a research institute—it was concerned with research planning. Its primary function was to serve as a platform for initiating cooperation of scholars from leading European institutions, which had (in UN terminology) “different social and economic structures”.36 To this end, the center initiated multinational teams of scholars—with an equal share of East-West participation. These teams would be led by scientific directors, again in equal parts coming from eastern and western Europe. Although the director’s committee played an instrumental role in proposing topics for joint research, formally, and often originally, the suggestions came from interested scholars who themselves chose the collaborators of the project they wanted to realize in cross-border teamwork. The directing committee decided only if a project proposal would be accepted and supported intellectually by the center. The research itself was conducted at the institutes at which the involved scholars was based, which implied that the necessary funding came from these institutes. From time to time, the directing committee received financial support from governments and UNESCO, but this was used only for the operation of the secretariat. Thus, the Vienna Centre was in fact primarily an initiator of European-wide collaborative projects—not so much in content but in terms of the formal requirements regarding project composition (East-West balance), and it served as an institutional anchor point for the projects. In other words, it operated as a non-governmental institution linking scholars and research institutes across Europe.37 This organizing principle was crucial for the later success of the center, reflected in the fact that nineteen research projects were initiated in the first decade. Researchers from at least four to six, and sometimes even up to twenty countries, took part in these projects. By 1972, the network coordinated from Vienna extended to 216 European research institutes, including 165 from eastern Europe as well as 22 from other parts of the world.38

  • 39 Garcia del Solar, “Inspection Report”, op. cit.; Statutes of the Vienna Centre (published in Petre (...)
  • 40 Petrella, Schaff, 1973, 100-105.

26At the heart of these research collaborations was the advancement of social science methods towards a comparative social science methodology which could explain the differences in the ideologies and socio-economic systems in Europe (and beyond) with the ultimate goal to establish a general theory of development based not on the Eurocentric origins of the field but on contemporary studies in which scholars from the divided region took part on equal footing.39 The cooperation across the East-West divide brought together different and, in fact, rival values, research orientations, and practices, sparking confrontations and challenging ideological ambitions. Competing agendas, vocabularies, and geopolitical rationales clashed, tensions arose, and efforts at concrete collaborative research projects were derailed.40 Nevertheless, within the Vienna Centre, scholars from the divided Europe learned about one another, and this triggered the circulation of knowledge across the continent. The autonomy of the center was essential for its success, and here the role of Vienna as seat for its headquarters was a deliberate decision. Although the Austrian government had proposed to host the center; it did not pay for it. The reason for establishing the center in Vienna was that Austria was a politically neutral country and its capital was therefore attractive for international organizations and networks who wanted to operate from the most neutral ground possible.

Organizing inter-regional cooperation in the social sciences: conflicting viewpoints, tacit dialogues, and ongoing tensed relations

27In 1974, the general conference of UNESCO set its future goals as further developing the social sciences in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, but above all, attention should now be devoted to strengthening inter-regional cooperation. This was supposed to be initiated, among others, at a meeting of experts in August 1976, organized by the DSS and ISSC to review the situation of the fields in “developing” countries and regions, and to assess possibilities for cooperation. This initiative failed to a large extent; it is nevertheless instructive. It shows the considerable tensions and disagreements between representatives from African, Asian, Latin American, and Arab contexts on the one hand, and the DSS and ISSC on the other. The latter gave only a minimal response to the former’s concerns—their criticism of the Eurocentrism of the international social sciences and the asymmetrical relationships therein. Yet it also demonstrates the unequal dealing on UNESCO’s part with CERDAS and CODESRIA. In preparation of the meeting, CERDAS, CLACSO, AASSREC, the Centre for Social Science Research and Documentation for the Arab Region (Cairo), the Vienna Centre, and the European Association of Development Research and Training Centers, had been asked to submit reports. I found no signs in the archive that CODESRIA was also approached; and the publication that included the reports does not contain a contribution by it. These reports were sent to the ISSC, which provided a comprehensive comment. The discussions at the meeting were based on this collection of papers. It remains open how the participants of the meeting were chosen, as representative of several other institutions took part. Amongst them was Burja from CODESRIA who was appointed the chairman of the meeting, assisted by the co-chairmen Schaff and Francisco Delich (CLACSO). I read this appointment as a mere symbolic recognition of CODESRIA, and as we will see, Schaff had written the report on the Vienna Centre in a manner that tacitly addressed this constellation.

  • 41 The reports, list of participants, and agenda are accessible in the UNESCO archive and in publishe (...)

28Before coming to this, I will briefly discuss the reports submitted by CERDAS, CLACSO and AASSREC as they reveal a strong skepticism regarding inter-regional cooperation at the time and clarify the conditions under which they would participate in future collaboration. They also bring to light the authoring organizations’ disagreement with the role the DSS and ISSC conceived for themselves, acting as clearing house and central knot.41

  • 42 Roy, R., 1977, “Social Science Cooperation in Asia”, in UNESCO, Inter-Regional Cooperation, UNESCO (...)
  • 43 Roy, “Social Science Cooperation in Asia”, op. cit., 21.

