Alva Myrdal and Cold War International Social Science: Visions, Practices and Geopolitics at UNESCO, 1950-1955
After the Second World War, in a paradoxical era of renewed internationalism and growing geopolitical tensions, the social sciences expanded as never before, both quantitatively and geographically. An important key promoter behind this development was UNESCO, whose newly established Department of Social Sciences worked in various ways for the internationalization of the social sciences. The subject of my book is to investigate these activities, with special focus on the half-decade 1950-1955 during the directorship of Alva Myrdal. More specifically, it analyzes Myrdal's and the department's visions and practices in an organizational and geopolitical context. What type of organization was UNESCO? How can Myrdal's internationalism best be characterized? How was the work conducted in practice? And how can this be understood in relation to contemporary geopolitical tensions? The book offers the first systematic study of Myrdal's endeavors at UNESCO and thus makes an important contribution to the knowledge about Myrdal’s international engagements and UNESCO's Department of Social Sciences. It also contributes to international research on the development of the social sciences during the Cold War and hence also, indirectly, to our understanding of the social sciences today. The application is intended for one year’s full-time research for the completion of a full-length book manuscript and includes two months research in residence at the University of Toronto.
Final report
The main objective of the sabbatical project has been to work on the completion of a synthesizing book manuscript on the internationalization of the social sciences during the Cold War. Empirically, the study is centered around UNESCO’s Social Sciences Department (SSD) during its first decade, from its inception in 1946 and with a particular focus on Alva Myrdal’s directorship 1950–1955. More specifically, the book aims to analyze the visions and practices of the Department and Myrdal within their organizational and geopolitical contexts. The book is thematically structured into four parts, covering, I. UNESCO as an international organization, II. Alva Myrdal's social scientific internationalism, III. SSD’s practical activities, and IV. the geopolitical context. Three transversal research questions, introduced in the introductory chapter and discussed in the concluding chapter, concern: 1) the impact of the Cold War on the Department’s activities, 2) the various forms of internationalization promoted by the Department, and 3) Alva Myrdal’s more specific role in the context.
MAIN RESULTS AND PUBLICATIONS
Of the study's four parts, two – Part I and II – were roughly completed beforehand in the form of articles published as part of an earlier RJ project (P12-0273:1; see Wisselgren 2017 and Wisselgren 2018 in the publication list). Most of the empirical work was also completed before the sabbatical began, as were preliminary analyses relevant to Part IV. The most extensive and time-consuming work has been devoted to Part III of the study – in the form of a comprehensive analysis of SSD’s practical activities during its initial decade – which has essentially been written from scratch. This part will also form the core of the coming book. A first version of Part III was presented as a pre-circulated full-length paper at a conference in Toronto in June 2022, and has since been revised to be in publishable condition. Preliminary versions of Part IV (on the geopolitical context) have similarly been presented at different conferences and seminar settings during the sabbatical year (at FMSH Paris in March 2022; Sociology of Education in Uppsala in March 2022; and Cheiron in Akron in June 2022).
Overall, the work on the supplementary parts (III and IV) means that the forthcoming book will provide a more detailed picture of and significantly clarify SSD’s and Alva Myrdal’s contributions to the contemporary internationalization of the social sciences. Three of the project's key findings from Part III concern the significance of UNESCO's deliberately planned but relatively unnoticed infrastructural efforts for the internationalization of the social sciences, the program-making process as an organizing principle, and Myrdal’s bureaucratic-administrative reforms of the Department’s internal work. A fourth overarching result developed in Part IV concerns the contextual importance of decolonization and the Global South perspective already at this early stage (which is usually dated to the following period, i.e., from 1955 onwards), aligning with newer global historical research on the Cold War and the internationalization of the social sciences.
The project has largely been carried out according to the original plan. One exception is that the book manuscript was initially intended to be submitted to a Swedish publisher but will now be directed to an international publisher. Another change is that what was previously planned as four longer empirical book chapters has now been transformed into four parts, each with two shorter chapters. At the same time, the focus of the book has expanded slightly – from being more centered on Alva Myrdal’s role to now placing the SSD department more in the foreground – which also motivates the book's revised working title: "Between Internationalism and Geopolitics: UNESCO and the Making of International Social Science in the Early Cold War."
