Project description
Unravelling the myth of race
Race is often understood as a social and cultural construct today, but the journey to this realisation is less well known. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the Rejecting Race project explores how thinkers across centuries challenged the concept of race, long before UNESCO’s 1950 statement denounced it as a social myth. This project traces the intellectual roots of racial deconstructivism, highlighting philosophical, linguistic, and sociological works that questioned the validity of race. Using genealogical and comparative analysis, it shows how early scepticism evolved into a rejection of race as a legitimate category by the late 19th century, raising crucial questions about why these ideas were dismissed for so long in Western thought.
Objective
It is now a truism that race is a social and cultural construct, but when was this first realised, why, and by whom? Rejecting Race: The Intellectual Origins of Racial Deconstructivism, 1784-1950 investigates the process by which it became accepted that race is an intellectual fiction rather than a real reflection of the world and its peoples. While the existing literature has traditionally identified the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Statements on Race that began appearing in 1950 as the first sustained challenge to the concept of race, Rejecting Race examines a range of thinkers who undermined the epistemological foundations of race well before the middle of the twentieth century. This historical study will use genealogical and comparative methods of textual analysis to examine selected philosophical, linguistic, anthropological, sociological, and historical texts written in English, French, and German. It is hypothesised that these will show how initial reservations about the idea of race expressed at the end of the eighteenth century developed into full-blown rejections of race as an intellectually valid category by the end of the nineteenth century, providing the essential framework for the movement that culminated in the UNESCO Statement on Race of 1950 that declared it a social myth. In undertaking a historical examination of when, how, and why race began to be challenged and reconceived in constructivist terms, this project will substantially revise the prevailing state-of-the-art by showing that race was a contested idea from its inception, a fact raising the troubling question of why it retained its hold on Western minds for so long.
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Keywords
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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75270 Paris
France
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