29Ramashray Roy, Secretary General of AASSREC, painted a discouraging picture of the state of the field in Asia, blaming ongoing colonial practices and calling for the indigenization of knowledge production. “Indigenization” was used for different purposes. While it was a strategy to de-universalize social science research, it was also a strategy by scholars from the decolonizing countries to claim positions for themselves in the orbit of UNESCO’s internationalism. Yet in the context of the expert meeting, the plea for indigenization was used, too, to demand that inter-regional relations not be conceived in a top-down manner from Paris offices, but emerge from consultation between the research councils amongst each other. After decolonization, Roy continued, the international social sciences developed within the “asymmetry of the transnational system”; theories from the industrialized countries served as a universal model, while in fact they were derived from the cultural traditions and historical experiences of western Europe and the US, and thus were detached from the realities of Asian contexts.42 It was necessary, Roy claimed, “to provide for the much needed corrective to the deficiencies in the dominant paradigms of research [and] to transform the centre-peripheric relationship that exists now into a polycentric world of social scientists.”43 In his conclusion, Roy insisted that inter-regional interactions at this point would only serve to reinforce the existing dependencies of the South.

  • 44 Oteiza, E., 1977, “The Latin American Experience and Inter-Regional Cooperation in the Social Scie (...)
  • 45 Oteiza, “The Latin American Experience…”, op. cit., 30.

30Enrique Oteiza, who had written the report for CLACSO, was also negative about the planned inter-regional networking, albeit with different arguments. He emphasized the growing cooperation in Latin America, with which a greater sovereignty had been achieved, and called for a fundamental shift. The exchange between the so-called “backward” and “developed” countries had been shaped by “academic imperialism, lack of symmetry or unbalanced flow of exchange, scientific dependence and one-way transfers of knowledge, wrong procedures for the definitions of research priorities and the irrelevance and inadequacy of training outside the region.”44 He also pointed to the low level of cooperation among Asian, African and Latin American scholars; colonial connections and the marginalization in the international structure had created center-periphery networks. He saw a need for change in the missing exchange between scholars from the “Third World” and the socialist countries in Europe. His conclusions were as clear as Roy’s: if there were international resources for initiating closer exchanges, then these should be used to promote contact between scholars from non-Western regions and for their interchange with eastern European social scientists; and not for bi-lateral connections running through the DSS and ISSC.45

  • 46 Bongoy, M., 1977, “Social Science Cooperation in Africa”, in UNESCO, Inter-Regional Cooperation, U (...)
  • 47 Ibid, 36 f.

31Mpekesa Bongoy, head of CERDAS, submitted a similar view. Social science research in Africa was established as an offshoot of the colonial centers in order to maintain their power. The political unrest after independence had delayed the development of Africa’s own structures in the fields of science. But Bongoy believed that something else was decisive: “neo-colonialist forces have often encouraged and taken advantage of the trouble situations in order to infiltrate into Africa and consolidate certain colonial structures with interest outside the continent.”46 Some countries had been pushed to cooperate in development aid programs with the former colonial powers, which largely perpetuated existing center-periphery relations. Bongoy closed with a clear call: For cooperation between Africa and the industrialized world, rules had to be established that ensured an even distribution of costs and clarified the type and wider goals of joint studies. Otherwise, one risked falling back into scientific neo-colonialism.47

  • 48 UNESCO Secretariat, 1977, “Priorities for Social Science Research in Developing Countries”, in UNE (...)
  • 49 Ibid., 71.

32These three reports, alongside others from representatives of CODESRIA and from the Middle East (for which no regional body existed at that time) formed the basis for a responsive statement by the DSS. Its authors emphasized that the UNESCO Secretariat expected effective inter-regional cooperation first and foremost from the intergovernmental bodies—which was an open affront against the goal and efforts of the Vienna Centre, CODESRIA and CLACSO to create the utmost distance from politically bounded institutions.48 The answer to the request to develop indigenous social sciences was also ambivalent at best. On the one hand, UNESCO supported this trend and recognized that international research policy must address the specific concerns of the regions. Indigenous resources and local researchers working on locally relevant topics were acknowledged as prerequisites for culture- and context-sensitive research. On the other hand, the DSS made it clear that it does not engage directly in the advancement of fields in Africa, Asia, and Latin America but in the creation of a worldwide research coordination infrastructure along common programmatic lines that would “create a universal scientific language and universal principles of a nature to render different scientific propositions translatable and acceptable by the communis opinio doctorum.”49 It was at least admitted that this expectation might be unrealistic and contradictory.

