Global Knowledge Making: Investigating the Social Scientific Practices in Gunnar Myrdal’s Texts on American Racism, 1938-1980

I propose a comparative analysis of Myrdal’s magnum opus, An American Dilemma, with his unpublished revised version, An American Dilemma Revisited, with a focus on the social contexts and research practices that went into the books’ knowledge production in order to explain their content. As such, this is a work in the history of social science as well as an investigation into the processes of knowledge production. Further, Myrdal was a public intellectual who shaped national projects in both the USA and Sweden, thus understanding the foundations of his research and views on the role of science in society further adds to the histories of the two nation-states. Finally, an important part of this investigation is to trace the transnational flows of ideas between the USA and Sweden (and elsewhere), looking for the intellectual influences which Myrdal carried back and forth between locations.