The current status of the book manuscript is that it requires another thorough revision before it can be language-edited and then submitted for review to the publisher. A detailed book proposal was prepared for Palgrave Macmillan’s book series "Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences", and has since been accepted by the series editors (in July 2003) for submission and review. The plan is to submit the completed manuscript by the end of this year and to have it published in the coming year.
In addition to the two previously mentioned project-related articles published before the start of the sabbatical (Wisselgren 2017 and Wisselgren 2018), two more book chapters were added during the project period (Wisselgren 2021a and Ekerwald & Wisselgren 2022). I have also published two other publications during the project period, which relate only indirectly to the project by addressing the history of the social sciences in a more general sense (Wisselgren 2021b and Wisselgren 2021c).
OTHER RESULTS
Aside from the book project and publications, the sabbatical year enabled and resulted in a two months stay abroad, an additional archival trip, participation in three international conferences, three seminar presentations, local hosting of an international conference, and the development of a new PhD and master’s course.
The research stay abroad was located to the Institute for History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST), University of Toronto. Originally scheduled for September–October 2021, it was postponed due to COVID-19 restrictions to May–June 2022. The main reason for visiting IHPST was that Professor Mark Solovey, one of the leading names in research on Cold War Social Science, is based there. Another advantage of the rescheduling was that the research stay could be coordinated with participation in the international HISRESS (History of Recent Social Science) conference, held at IHPST from June 17–19, 2022. This also resulted in me and two colleagues taking on the local hosting of the subsequent HISRESS conference, which was held at the Department of History of Ideas, Uppsala University, June 9–10, 2023.
A second, significantly shorter trip went to Paris for a supplementary archival visit to the UNESCO Archives, coordinated with a seminar presentation at the Fondation Maison des Science de l’Homme in March 2022.
In addition to these trips, I made presentations at two more international conferences, one the history of science conference (ICHST in Prague in July 2021) and another one more specialized on the history of social science (Cheiron in Akron in June 2022). Both of these were conducted via Zoom, again due to the pandemic. Additionally, during the period, I gave several seminar presentations at Swedish universities (see the publication list).
NEW RESEARCH QUESTIONS
In the continuation of the sabbatical year, I developed, together with three colleagues – Tobias Dalberg, Johan Heilbron, and Hampus Östh Gustafsson – a combined PhD and Master’s course on the theme "History and Sociology of the Social Sciences and the Humanities: Boundaries, Persona, and Knowledge Circulation" (7.5 ECTS). The course was offered at the Department of History of Ideas in Uppsala for the first time in the spring of 2024 (and will be offered again in autumn 2025).
The PhD and Master’s course is thematically linked to a new research project, "Funding Effects: The Emergence of Public Research Councils and the Formation of the Human Sciences in Sweden, 1947–1977" (VR, dnr 2023-00851), which I will be leading together with Dalberg and Östh Gustafsson, and in which Heilbron and Solovey are part of the international reference group. This new VR project is, like the sabbatical project, concerned with the development of the social sciences during the post-war period from a partly research funding and policy-oriented perspective, and hence will allow continued research in the extension of the sabbatical project.
DISSEMINATION
In addition to the mentioned publications, the results of the sabbatical project have so far mainly been disseminated and presented in seminar and conference formats.
MAIN RESULTS AND PUBLICATIONS
Of the study's four parts, two – Part I and II – were roughly completed beforehand in the form of articles published as part of an earlier RJ project (P12-0273:1; see Wisselgren 2017 and Wisselgren 2018 in the publication list). Most of the empirical work was also completed before the sabbatical began, as were preliminary analyses relevant to Part IV. The most extensive and time-consuming work has been devoted to Part III of the study – in the form of a comprehensive analysis of SSD’s practical activities during its initial decade – which has essentially been written from scratch. This part will also form the core of the coming book. A first version of Part III was presented as a pre-circulated full-length paper at a conference in Toronto in June 2022, and has since been revised to be in publishable condition. Preliminary versions of Part IV (on the geopolitical context) have similarly been presented at different conferences and seminar settings during the sabbatical year (at FMSH Paris in March 2022; Sociology of Education in Uppsala in March 2022; and Cheiron in Akron in June 2022).