  • 50 Friedman, S., 1977, “The Developing Countries and Inter-Regional Cooperation in the Social Science (...)
  • 51 Franz, 1969; Franz, 1973.

33The reaction of the Secretary General of the ISSC, Samy Friedman, who had been invited to comment on the reports of the regional research councils, rejected the latter even more strongly and countered their objections in five points. By referring to colleagues in Europe and the US who also criticized established theoretical work, he refuted Roy’s argument that existing theories were unsuitable for developments in large parts of the world. He dealt with Bongoy’s problematization of neocolonial trends under the sub-heading “ideological slant” with a lengthy quote from Bongoy’s report and without any further remark. On the issue of unequal inter-regional relationships and lasting dependencies, he pointed out that these had already been addressed on various occasions. Finally, he pointed at Syed Hussein Alatas, who was later a prominent voice in postcolonial studies alongside Edward Said and Ranajit Guha. Friedman argued that while Alatas had earlier called for a fundamental methodological renewal of the field, he more recently pleaded for an adaption of Western models, quoting Alatas as follows: “their generally valid universal aspects have simply to be separated from their particular association with Western values.”50 For Friedman, the concerns of Roy, Oteiza, and Bongoy emerged from problems regarding the aftermath of a past colonial situation and were therefore of limited relevance for planning the future. Researchers in developing countries needed to realize that dependencies were changeable and that regional and supra-regional cooperation should inform and guide national infrastructure development. Indigenization, from his point of view, runs the risk of falling into the troubled waters of nationalism, chauvinism, and the primacy of applied studies. Concluding, Friedman found the reports from the representatives of the regional research councils an inadequate basis for the goal of the meeting and suggested that further planning for inter-regional coordination should be based on more suitable plans from the DSS.51 In his view, cooperation is best built via the international disciplinary associations, even if these had so far shown reluctance concerning the plea for indigenization.

  • 52 “Inter-Regional Cooperation in the Social Sciences. Final Report of the Meeting”, UNESCO, Paris, 2 (...)
  • 53 We only know that from the DSS the five people were present at the meeting, including V. Mshvenier (...)
  • 54 “Inter-Regional Cooperation in the Social Sciences. Final Report of the Meeting”, op. cit., p. 9; (...)

34Friedman’s response deserves attention, as it set the tone for the final report of the expert meeting and illustrates his refusal of the criticism brought forward by Roy, Oteiza, Bongoy and others. It recognized the colonial origins of the social sciences in the “Third World,” as well as the persistent dependencies. It also acknowledged the dominance of institutional and conceptual models from Europe and the US as factors delaying qualitative change toward post-colonial research—especially in Africa. In essence, however, these concerns were presented as issues that had to be met primarily by scholars in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. At the same time, the report limited their proactive participation in any inter-regional cooperation. The DSS and ISSC wanted to implement a set of pre-formulated research priorities by means of inter-regional coordination rather than arriving at a joint program in an open bottom-up discussion. The report showed a strong inclination toward a universal format of social science research. It saw the dominance of Western social scientists as a problem, but hardly recognized the necessity for fundamental change in the theories produced by these scholars. Accordingly, the international social sciences needed to become more pluralistic, but only under the condition that the aims and methods of the social sciences were the same everywhere and only the problems under study differed.52 The authors of the report (their names do not appear53) expressed a desire to eliminate imbalances created by the fact that the “West” would deliver “ready-made conceptual models, theoretical frameworks, research techniques [...] whereas the flow in the reverse direction [was] the raw data.”54 However, the steps the representatives from the non-Western region advocated to this end was relegated to the need for a quantitative expansion of the education and research systems outside of Europe and the US. Indigenization of research bore the danger of provincialism and national orientations, and developing social sciences in the previously colonized parts of the world Europe should be integrated into international research planning to prevent this risk. The social sciences, the report claimed, had already become a polycentric world in which the fear of intellectual hegemony is groundless.

  • 55 Dufoix, 2021.

35The way in which global asymmetries in knowledge production and universalistic theory building were dealt with in the final report speaks volumes. Individual aspects of this constellation were recognized, yet its structural problems and consequences for the future internationalization of the social sciences as pursued by UNESCO remained unacknowledged. The participants from the DSS and ISSC rejected the criticism voiced by the representatives from Asia, Africa, and Latin America whose reports pointed at the universalist outlook imbuing UNESCO’s program for an international social science infrastructure and demanded a self-directed development of “their” social sciences. Likewise, the refusal of inter-regional cooperation, if it would be planned and pre-structured by the center of UNESCO’s social science orbit alone, was not taken seriously. This attitude was a major factor in the eventual failure of the networking initiative, and it is remarkable. In addition, a notion of development departing from older diffusionist ideas and focusing on endogenous development had become prominent within UNESCO. This shift did not imply a “withering away from universalism and an embracement of particularity”; it was rather based on the belief that “the more endogenous the development, the more universal it can be.”55

36At the expert meeting one can also observe a silent transfer of experiences and institutional solutions from eastern Europe that addressed problems with which the other research councils, especially CODESRIA and CLACSO, had also dealt.

