Arthur Asseraf: "Rumor in Orléans: Social Scientists and the Interpretation of Racism in 1960s France"

Forskningspresentation av Arthur Asseraf, University of Cambridge. 

Beskrivning: 

How has the work of social scientists changed wider understandings of race? In Europe, the years after 1945 can be described as a time of increased epistemological uncertainty about race. Biological racism was disavowed by the international scientific community, but it did not disappear. Social scientists stepped in to explain that race was a socially constructed phenomenon. What emerged was not a consensus but rather new conflicts of interpretation. Different actors competed to define how race operated and what constituted racism, and multiple paradigms emerged to explain this. One of these paradigms was understanding race as a problem of communication.

                This seminar will trace the emergence of this paradigm through one conflict of interpretation over a racist incident in 1960s France, the ‘rumour of Orléans’, an antisemitic rumour that took over the city of Orléans in 1969. Anonymous citizens, state actors and social scientists led by Edgar Morin analyzed an ambiguous series of events to coproduce a new understanding of racism as fundamentally diffuse. This new understanding marked a new role for social scientists and communication studies more particularly in the analysis of racism.

Foto: Arthur Asseraf