Background
Gunnar Myrdal was born on December 6, 1898 in Skattungbyn, Orsa Municipality, Sweden. He was christened as Karl Gunnar but the first name was later dropped.
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( In this landmark effort to understand African American ...)
In this landmark effort to understand African American people in the New World, Gunnar Myrdal provides deep insight into the contradictions of American democracy as well as a study of a people within a people. The title of the book, An American Dilemma, refers to the moral contradiction of a nation torn between allegiance to its highest ideals and awareness of the base realities of racial discrimination. The touchstone of this classic is the jarring discrepancy between the American creed of respect for the inalienable rights to freedom, justice, and opportunity for all and the pervasive violations of the dignity of blacks. The appendices are a gold mine of information, theory, and methodology. Indeed, two of the appendices were issued as a separate work given their importance for systematic theory in social research. The new introduction by Sissela Bok offers a remarkably intimate yet rigorously objective appraisal of Myrdal?a social scientist who wanted to see himself as an analytic intellectual, yet had an unbending desire to bring about change. An American Dilemma is testimonial to the man as well as the ideas he espoused. When it first appeared An American Dilemma was called "the most penetrating and important book on contemporary American civilization" by Robert S. Lynd; "One of the best political commentaries on American life that has ever been written" in The American Political Science Review; and a book with "a novelty and a courage seldom found in American discussions either of our total society or of the part which the Negro plays in it" in The American Sociological Review. It is a foundation work for all those concerned with the history and current status of race relations in the United States.
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( Nobel Prize winner Gunnar Myrdal is best known for his ...)
Nobel Prize winner Gunnar Myrdal is best known for his book An American Dilemma, a classic study of Americas racial problems that was chosen as one of The Modern Librarys top 100 nonfiction books of the twentieth century. The Essential Gunnar Myrdal covers the full range of Myrdals writing, much of which has never been published in book form. It includes his early essays on economics, his thoughts on the population explosion, his discussions of the question of value in the social sciences, and excerpts from Asian Drama, his monumental study of the development of Asia. The newest edition in The New Presss Essential series, the book includes extensive commentary by the editors as well as an introduction by Sissela Bok, who is Myrdals daughter and author of the acclaimed Lying and Secrets.
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(The eminent Swedish sociologist discusses such diverse to...)
The eminent Swedish sociologist discusses such diverse topics as American racism, depletion of natural resources, the state of the social sciences, and the Western world's inflationary growth. Bibliogs
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economist politician sociologist
Gunnar Myrdal was born on December 6, 1898 in Skattungbyn, Orsa Municipality, Sweden. He was christened as Karl Gunnar but the first name was later dropped.
He graduated from the University of Stockholm Law School in 1923 and received a doctorate of laws in economics in 1927.
In 1967 Myrdal received an honorary doctorate from Sir George Williams University, which later became Concordia University.
In 1971 both he and his wife received honorary doctorates from Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota.
Myrdal received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1979.
From 1927 to 1950, he taught economics and, in the 1960s, international economics at the University of Stockholm.
In 1934, Myrdal and his wife, Alva, a sociologist, wrote Crisis in the Population Question, which studied the excessively decreasing Swedish birthrate. Their analysis stressed the need for social planning in order to raise the birthrate without lowering the high standard of living. Their work greatly influenced Scandinavian social planning in the 1930's and opened the way for general social reforms in Sweden. Myrdal served on the new government commissions which were instrumental in bringing about "social engineering, " and as a member of the Swedish Senate (1936-1938) and the board of the National Bank of Sweden, he also helped in the rational planning of the economy.
Myrdal directed a study of the African American for the Carnegie Corporation published as An American Dilemma: The Negro and Modern Democracy (1944). Now regarded as a classic of legal, sociological, and anthropological scholarship, it helped focus attention on America's race problem. He believed that the African American plight was a focal point of the general moral dilemma of America: the conflict between the just American goals and ideals and the actual practices of the individual members of society. His work has been cited in U. S. Supreme Court decisions.
Myrdal served as minister of commerce in Sweden (1945-1947). He used his neutrality and objectivity as an international civil servant and as director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (1947-1957). In the 1950s and 1960s, he wrote prolifically on international economics, the problems of underdevelopment, and value biases in Western economic thought.
In 1968, Myrdal completed another major study, Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations (3 vols. ).
His later work includes The Challenge of Affluence (1963).
He passed away in 1987 in Sweden.
( Nobel Prize winner Gunnar Myrdal is best known for his ...)
( In this landmark effort to understand African American ...)
(The eminent Swedish sociologist discusses such diverse to...)
(Myrdal described this book as a discussion of three key n...)
He became a Social Democratic Member of Parliament from 1933 and from 1945 to 1947 he served as Trade Minister in Tage Erlander's government. During this period he was heavily criticised for his financial agreement with the Soviet Union. At the same time he was accused of being responsible for the Swedish monetary crisis in 1947.
While analyzing the difficulties of development in southern Asia Myrdal feels that the disparity between rich and poor nations cannot be bridged until old myths about development are rejected. He argues that the crucial factor is not the amount of foreign aid or the kind of economic system used but the social discipline of the masses. Without more native self-help, without the rousing of the masses and their real participation in nation building, without strong programs of birth control, and without the rooting out of corruption in government, Myrdal concludes that the Asian drama could become a tragedy.
Quotations:
"It Is in the Agricultural Sector That the Battle for Long- Term Economic Development Will Be Won or Lost. "
"The big majority of Americans, who are comparatively well-off, have developed an ability to have enclaves of people living in the greatest misery almost without noticing them. "
"So many social changes are as irreversible as the reaction when sodium is thrown into water. "
"The study of women's intelligence and personality has had broadly the same history as the one we record for Negroes . .. in drawing a parallel between the position of, and feeling toward, women and Negroes, we are uncovering a fundamental basis of our culture. "
"America is conservative in fundamental principles. .. but the principles conserved are liberal and some, indeed, are radical. "
Quotes from others about the person
Myrdal was certainly committed to democracy, even in developmental contexts, and firmly opposed to empires. Democratic or otherwise, he was highly pessimistic—in retrospect excessively so—about the prospects for international economic development. Hayek had no problem with “transitional” authoritarianism, as in Pinochet’s Chile, with which he was associated. Hayek, an Austrian aristocrat teaching in London, and Myrdal, a Social Democrat who attempted to rally his fellow Swedes against Hitler, were united and defined by their anti-Nazism. "
Thomas Timberg, “William Easterly’s The Tyranny of Experts: The Undoubted Merits of Individual Liberty, Individual Initiative and Democracy” (2014)
Myrdal was married to politician and diplomat Alva Myrdal in 1924, and together had two daughters, Kaj Fölster (mother of Swedish economist Stefan Fölster) and Sissela Bok, and a son, Jan Myrdal.
He was born in 1876 and died in 1934.
She was born in 1878 and died 1965.
She was a Swedish sociologist, diplomat and politician. She, along with Alfonso Garcia Robles, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982.
She is a Swedish-born American philosopher and ethicist.
He is a Swedish author, leftist-political writer and columnist. He is an honorary doctor of literature at Upsala College in New Jersey, US, and a PhD at Nankai University in Tianjin in China.