Experiences from the European Research Council and a tacit dialogue

  • 56 Schaff, A., 1977, “Social Science Cooperation in Europe”, in UNESCO, Inter-Regional Cooperation, U (...)

37Adam Schaff, head of the Vienna Centre, seems to have anticipated the skepticism of his colleagues from overseas. His report on the Vienna Centre and the European experiences with regional cooperation contained several proposals that addressed the challenges his colleagues, especially those from Africa, faced in terms of fostering cooperation in their regions. Schaff stressed that it had been crucial for the Vienna Centre to transcend the political divides in Europe and to include scholars from all parts of the region in the activities it initiated and supported. He underlined that only projects that represented scholars from both sides of the Iron Curtain were accepted; and that such a divides-crossing orientation, integrating the entire region could “serve as a model in promoting similar initiatives in international co-operation.” Important mechanisms for preventing conflict were the “rigorous principle of strict equilibrium of influences of the East and the West […] to avoid suspicion, and possibility of the political or ideological domination of the Centre by one side”, while in addition, the composition of the board of directors was based on the principle that the same number of people would be assigned from each side, and “that the opposition on the part of any member has in fact been treated as a veto.” 56 These and other internal regulations were meant to ensure the “international character of the Centre, to prevent it from becoming a national institution”.

38For this, Schaff continued, it was crucial that the center was established as an expert body rather than an intergovernmental organization, as a coordinating agency, not a research institute, and that strictly equal participation from both sides in the research committees of the center was anchored in the statutes. Moreover, the international character of the work was to be preserved by funding from all involved research institutions.

39Schaff’s explanation that the great differences in the degree of institutionalization and professionalization of the social sciences in Europe were taken seriously, and that the national fields that were just beginning to develop were explicitly invited to take part in the center, are two of the many signs in the report that the author was aware of the challenges experienced in other parts of the world.

40In addition, Schaff outlined possible forms of cooperation with the African and Latin American research councils, continuing, amongst others, to share experiences, train staff, and cooperate on shared scientific interests, for instance, regarding the future of rural communities or the issue of urban growth. Existing transcontinental cooperation with scholars from Japan, Mexico, and the US had already shown, Schaff ended his report, the energizing and intellectual potential of such cooperation, and the experience should be continued. At the time of the expert meeting, it had already become apparent that CODESRIA had a stronger profile and enjoyed much greater recognition in the region than CERDAS. In this context, Adam Schaff’s report on the Vienna Centre can be read as a direct intervention through which he supported non-governmental regional cooperation within CODESRIA and addressed this body as a central point of contact for the future planning of inter-regional cooperation.

Continuing tense relations between CODESRIA and UNESCO

  • 57 “Impact Evaluation”, CERDAS, 1986, UNESCO Archives, 125 EX/INF 8.

41In the DSS, the limited effectiveness of CERDAS continued to be raised as an issue. However, even after a comprehensive evaluation in 1986 showed that CERDAS was still hardly known, had barely any activity, and had been met with criticism from scholars in the region from its start, the division continued to rely on the institution that it had set up itself and kept CODESRIA at a distance.57 This negative attitude toward self-directed regional organization once more becomes clear with regard to the negotiations on the status of CODESRIA vis-à-vis UNESCO. I show this in brief in the following as it demonstrates that even in the aftermath of the expert meeting, UNESCO did not draw a lesson from the rather obvious reasons for its failure.

  • 58 “Directives Concerning UNESCO’s Relations with Non-Governmental Organizations”, Paris, 1966; Marte (...)
  • 59 Bujra, “Request for NGO Status”, 07.011.982 (C-11-82-06), UNESCO Archives, Secretariat Records, Bo (...)
  • 60 Békri (UNESCO) to Bujra (CODESRIA), 23.8.1983 (DG/7.6.2/A.O86), UNESCO Archives, Secretariat Recor (...)

42With the increase in international non-governmental organizations, the question of the relationship to these institutions had risen at UNESCO, all the more since Paris was actively involved in the establishment of NGOs. In 1966, a legal framework was established that provided three categories of official association with UNESCO, each with different rights, obligations, and access conditions.58 In January 1982, Abdallah Bujra submitted the application of CODESRIA for admission and justified it by citing the many commissioned works the organization had done for UNESCO.59 A year later, he was informed that CODESRIA was granted the status of a Category C NGO, “Mutual information relationship.” The requirements for this category were marginal, and the advantages of such a linkage symbolic. In addition to a loose exchange of information, this classification only included the possibility of an invitation to certain UNESCO meetings. Every internationally composed NGO with elected representatives and activity in at least one of the fields in which UNESCO was involved was granted this status. Therefore, it is not surprising that Bujra immediately asked for a re-classification into category B, “Information and consultative relations.” Under this category, participation in the preparatory work for the UNESCO program was possible, and subsidies were promised in return. The rejection followed shortly afterward on the grounds that CODESRIA did not have a broad membership.60 In view of its firm anchoring in the region, to which the evaluation of CERDAS attested shortly thereafter, it was clear that other reasons must have played a role in this negative answer.

