ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the history, politics and lessons of the project on Cultural Values and Population Policy, an eight-nation study sponsored by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA). The central question is why the UNFPA decided to publish absolutely nothing from the project when all of the work was completed and thousands of pages of reports were available, including a popular summary. The answer has to do with the sensitivity of the research topic; the climate of opinion among key international population assistance agencies in the early 1970s; the internal politics of the UNFPA; the specific findings from the study; and the relationship between the co-ordinating organization and the UNFPA. The study ran into trouble partly because some of the findings might be considered critical of member countries of the United Nations or of agencies providing international population assistance. The UNFPA itself had great difficulty with the idea of free publication, but vacillated on how best to deal with that question. The main lessons are that UN agencies may not be suitable sponsors for research with this level of controversy; that it is hard to carry out research when agreements with the funding source are subject to change for political reasons; that in studies of this kind it is difficult to draw sharp lines indicating who is responsible for what in publication; and that judgements about the value of new lines of research may require the lapse of a decade or more.
