Social Context and Psychological Testing in South Africa, 1918-1939

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Abstract
In the period between the two world wars the social and human sciences in South Africa became important contributors to the debates about vital social issues, of which `the Native question' was a particularly pressing one. Psychological knowledge, too, was utilized in the legitimation of a social order based on race, since the perception was that psychological testing produced empirical data which supported certain explanations of this order. Two ideological positions developed in the period under review in South Africa: eugenics and Christian-nationalism. The contribution of psychological testing, eugenics and Christian-nationalism to the construction of `race' in the local context forms the focus of this paper. It is argued that eugenics provided arguments for social inequality in terms of biology, while its counterpart, Christian-nationalism, provided similar arguments based on theology. However, Christian-nationalism also enabled Afrikaner politicians and social scientists to mobilize impoverished Afrikaans speakers, and hence it had more of a policy impact than eugenics. Psychological testing became recognized as a source of authority on social controversies, particularly with reference to educational policies, where race played a significant mediating role.

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