  • 61 ICCDA was a joint initiative of the Association of Development and Research Institutes of Asia and (...)

43The next attempt, which was made from Dakar, is instructive in this regard. In the summer of 1989, Thandika Mkandawire, the director of the research council at the time, turned to Paris and applied for re-grouping into category A, “Consultative and associate relations.” This status was attractive because it included close and regular involvement in the planning and implementation of the UNESCO program and was linked with presence and office space in the General Secretariat. In the application, Mkandawire referred to the established cooperation with the UNESCO regional office in Dakar (BREDA) as well as CODESRIA’s diverse activities with CLACSO and other UNESCO bodies via the Inter-regional Coordinating Committee of Development Organizations (ICCDA). The latter emerged from CLACSO’s initiatives in the field of development studies, as previously mentioned.61

  • 62 Mkandawire to General Secretary, 23 August 1989 (C.SS.63); Thandika Mkandawire to Georges Malempré (...)

44In addition, he argued, the program paper “UNESCO Priorité Afrique 1990-1995” shows numerous overlaps with the work of CODESRIA. This request was not accepted, not even when Mkandawire submitted his organizations’ current membership list and future work program. In May 1990, it was announced that the previous classification under category C remained valid. An internal document suggested that CODESRIA had not yet been able to provide evidence of the necessary “major contributions to UNESCO work.”62

  • 63 Mkandawire to General Secretary, 15 November 1991, UNESCO Archives, Secretariat Records, Box 206, (...)

45Nevertheless, the executive committee in Dakar continued the efforts for a closer link to Paris and a more influential position in UNESCO. In 1992, an invitation was issued to UNESCO attend CODESRIA’s general assembly, at which new research priorities and new statutes were to be decided.63 Ali Kazancigil attended the general assembly in his function as director of the Division for Social Sciences and Humanities (which had replaced DSS). In his report on the meeting, he clearly disagreed with the former attitude of his division vis-à-vis CODESRIA and drew a highly negative picture of the division’s work in Africa: CODESRIA united almost all research centers and university units in the field throughout Africa, was at least as well-positioned as CLACSO, and had an impressive program. Not only was it wrong to create a regional rival by establishing CERDAS just a year after CODESRIA was founded, especially against the advice of the African colleagues, but also the very same mistake was repeated with the establishment of the Conseil africain des sciences sociales et humaines (CASSH) in Harare in 1990, which barely took into account the situation in the region and did not receive any local support. None of the leading social scientists in Africa understood this decision, which was deemed

  • 64 Original quote: “inutile puisque faisant double emploi avec CODESRIA, accueilli avec hostilité ou (...)

useless because redundant with CODESRIA, welcomed with hostility or indifference from the research community, without any chance of making a real start. […] UNESCO therefore pursued a badly conceived and unproductive strategy for the development of the social sciences in Africa […].64

46Kazancigil’s intervention received no response. Even years later, in 1995 when new directives for the status of NGOs aiming at greater flexibility were adopted, CODESRIA remained in a subordinate category. In effect, the direct connections between CODESRIA and UNESCO headquarters ended for the time being.

47Interesting questions for further research would be to ask if and how Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, who between 1974-1987 served as UNESCO General Secretary and who was the first person in this position not having a European or North American background, dealt with the existence of two African research councils. After all, he strengthened UNESCO’s work in the social sciences by setting up the Sector for Social Sciences and their Applications and charging one of its sub-divisions with the development of international cooperation in the field. Further, we know very little as yet about how UNESCO as well as CERDAS was thought of within CODESRIA, whether these attitudes changed over time or under the guidance of new leading figures. We do know, as I have shown, that at the time of CODESRIA’s re-establishment as a regional research council in 1973, both were met with opposition; yet we also see that it seemed important to relate to and be recognized by UNESCO.

