Experts as Agents of Liberation?: Expert Cultures and Transnational Knowledge Networks in the Cold War Era I

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Recent decades have seen a great deal of attention paid to expertise, its circulation and its transfer across various (post-)Cold War borders. In fact, the existence of transnational networks of experts working across the Iron Curtain is often cited as one of the main reasons former Soviet countries embraced the Western model so rapidly and successfully after 1989. One could even, in a somewhat "Whiggish" manner, interpret the events of 1989 as an example of liberation through expertise.
Much of the literature approaches transnational expert networks and institutions as places in which ideological and geopolitical conflicts, as well as rival types of expertise, have been reconciled in the name of the universal, humanist ideas of modern internationalism. However, the inherent ambiguity of transnational expertise lies not only in the well-known affinity of experts for technocratic approaches and solutions framed by Enlightenment discourses of human emancipation (liberation) and progress (modernity), which entail certain aspects of discipline and control. Simultaneously, a hegemonic discourse is created and other views and perspectives are marginalised due to the discursive and social nature of knowledge and expertise.
Our panel focuses on following topics: 1) how experts used, applied and understood the concept of liberation, 2) which power hierarchies and structures influenced the formation of the agenda at the level of international networks, 3) how specific agendas and discourses contributed to liberation processes at the national level.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Jiří Janáč, Institute of Contemporary History CAS (Czech Republic)

Papers

• 'Communism Cannot Be Built with a Shovel': Politicization of the Soviet-Czechoslovak Student Construction Brigade Exchange in the Context of the Prague Spring - Liana Kirillova, Baylor U

• The Fifth Column of Technocratic Socialism?: How Environmental Expertise Got Out of Hand in State Socialist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s - Jiří Janáč, Institute of Contemporary History CAS (Czech Republic)

• Internationalization of Science Policy Expertise and Czechoslovakia in the 1960s: Western Knowledge Undermining the Image of Socialist Science? - Michaela Šmidrkalová, Masaryk Institute and Archives CAS (Czech Republic)

• UNESCO’ International Geological Correlation Programme as a Means of Liberation of Geological Research in State-Socialist Czechoslovakia - Barbora Buzássyová, Institute of History SAS (Slovakia)

Discussant

• Kimberly Elman Zarecor, Iowa State U