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Introduction
In 1952, the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss published a small booklet titled Race and History . It formed part of a series of pamphlets by leading geneticists and cultural anthropologists like Leslie C. Dunn, Otto Klineberg, Michel Leiris and Max Gluckman, which was later also edited as a collective volume (UNESCO, 1956). UNESCO commissioned this series after a group of mainly social scientists, including Lévi-Strauss, had drawn up what would become known as the first UNESCO Statement on Race in 1950. This document caused a considerable stir among physical anthropologists, especially for what was seen as its central claim, namely that race is nothing but a 'social myth' (UNESCO, 1952, p. 101). A second expert committee, this time comprising physical anthropologists and geneticists, was therefore assembled to produce a revised statement in the summer of 1951, which redefined, rather than debunked, race in population geneticist terms (Pogliano, 2001; Gayon, 2003; Brattain, 2007; Müller-Wille, 2007). The fact that a second statement had to be produced through a complicated process of circulating drafts, collecting and evaluating viewpoints and criticisms, as well as revising the text on the basis of the reactions elicited, calls into question, of course, that the 'consensus' reached reflected some pre-existing unanimity about human diversity and its political implications. Yet the Statement proved authoritative and received immediate and widespread attention in the mass media, so much so, that it seems to have deeply influenced research agendas in physical and evolutionary anthropology in the following three decades (Weingart et al , 1992, pp. 602-622; Haraway, 1997, pp. 234-244; Proctor, 2003).
In 1971, 20 years after issuing the first statement on race, UNESCO invited Lévi-Strauss once again to contribute to its worldwide campaign against racism. He was asked to give a public lecture to open the International Year of Action to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination. This time the lecture, titled 'Race and culture', caused what Lévi-Strauss later would call un assez joli scandale - 'a rather nice scandal' (Lévi-Strauss, 1983, p. 14, my translation).1 He had communicated a written version of his paper to UNESCO officials 24 hours before the talk was scheduled, only to discover that the Director-General René Malheu took to the stage, according to Lévi-Strauss, 'not only to exorcize...