The Life Sciences after World War II: Institutional Change and
International Connections
May 16-17, 2014
University of Pittsburgh
Proposal for Discussion
Dr. Charlotte Walker-Said
Assistant Professor
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
City University of New York (CUNY)
524 West 59th St.
New York, NY 10019
[email protected]
www.cwalkersaid.com
(212) 237-8758
Title:
Science and Charity: Scientific Inquiry and Catholic Social Work in Africa at the End of Empire
Abstract:
Following the end of World War II, new forms of expert knowledge about the family and
child development emerged in the context of massive population displacement in Europe. European
psychologists, psychiatrists, humanitarian workers, and policymakers tested ostensibly universal
theories of child development and ideal conditions of family formation through their observations of
populations uprooted by war and racial persecution (Zahra 2011; Herzog 2005; Harsch 2007; Judt
2006). European social workers, psychologists, and policymakers like John Bowlby, Anna Freud,
Susan Isaacs, and Georges Heuyer developed new theories about human development, the nature of
emotional bonds within the family, the value of familial and collective education, and the importance
of a monogamous, two-parent home in raising psychologically stable and morally decent children.
This line of thinking was brought to the African colonies via humanitarian and religious
organizations, which employed European social scientists, including psychologists, psychiatrists, and
biologists in order to perform widespread testing and assessment of African populations’ ability to
“reason” emotional bonds like love, maternal compassion, and fatherly responsibility, as well as
“deduce” and participate in modern culture and industrial development. International Christian
charities also worked through indigenous congregations to transmit post-war European social science
on family constitution and scientific child-rearing and in so doing, launched new discourses on the
role of families, mothers, parents, and children in the nascent nation-states in the African continent.
In addition, West African trade union movements participated in the communication of social
scientific theories on family stability and human emotional-intellectual capacities. The Cameroon
section of the Conféderation General du Travail (CGT) often invoked the “security of the family” and
“decent standards of family living” as the basis for wage and quality of life bargaining and also
referred to scientifically-backed European literature promoting the psychological necessity of family
allocations, funds for family insurance, profit sharing, family counseling, and low income housing for
Africans (Cooper 1996; Nord 2010; Dutton 2005; Pedersen 1995).
The paper I propose to present at the University of Pittsburgh’s “The Life Sciences after
World War II” conference will explore the work of European social scientists in the Frenchadministered United Nations Trusteeship of Cameroon in the last decade of French administration
(1950-1960). During this decade, scholars like Dr. Paul Verhaegen, a neurologist and psychologist
who began his investigations at the Elisabethville Hospital in Belgian Congo and the Psychology
Clinic at the Mining Union in Haut-Katanga in Belgian Congo, pioneered new methods of studying
the psychology of the African child and the “social evolution” of the African adult and launched new
work in Cameroon’s urban centers to center his research on the rapidly industrializing zones of
Francophone Africa in order to make scientific observations of Africans in a rapidly changing
political economy. Verhaegen’s colleagues, including Marcelle Geber, Jenny Aubry, and Jacques
Lacan began working under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO) to devise
multiple series of tests to better comprehend the relationships, hierarchies, psychological attachments
and processes, and standard practices of the family in Africa, with particular emphasis on the motherchild relationship, the intellectual and social development of the African child in a rural milieu, and
the transitions of African families and children in rapidly burgeoning urban milieus. Geber’s work
took her to Uganda and her published tests launched new investigations in Cameroon, which, like
Verhaegen’s studies, were heavily funded by the Catholic Church and Catholic charitable institutions
organized through Catholic Action, an international association of lay Catholic groups with a
substantial presence in Cameroon as a result of the leadership of Dr. Paul Aujoulat, himself a medical
doctor and humanitarian (Lachenal and Taithe 2009; Verhaegen 1973; Geber 1957).
In addition to observations, interviews, and assessments of African family life and child
development, tests run by social scientists in the last decade of European colonialism included
intelligence scales, verbal and non-verbal group tests of general aptitude, personality studies,
performance tests, infant tests, special aptitude tests, and projective tests. Marcelle Geber and Paul
Verhaegen in particular developed “African intelligence scales” through studying African child
development as well as young adult parent behavior. In Geber and Verhaegen’s assessments,
“intelligence” was correlated with adaptability to western habits and assimilation of European modes
of family building, professional development, and social networking. Catholic journals such as Eglise
Vivante published Paul Verhaegen as well as Jacques Lacan’s work, and supported Marcelle Geber
and Jenny Aubry’s work with financial assistance and backing within international institutions such as
the WHO and UNICEF. In partnering with social scientists working in Cameroon, the Catholic
Church wished to dovetail charitable missions in the region with medical and scientific investments
that would not only improve standards of living, but also instill the moral disciplines of modernity
among Africans—including nuclear family building, educational advancement, career placement, and
individual property owning.
Social scientists like Verhaegen and Geber, much like the leaders of the Catholic Church in
Europe, ardently believed in the larger humanitarian message of the widespread scientific testing of
Africans that occurred in the last decade of formal European colonial rule: that there was no genetic
difference between Africans and Europeans, only social distinctions, which could be overcome with
greater educational and technical investments. Africans were ultimately capable of “intelligence” per
the tautology of European tests, and through cultural adaptation, Africans could enjoy the benefits of
modernity. For its part, the Catholic Church invested in such theories in order to fight against the
racial bias internationally and within its own walls. African Catholic priests in Cameroon partnered
with clinics, hospitals, and schools where social science testing was ongoing through the last decade
of French administration in part in an attempt to disprove the racist assumptions of many of their
own bishops and clerical superiors (Etoga 1956).
Curiously, a great many post-war social scientists articulated prescriptions for Africa that
echoed early nineteenth-century imperial theories of thinkers like John Stuart Mill and Nicolas de
Condorcet who conceived of progress for native populations as a matter of individual cognitive
development rather than as a series of changes in patterns of social interaction. Such analogies also
tended to support a view of progress as occurring in all areas of life (scientific, political, and moral) in
lockstep together, and to encourage the notion that “backward” societies were like children in need
of tutelage (Pitts 2006).
In sum, this paper will explore the social scientific theories and testing strategies of
European social scientists in Cameroon and across Africa and will explore the humanitarian and
religious ideologies that influenced and disseminated scientific messaging in Africa at the end of
empire. It will investigate the roles of scientists, policymakers, governors, members of the clergy
(both European and African), and everyday African research subjects as they participated in the
production of knowledge about African social structures—in particular, the family unit and the
professional community. It will also argue that scientific discourse that originated in post-war
European reconstruction efforts found new fertile ground in the African colonies as a result of preexisting Christian and humanitarian organizing that emphasized the necessity of morally uplifting the
African woman, domesticating the African man, and rescuing the African child from poverty and
deficiency. This social scientific discourse and its apparatus in the form of international medical
humanitarian organizations was as committed to social progress and the advancement of the public
good in Africa as missionary societies, and much like their counterparts, inserted specific forms of
bias and assumption into their work.
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