Changing the Concept of Race: On UNESCO and Cultural Internationalism

From 1945 and the following 25 years UNESCO – the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – was, as a hub for cultural internationalism, at the heart of a dispute in international scientific circles over the correct definition of the concept of race. In the wake of World War II and the Holocaust this was the core of UNESCO’s many post-war mental engineering initiatives and essentially a dispute about whether the natural sciences or the social sciences should take precedence in determining the origins of human difference, of social division, and of the attribution of value. The article provides an overview of the work on race carried out by UNESCO, examines the measures it took to combat racism and pays attention to their political and social impact. It demonstrates how UNESCO played a major part in imposing a new post-war view of man, but also that the impact differed from country to country and had a focus on problems in the U.S. and South Africa. Not before 1960 did it gradually begin to have a more global approach and impact.