48During the 1960s and 1970s, building regional cooperation in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and to a lesser degree in Europe was a priority in UNESCO’s policy towards internationalizing the social sciences; connecting the research landscape across regions was also high on the agendas of social scientists situated in different parts of the world. In this article I have shown that what might seem at first glance a good match of interest was in fact highly conflictual. Strategies for regionalization differed in two essentials points: first, regarding the role of state support and government involvement in setting up regional research councils; secondly, in terms of the role the social science-related bodies of UNESCO, the DSS in the secretariat and the ISSC as its operating arm, would play in bringing the new research councils into a sustained dialogue. While CODESRIA, the Vienna Centre, and CLACSO emerged from self-directed initiatives of scholars in the regions, and while their founders deliberately opted for setting up the new regional research councils as non-governmental organizations, securing the greatest possible independence from the scientific diplomacy of states, opposite thinking directed the policy of the DSS and ISSC. They conceived the regional councils as part of their envisaged architecture for the international social sciences which was based on a territorial rational, epitomizing the international political order of the post-1945 period. According to their approach, nationally organized social science fields would collaborate on a regional basis, but this entanglement would be coordinated from the top of the hierarchical chart—that is, the international disciplinary association and their synchronization through the ISSC and for that matter, from UNESCO’s DSS. Part and parcel to this institutional policy was a strong leaning on and collaboration with governments, which is not surprising given the fact that UNESCO is an intergovernmental organization whose program is decided by its member states. Due to this, the DSS and ISSC had to respond proactively to the demands of UNESCO members regarding support for the social sciences in their countries and regions, which included ideas for regional cooperation.

49UNESCO’s strategy for initiating and setting up regional research councils based on a government-anchored internationalism might have been without alternative for its leading figures, yet scholars in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and eastern Europe saw it very critically. More often than not, they were confronted with governments that aimed at controlling and directing the social sciences and who were fully aware of the political importance of social science knowledge. The uneasy relations with their states’ scientific policies brought about cautions vis-à-vis UNESCO, to say the least. While the Vienna Centre and CLACSO were in the favorable position of being the sole regional research body in their region, representing scholars from across Latin America and Europe, the situation was different in Africa. Within a year of each other, two councils emerged on the continent, CERDAS and CODESRIA. While CERDAS resulted from the initiative of some African member-states and the rationale of UNESCO, CODESRIA emerged as a critical response, in fact a countermove to CERDAS, which was co-launched and supported by UNESCO. I have shown the marginalization of CODESRIA at an expert meeting in 1976 that was meant to plan inter-regional cooperation; and I have outlined the reluctance of UNESCO to recognize CODESRIA’s strength in Africa in the 1980s and 1990s.

50At the same time, I offered a reading of the expert meeting that acknowledges tacit communications between Adam Schaff, director of the Vienna Centre, and Abdalla S. Bujra, who was invited to give CODESRIA a voice. In addition to that, I argue that it is instructive to recognize the shared agendas of CODESRIA and the Vienna Centre, as both aimed to challenge the asymmetrical relations in field, inherited from its Eurocentric origins and perpetuated in the emerging dominance of US-American social science research. While we can observe similar strategies and a tacit communication, we see less direct exchange. Nevertheless, joint goals, especially the drive towards decentering international cooperation, need to be taken seriously. This shows especially in terms of the question of who would steer inter-regional connections. Both research councils, as well as CLACSO, insisted on the importance of bottom-up networking which would not be centered on and run through the Paris-based UNESCO bodies. The reluctance of the DSS and ISSC to go along with this explains to large extent the failure of the expert meeting and the UNESCO-led initiative for an inter-regional dialogue.

51I have also highlighted the lukewarm response from the DSS and ISSC to their interlocutors’ quests to decolonize social science knowledge production at the expert meeting in 1976; this stance complemented its policy regarding initiating regional cooperation in the social science. If we take this into account, we can recognize that building regional cooperation in the social sciences in the 1960s and 1970s was a contested process, and that its legacies shaped the relations of regional research councils in the years to come, especially the relationship between CODERSIA to UNESCO.

52Recognizing the two different notions and practices of regional cooperation, one initiated and driven by scholars, the other started by UNESCO and developing through diplomacy as well as governmental internationalism, is revealing. It brings to light a domain through which scholars from Africa, Europe, and other world regions negotiated their position and influence in the internationalization of the social sciences; they addressed unequal relations in the field and promoted their own ideas about regional and international cooperation. At the same time, we can see that their goals were part of a wider movement toward decentering the steering of international cooperation in the field. Scholars from various regions advocated self-directed cooperation and institutional settings in which “their” research topics, organizing schemes, and the forms of exchange that seemed most relevant to them would guide the work—and not priorities formulated in Paris. The negotiations on who steers cross-border research cooperation reveal tensions and divisions in the endeavor of internationalizing social science research coordination in the context of decolonialization and the Cold War. The recognition of these different notions and practices of regional cooperation opens new avenues for future research on the global history of the social sciences.

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Notes

1 The most comprehensive work on the subject is Hoffmann, 2017; see also Zevounou, 2020; Mourre, 2019; Barro, 2010.

2 Only recently the history of the social sciences in eastern Europe has been studied in a comprehensive manner: especially Hîncu, Karady, 2018.

3 On the growing literature about scientific collaboration between eastern and western Europe during the Cold War: Mikkonen, 2015; Iacob, 2018.

