Social scientists as policy makers: E. G. Malherbe and the national bureau for educational and social research, 1929–1943

Abstract

This is a study of the South African National Bureau for Educational and Social Research from its founding in 1929 until the publication of the Bilingual School in 1943. It explores a number of major research projects that were undertaken by the Bureau in the 1930s including social research on the ‘poor white problem’, African education, IQ Testing, educational measurement, and bilingualism. It argues that the founder of the Bureau, the American trained social scientist, E. G. Malherbe brought a very specific conception of the politics of knowledge to his work at the Bureau. Malherbe believed that social science should be developed to serve the ‘public interest’, and that the public interest was best informed by social science research. In the process, the relationship between intellectuals and the state would be substantially transformed. Malherbe's particular conception of the politics of knowledge although effective in the contexts of the early 1930s, became a contested terrain by the early 1940s.