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Understanding the Dual Crisis

Carl-Ulrik Schierup

in Migration, Citizenship, and the European Welfare State: A European Dilemma

This chapter introduces the book’s central questions, themes, and theoretical concepts, and elaborates on the moral-political premises of the study. It starts with a discussion of the contemporary ... More

This chapter introduces the book’s central questions, themes, and theoretical concepts, and elaborates on the moral-political premises of the study. It starts with a discussion of the contemporary dual crisis of the welfare state and the nation. This complex crisis presents the European Union with a dilemma centered on changing frameworks of citizenship, social exclusion, and the racialization of social relations. It has important historical similarities with the American dilemma of race, class, and democracy described by the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal. This emerging ‘European dilemma’ can no longer be dealt with through the defensive strategies through which European governments and EU institutions have endeavored to appease anti-immigrant populist parties in the past: by adopting restrictive immigration and asylum regimes, shifting from multiculturalism towards revamped assimilationist policies, or devising new ‘guest worker’ systems designed to keep the ‘problem’ away from the core institutions of society altogether. On the one hand, the very future of the European project of integration is dependent on the successful framing of new inclusive modes of citizenship and broad forms of social solidarity. On the other hand, taking this task seriously means confronting powerful political and economic interests. Thus, a central question of the book is whether current national and EU-level anti-discrimination and equal opportunities policies can succeed in the absence of some form of broad social compact on citizenship and social welfare in terms of normative political consensus, and strong institutions beyond and complementary to the market.Less

In Search of Common Ground

Wendy L. Wall

in Inventing the "American Way": The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement

In the late 1930s, many individuals and organizations argued that a defining feature of American life was the ability of people of diverse origins to live together harmoniously. Such assessments were ... More

In the late 1930s, many individuals and organizations argued that a defining feature of American life was the ability of people of diverse origins to live together harmoniously. Such assessments were both descriptive and prescriptive. Despite the nation’s long history of intolerance, when compared to the rest of the world the U.S. looked to many observers like a cosmopolitan haven. At the same time, many of those who hailed American pluralism did so to shore up tolerance and prevent the U.S. from succumbing to the hatreds ravaging other lands. Thus, nearly all of those who lauded America’s pluralist makeup also emphasized an ideological consensus that made other forms of pluralism possible. The bulk of this chapter explores the different versions of pluralism and consensus offered by Louis Adamic and the Common Council for American Unity, the interfaith movement spearheaded by the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Margaret Mead and other intellectuals concerned with cementing national morale, and Gunnar and Alva Myrdal.Less

“Life Upon the Horns of the White Man’s Dilemma”: Ralph Ellison, Gunnar Myrdal, and the Project of National Therapy

Stephen Schryer

in Fantasies of the New Class: Ideologies of Professionalism in Post-World War II American Fiction

This chapter examines Ralph Ellison's critique of Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma. Ellison rejected Myrdal's claim that black culture and psychology can be viewed as pathological by-products of ... More

This chapter examines Ralph Ellison's critique of Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma. Ellison rejected Myrdal's claim that black culture and psychology can be viewed as pathological by-products of white racism, and criticized the impact of sociology on naturalistic representations of race, questioning if “American Negroes are simply the creation of white men, or have they at least helped to create themselves out of what they found around them?” Kenneth Warren praised Ellison's argument saying that he “was seeking a dynamic, even dialectical account of the Negro that would acknowledge the history of racial repression but not characterize black people as merely prisoners of a repressive environment.” Andrew Hoberek similarly highlights the extent to which Ellison echoed a version of postwar sociology concerned with issues of class rather than with issues of race.Less

Building on Lost Foundations: The Institutional Matrix and Socioeconomic Development

Howard Stein

in Beyond the World Bank Agenda: An Institutional Approach to Development

The World Bank agenda of the past two decades has projected a narrow economic doctrine onto a complex social and economic reality without regard to “time, place and culture,” with disastrous ... More

The World Bank agenda of the past two decades has projected a narrow economic doctrine onto a complex social and economic reality without regard to “time, place and culture,” with disastrous consequences. It is time to return to the foundations put in place by institutional economists such as Gunnar Myrdal that have been lost to a discipline that has broadened its application while narrowing its thinking. Building on the contribution of Myrdal, this chapter draws on a large body of theory from sociology, economics, management studies, and psychology to map out an institutional approach to development. It begins with a discussion of the bias inherent in the orthodoxy of Myrdal's era and today. It then investigates Myrdal's institutionalist view of development based largely on his Asian Drama. It examines the concept of institutions in the works of Myrdal and others, and explores the five dimensions of the institutional matrix along with the relation between institutional change and development.Less