4 Conflicts between French, British and US-American social scientists existed early on in and around UNESCO. For instance, the International Social Science Council emerged in 1952 from a US-American initiative which was directed against French efforts for the establishment of the Bureau international de recherche sur les implications sociales du progrès technique (BIRISPT), see “Le Bureau International de Recherche sur les implications sociales du progrès technique”, 1954; for constellations in the DSS, Rangil, 2013.

5 The political decision making was the business of the member states and representatives, while in the execution of the politically agreed upon programs UNESCO, like other intergovernmental institutions, developed transnational practices involving experts, scholars and activists. On the transnational history of international organizations: Sluga, 2011; Maurel, 2011; Herren, 2014; Berg, 2015. On the transnational history of the social sciences: Heilbron, Guilhot, Jeanpierre, 2008.

6 Report of the Social Science Committee, Preparatory Commission of UNESCO, 1946, UNESCO Archives, p. 3; Brodersen, 1956; Hochfeld, 1966; on the ISSC, see Platt, 2002.

7 On this and other aspects of the DSS program, see Maurel, 2010; Selcer, 2009; (2011), Lengyel, 1986.

8 Marshall, 1965.

9 Rangil, 2013.

10 Agrawal, Aggarwal, 1988, 52-54; Elzinga, 1996; Lengyuel, 1986.

11 See on the wider process Muschik, 2022.

12 Contrary, for example, to the hope that African scholars would opt in first instance for participation in the International Sociological Association and the other international disciplinary bodies, the early 1970s saw the founding of the African Association of Political Sciences (1973) to be followed by similar institutions for sociologists, economists, historians, and philosophers. This institutional drift has a history of its own, hinted at by Barro, 2010.

13 On the competition between FLASCO and CLACSO and UNESCO’s role in Latin America see Beigel, 2016.

14 On the main objectives of CERDAS see “Impact Evaluation”, CERDAS, 1986, UNESCO Archives, 125 EX/INF 8.

15 The international history of CODESRIA also included the role of its international donors, especially the Danish and Swedish international development agencies. Remarkably, in 1973 a small grant was received by the World Bank and Ford Foundation, see: Mkandawire, Sawyer, Sané, 2015, 6.

16 See Zevounou, 2020, who draws on the works by Manière, 2012; and Cissé, 2018.

17 West, 1965; Hoffmann, 2017; Mkandawire 1988.

18 Zevounou, 2020.

19 Bayle, 2015.

20 Ibid.

21 Zevounou, 2020.

22 See Hoffmann, 2017, 101-113.

23 Bujra, 1994, 143.

24 Quoted from Hoffmann, 2017, 107f; excerpt from an interview the author had with Mkandawire in Johannesburg in 2017.

25 Ibid.

26 Amin, 2006, 222.

27 Zenouvou, 2020; on the aspect of data imperialism see: Mkandawire, 1993, 15.

28 On UNECA, see Banks, 2022; on the tedious work of giving the economic interests of the newly decolonized countries a place in the international economic politics of the UN, see Toye, Toye, 2004; on relations with the UN, Amin, 2006, ch. 8; on relations with the OAU, Hoffmann, 2017, 108f.

29 Zevounou, 2020; Mourre, 2019; Hoffmann, 2020, 108.

30 Hoffmann, 2020, 108, quoting Bujra, 2003.

31 See footnote 4.

32 Górny, 2011, 111; Kula, 2010.

33 On Schaff, see Montanari, 2012.

34 On the development of the Vienna Centre, see “Report of Meeting 28.11.1960. Re: A proposed European Social Science Institute”, UNESCO Archives, Records Secretariat, Box 4, Fd. 1, 3 A 01, ISSC 66; Garcia del Solar, L., 1971, “Inspection Report”, European Coordination Centre for Research and Documentation in the Social Sciences, UNESCO Archives, Paris, JIU/HBP/71/13, GE.72-1890; Petrella, Schaff, 1973; Charvát, Stamation, Villain-Gandossi, 1988.

35 Szalai, Petrella, 1977, ix.

36 See, for this phrase, among others, the report on the inspection of the Vienna Centre by UNESCO in 1971: Garcia del Solar, “Inspection Report”, op. cit., 5; Petrella, Schaff, 1973; on the program of comparative social sciences, see Rokkan, 1968; Rokkan, 1979.

37 Schaff, 1988.

38 [Castryck]-Naumann, 2018.

39 Garcia del Solar, “Inspection Report”, op. cit.; Statutes of the Vienna Centre (published in Petrella, Schaff, 1973, 109-112); Feldheim, 1988.

40 Petrella, Schaff, 1973, 100-105.

41 The reports, list of participants, and agenda are accessible in the UNESCO archive and in published form: UNESCO, 1977, “Inter-Regional Cooperation in the Social Sciences”, Reports and Papers in the Social Sciences, 36, UNESCO Archives, SS/22/36. For a more detailed discussion of the expert meeting, see Castryck-Naumann, 2020.

