Description
Book SynopsisThomas EtzemÃller examines the impact of two of the leading social scientists of the twentieth century, Alva and Gunnar Myrdal. This study brings to light the roots of modern social engineering, providing insight for today's sociologists, historians, and political scholars.
Trade ReviewIn the US, Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal is best known for An American Dilemma, his 1944 book on race relations and racism in the US. By that time, however, Gunnar and his wife Alva Myrdal were already prominent as major intellectual contributors to Sweden’s planned society. They were also, in the eyes of many people, a model of a modern egalitarian marriage. Etzemüller traces the development of their social views and advocacy and the conflicts that sometimes troubled their publicly idealized partnership. The author places the couple within the historical setting of the creation of the Swedish welfare state. The Myrdals were devoted to their nation’s project of establishing a new harmonious community through the rational planning of social relations by experts. From their background in Sweden, the Myrdals became proponents of social planning on a worldwide scale. Although somewhat densely written for general readers, this book will be of great value to upper-level undergraduates and scholars seeking to understand Swedish social democracy, the problems and paradoxes of social engineering, and the life and work of two of the most important social scientists and reformers of the 20th century. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. * CHOICE *
The relationship between the personal, the political, and the public is at the core of modern politics. By focusing on the self-presentation in words and media images of the Swedish social scientists and reformers Alva and Gunnar Myrdal, Thomas Etzemuller offers a fresh perspective both on their one-time international celebrity status as “rational modernizers” and on the deep contradictions in welfare state ideology between individualism and collectivism, cosmopolitan liberalism, and nationalist state authoritarianism. This book is a compelling and highly readable story that feeds well into contemporary welfare state controversies. -- E. Stina Lyon, London South Bank University
Table of Contents1. Introduction: A Path through Modernity 2. Orchestrated Lives 3. Exploratory Steps 4. The Project of Modernity 5. The Power of Cold Reason 6. Rebuilding Society 7. Project Child 8. An Exemplary Life? 9. America 10. World Citizens 11. Conclusion: Latitude
