Experts and expertise in the mandates of the League of Nations: figures, fields and tools

Presentation

From the colonial era to that of international public policy in the South, expertise has played a growing role in the international order of the twentieth century. A paradoxical notion, reputed to be instrumental in informing and improving public action, it encompasses a whole field of opposing modalities of knowledge and its enunciation. Situated between experiential knowledge and abstract nomothetic knowledge, research and authority, expertise is interesting to study in the context of the first system of international organizations and the concomitant crisis of colonial empires.

Mandates have recently become one of the main focal points for questioning the global dissemination of norms through international bodies. Expertise is read as one of the signs of a late colonialism, codified, and placed under the converging gazes of scholars, states and public opinion.

Through the mandates of the League of Nations, this book scrutinizes the emergence of the international as a framework for inter-state, open and procedural decision-making framing a world of connections, flows and structures entangled at various scales. It depicts the figures of experts and sheds light on the complex interplay between these experts and the institutions that commission them to define the standards of expertise. It highlights their contestation in an asymmetrical dialectic that pits experts against counter-experts, local populations against commissioning authorities.

Managers

Philippe Bourmaud is a senior lecturer who has taught in Nablus and conducted research into the history of medicine in the Near East. He is currently working on the social constructions of alcohol in the contemporary Middle East and on the Arab cultural presence in Istanbul through history.

Norig Neveu, CNRS research fellow, began her research with a study of holy places in southern Jordan before working on a connected history of religious authorities in the Near East since the late 19th century. She is also interested in solidarity networks in the context of migration.

Chantal Verdeil is a university professor who first worked on the Jesuit mission in Lebanon, then on Christian missions in the Maghreb and the Middle East in the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, she is interested in the history of education in the Near East.

374 pages
16 x 24 cm
Publication: 13/08/2020
ISBN: 9782858313464