42 Roy, R., 1977, “Social Science Cooperation in Asia”, in UNESCO, Inter-Regional Cooperation, UNESCO Archives, SS/22/36, 13-24, here p. 14 f. and 16. On the development on sociology in Asia, including its regional organization, see Dufoix, 2021.

43 Roy, “Social Science Cooperation in Asia”, op. cit., 21.

44 Oteiza, E., 1977, “The Latin American Experience and Inter-Regional Cooperation in the Social Sciences”, in UNESCO, Inter-Regional cooperation, UNESCO Archives, SS/22/36, 25-31, here p. 29; see on these issues also Amin et al., 1975.

45 Oteiza, “The Latin American Experience…”, op. cit., 30.

46 Bongoy, M., 1977, “Social Science Cooperation in Africa”, in UNESCO, Inter-Regional Cooperation, UNESCO Archives, SS/22/36, 32-37, here p. 32.

47 Ibid, 36 f.

48 UNESCO Secretariat, 1977, “Priorities for Social Science Research in Developing Countries”, in UNESCO, Inter-Regional Cooperation, UNESCO Archives, SS/22/36, 67-84, here p. 67.

49 Ibid., 71.

50 Friedman, S., 1977, “The Developing Countries and Inter-Regional Cooperation in the Social Sciences”, in UNESCO, Inter-Regional Cooperation, UNESCO Archives, SS/22/36, 58–66, here p. 60.

51 Franz, 1969; Franz, 1973.

52 “Inter-Regional Cooperation in the Social Sciences. Final Report of the Meeting”, UNESCO, Paris, 23-27 August 1976, in UNESCO, Inter-Regional Cooperation, UNESCO Archives, SS/22/36, 7-12, here p. 11.

53 We only know that from the DSS the five people were present at the meeting, including V. Mshvenieradze, Director of the Division of International Development of the Social Sciences; J. Ziolkowski, Senior Programm Special Adviser; and M. Hildebrandt, Assistant Director of the Division of Social Sciences and its Application. The DSS had been split in two divisions.

54 “Inter-Regional Cooperation in the Social Sciences. Final Report of the Meeting”, op. cit., p. 9; for details on the meeting, see Castryck-Naumann, 2020.

55 Dufoix, 2021.

56 Schaff, A., 1977, “Social Science Cooperation in Europe”, in UNESCO, Inter-Regional Cooperation, UNESCO Archives, SS/22/36, 43-50, here p. 46.

57 “Impact Evaluation”, CERDAS, 1986, UNESCO Archives, 125 EX/INF 8.

58 “Directives Concerning UNESCO’s Relations with Non-Governmental Organizations”, Paris, 1966; Martens, 1999.

59 Bujra, “Request for NGO Status”, 07.011.982 (C-11-82-06), UNESCO Archives, Secretariat Records, Box 206, Fd. 3.1/117-5.

60 Békri (UNESCO) to Bujra (CODESRIA), 23.8.1983 (DG/7.6.2/A.O86), UNESCO Archives, Secretariat Records, Box 206, Fd. 3.1/117-5.

61 ICCDA was a joint initiative of the Association of Development and Research Institutes of Asia and the Pacific (ADIPA), the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), the Arab network, CLACSO, and CODESRIA. An important step towards its founding was an interregional meeting, directed by Dudley Seers, which led to a white paper “The Development of Development Thinking” which was co-written by scholars from ADIPA, CLACSO, CODESRIA and EADI verfasst, who sought to establish a body in which the could collaborate on equal terms. See Bayle, 2015.

62 Mkandawire to General Secretary, 23 August 1989 (C.SS.63); Thandika Mkandawire to Georges Malempré, 20 November 1989; Frederico Mayor to Thandika Mkandawire, 29 May 1990, UNESCO Archives, Secretariat Records, Box 206, Fd. 3.1/117-5.

63 Mkandawire to General Secretary, 15 November 1991, UNESCO Archives, Secretariat Records, Box 206, Fd. 3.1/117-5.

64 Original quote: “inutile puisque faisant double emploi avec CODESRIA, accueilli avec hostilité ou indifférence par la communauté des chercheurs [… KCN], sans aucune chance d’avoir un commencement de réalité, le CASSH apparait comme une entreprise condamnée à végéter. […] L’UNESCO a donc poursuivi des stratégies pour le moins mal conçues et peu productives en matière du développement des sciences sociales en Afrique […]”. Kazancigil to Fournier, 19 February 1992 (SHS/IST/92/memo 62), p. 2, UNESCO Archives, Secretariat Records, Box 206, Fd. 3.1/117-5.

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Katja Castryck-Naumann

Leibniz-Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, Leipzig

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