Alva and Gunnar Myrdal are the only couple ever awarded Nobel prizes as individuals: Gunnar won the prize in Economics in 1974, and Alva won the Peace Prize in 1982. This dual biography examines their work as architects of the modern welfare state and probes the connections between the public and private dimensions of their lives. Drawing on their extensive personal correspondence and diaries between their electrifying first meeting in 1919 and their protracted marital crisis in the early 1940s, this book presents the psychologist and the economist as they sought to combine love and work in an equal partnership. Alva and Gunnar simultaneously experimented with a new kind of intimate relationship and designed the social supports necessary for women both to bear and raise children and to contribute their talents and energies to society. Like all genuine revolutionaries, they struggled to free themselves from the burdens of their upbringings; to evaluate their own actions with what they called "unsparing honesty," and to test their policy recommendations in practice, measuring everything against the values they shared.

As two of the leading social scientists of the twentieth century, Alva and Gunnar Myrdal tried to establish a harmonious, “organic” Gemeinschaft [community] in order to fight an assumed disintegration of modern society. By means of functionalist architecture and by educating “sensible” citizens, disciplining bodies, and reorganizing social relationships they attempted to intervene in the lives of ordinary men. The paradox of this task was to modernize society in order to defend it against an “ambivalent modernity.” This combination of Weltanschauung [world view], social science, and technical devices became known as social engineering. The Myrdals started in the early 1930s with Sweden, and then chose the world as their working field. In 1938, Gunnar Myrdal was asked to solve the “negro problem” in the United States, and, in the 1970s, Alva Myrdal campaigned for the world's super powers to abolish all of their nuclear weapons. The Myrdals successfully established their own "modern American" marriage as a media image and role model for reform. Far from perfect, their marriage was disrupted by numerous conflicts, mirrored in thousands of private letters. This marital conflict propelled their urge for social reform by exposing the need for the elimination of irrational conflicts from everyday life. A just society, according to the Myrdals, would merge social expertise with everyday life, and ordinary men with the intellectually elite. Thomas Etzemüller's study of these two figures brings to light the roots of modern social engineering, providing insight for today's sociologists, historians, and political scholars.

"Alva and Gunnar Myrdal are the only couple ever awarded Nobel prizes as individuals: Gunnar won the prize in Economics in 1974, and Alva won the Peace Prize in 1982. This dual biography examines their work as architects of the modern welfare state and probes the connections between the public and private dimensions of their lives. Drawing on their extensive personal correspondence and diaries between their electrifying first meeting in 1919 and their protracted marital crisis in the early 1940s, this book presents the psychologist and the economist as they sought to combine love and work in an equal partnership. Alva and Gunnar simultaneously experimented with a new kind of intimate relationship and designed the social supports necessary for women both to bear and raise children and to contribute their talents and energies to society. Like all genuine revolutionaries, they struggled to free themselves from the burdens of their upbringings; to evaluate their own actions with what they called "unsparing honesty," and to test their policy recommendations in practice, measuring everything against the values they shared"--

In it, she creates an intimate, impassioned portrait of one of the great women of the 20th century.

The daughter of Alva Myrdal offers a portrait of the public triumphs and private difficulties of her mother's influential life. Myrdal was an advocate for women's rights and peace, an ambassador, Swedish cabinet minister and Nobel Prize winner. Her husband, Gunnar, was a noted economist, a Swedish minister and also a Nobel Prize winner.

This study examines the manner in which Gunnar Myrdal's intellectual style left an impact on the shaping of Sweden's welfare state, on race relations in the United States, on post-World War Two economic cooperation in Europe, and on the analysis of Third World economic development.

This book provides an evaluation of the intellectual development of Gunnar Myrdal, emphasizing his methodology, his beliefs about economics and the role of economists in modern society. It explains how Gunnar Myrdal became an institutional economist and how this perspective influenced his contribution to economic development and attempts to close the gap between rich and poor countries. The main argument of the book is that economists, despite being trained in the orthodox neoclassical tradition, can develop an alternative conception that is more relevant and appropriate for analysis and policy making in developing and transition economies. Much of the discussion focuses on the evolution of Gunnar Myrdal's intellectual development and his contributions to transformation issues in an historical context. Specific issues discussed include political and social problems and transformation policy for Central and Eastern Europe. The Political Economy of Gunnar Myrdal will be welcomed by academics and students researching in the fields of the history of economic thought, comparative economics and economic development.