Overall, the work on the supplementary parts (III and IV) means that the forthcoming book will provide a more detailed picture of and significantly clarify SSD’s and Alva Myrdal’s contributions to the contemporary internationalization of the social sciences. Three of the project's key findings from Part III concern the significance of UNESCO's deliberately planned but relatively unnoticed infrastructural efforts for the internationalization of the social sciences, the program-making process as an organizing principle, and Myrdal’s bureaucratic-administrative reforms of the Department’s internal work. A fourth overarching result developed in Part IV concerns the contextual importance of decolonization and the Global South perspective already at this early stage (which is usually dated to the following period, i.e., from 1955 onwards), aligning with newer global historical research on the Cold War and the internationalization of the social sciences.
The project has largely been carried out according to the original plan. One exception is that the book manuscript was initially intended to be submitted to a Swedish publisher but will now be directed to an international publisher. Another change is that what was previously planned as four longer empirical book chapters has now been transformed into four parts, each with two shorter chapters. At the same time, the focus of the book has expanded slightly – from being more centered on Alva Myrdal’s role to now placing the SSD department more in the foreground – which also motivates the book's revised working title: "Between Internationalism and Geopolitics: UNESCO and the Making of International Social Science in the Early Cold War."
The current status of the book manuscript is that it requires another thorough revision before it can be language-edited and then submitted for review to the publisher. A detailed book proposal was prepared for Palgrave Macmillan’s book series "Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences", and has since been accepted by the series editors (in July 2003) for submission and review. The plan is to submit the completed manuscript by the end of this year and to have it published in the coming year.
In addition to the two previously mentioned project-related articles published before the start of the sabbatical (Wisselgren 2017 and Wisselgren 2018), two more book chapters were added during the project period (Wisselgren 2021a and Ekerwald & Wisselgren 2022). I have also published two other publications during the project period, which relate only indirectly to the project by addressing the history of the social sciences in a more general sense (Wisselgren 2021b and Wisselgren 2021c).
OTHER RESULTS
Aside from the book project and publications, the sabbatical year enabled and resulted in a two months stay abroad, an additional archival trip, participation in three international conferences, three seminar presentations, local hosting of an international conference, and the development of a new PhD and master’s course.
The research stay abroad was located to the Institute for History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST), University of Toronto. Originally scheduled for September–October 2021, it was postponed due to COVID-19 restrictions to May–June 2022. The main reason for visiting IHPST was that Professor Mark Solovey, one of the leading names in research on Cold War Social Science, is based there. Another advantage of the rescheduling was that the research stay could be coordinated with participation in the international HISRESS (History of Recent Social Science) conference, held at IHPST from June 17–19, 2022. This also resulted in me and two colleagues taking on the local hosting of the subsequent HISRESS conference, which was held at the Department of History of Ideas, Uppsala University, June 9–10, 2023.
A second, significantly shorter trip went to Paris for a supplementary archival visit to the UNESCO Archives, coordinated with a seminar presentation at the Fondation Maison des Science de l’Homme in March 2022.
In addition to these trips, I made presentations at two more international conferences, one the history of science conference (ICHST in Prague in July 2021) and another one more specialized on the history of social science (Cheiron in Akron in June 2022). Both of these were conducted via Zoom, again due to the pandemic. Additionally, during the period, I gave several seminar presentations at Swedish universities (see the publication list).
NEW RESEARCH QUESTIONS
In the continuation of the sabbatical year, I developed, together with three colleagues – Tobias Dalberg, Johan Heilbron, and Hampus Östh Gustafsson – a combined PhD and Master’s course on the theme "History and Sociology of the Social Sciences and the Humanities: Boundaries, Persona, and Knowledge Circulation" (7.5 ECTS). The course was offered at the Department of History of Ideas in Uppsala for the first time in the spring of 2024 (and will be offered again in autumn 2025).
The PhD and Master’s course is thematically linked to a new research project, "Funding Effects: The Emergence of Public Research Councils and the Formation of the Human Sciences in Sweden, 1947–1977" (VR, dnr 2023-00851), which I will be leading together with Dalberg and Östh Gustafsson, and in which Heilbron and Solovey are part of the international reference group. This new VR project is, like the sabbatical project, concerned with the development of the social sciences during the post-war period from a partly research funding and policy-oriented perspective, and hence will allow continued research in the extension of the sabbatical project.
DISSEMINATION
In addition to the mentioned publications, the results of the sabbatical project have so far mainly been disseminated and presented in seminar and conference formats.