Topic
Social Sciences and Socialism in the World
The studies under this thematic focus on how social sciencists in socialist countries of Eastern Europe during the period of the Cold War reacted to the changing North-South relations. They study how East European actors and institutions connected their concern with the development in their own societies to the development in African, Asian and Latin American contexts. We analyze the international circulation of Eastern European concepts and analyses, particularly through UNESCO’s scientific networks.
Global North-South Relations in the State-Socialist Social Sciences
In the course of decolonisation, addressing the changing relations of the so-called Global North and Global South became an increasingly central topic in the social sciences of the socialist countries of Eastern Europe. Social developments in one’s own country or the perceived ‘brother countries’ in Eastern Europe were compared with transformations in other parts of the world and were interpreted with new epistemologies inspired by socialism. At the same time, new research fields centred around issues of development and worldwide dynamics were being founded and institutionalised, such as research into developing countries or regional studies.
On the one hand, these researches centre on social scientists’ relationships with the Third World; on the other, they focus on international networks and associations, especially within UNESCO’s compass. The goal of this thematic focus is to reconstruct which concepts and analyses from Eastern Europe have left their traces in international research discussions. Such deepened knowledge of the highly entangled history of state-socialist social sciences contributes to an expanded understanding of the global knowledge order of the Cold War.