Consolidating the Race Concept in Biology

Michael Yudell and J. Craig Venter

in Race Unmasked: Biology and Race in the Twentieth Century

This chapter begins by discussing the US Supreme Court's decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case, which was influenced by Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern ... More

This chapter begins by discussing the US Supreme Court's decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case, which was influenced by Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. Its critical assessment of American racial oppression and rejection of the typological view of race proved instrumental in striking down legalized segregation. In relation to the Brown decision, human geneticist Curt Stern published “The Biology of the Negro,” an article in which he claimed that not only would the Negro race be dissolved as the result of being hybridized into the dominant white population, but also race itself would become futile as the white and black races merged. The chapter also presents how the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) campaigned for the application of scientific knowledge in the fight against racial prejudice.Less

The Dynamic Racial Composition of the United States

Tukufu Zuberi

in Race, Poverty, and Domestic Policy

This chapter focuses on the dynamic racial composition of the United States. It begins with a critical reexamination of the underlying theoretical orientation of An American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal, ... More

This chapter focuses on the dynamic racial composition of the United States. It begins with a critical reexamination of the underlying theoretical orientation of An American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal, who writes that the African-American problem is due to lack of assimilation or resistance to amalgamation into white American culture. It then discusses the factors that caused the changes in the racial composition of the United States and the important implications for the future. Finally, the chapter examines the limits of racial assimilation.Less

Killing Sympathies: RACIAL LIBERALISM AND RACE NOVELS

Jodi Melamed

in Represent and Destroy: Rationalizing Violence in the New Racial Capitalism

This chapter presents Gunnar Myrdal’s novel An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944) to illustrate the emergence of race novels and the values ascribed to literature about ... More

This chapter presents Gunnar Myrdal’s novel An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944) to illustrate the emergence of race novels and the values ascribed to literature about racial liberalism. Throughout the Cold War, race novels were as the primary tool of antiracism movements for discussing the notion of racial liberalism and to gain the support of white Americans against racial discrimination. This satirized the social and professional context of different race relations by dramatizing the failure of white Americans to help promote racial equality and the notion of the possibility that racial liberalism could be attained through philanthropy, academia, government, media, and race relations organizations.Less

Introduction: Once You Go Black

Alisha Gaines

in Black for a Day: White Fantasies of Race and Empathy

The Introduction begins with a personal anecdote. Unaware of the complicated politics of racial impersonation, Gaines blackened a fellow student for her high school’s revival of the 1947 Broadway ... More

The Introduction begins with a personal anecdote. Unaware of the complicated politics of racial impersonation, Gaines blackened a fellow student for her high school’s revival of the 1947 Broadway musical, Finian’s Rainbow. In the musical’s complicated plotline, magically becoming black for a day was the only corrective remedy to the racism of a white, Southern legislator terrorizing his constituents. Moving from the personal to a close reading of Finian’s Rainbow, the introduction establishes the postwar temporality and theoretical scaffolding for the rest of the book. The introduction establishes the link between these racial experiments in temporary blackness and the politics of American liberalism by considering Gunnar Myrdal’s influential sociological tome, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. In it, Myrdal concluded that the solution to the “Negro problem” “rested in the heart and mind of the [white] American.” This false conclusion enabled the genealogy of “empathetic racial impersonation” detailed in the rest of the book. It argues these racial experiments come into vogue when the United States, as an emerging, postwar superpower, attempts to understand its racial past, present, and future. It then unpacks how and why empathetic racial impersonation resurges during moments of racial and sociopolitical crisis.Less

Into the Southern “Wilds”

David A. Varel

in The Lost Black Scholar: Resurrecting Allison Davis in American Social Thought

The fourth chapter begins by chronicling the fieldwork of Allison Davis, Elizabeth Davis, Mary Gardner, Burleigh Gardner, and Saint Clair Drake in their community study of Natchez, Mississippi, from ... More

The fourth chapter begins by chronicling the fieldwork of Allison Davis, Elizabeth Davis, Mary Gardner, Burleigh Gardner, and Saint Clair Drake in their community study of Natchez, Mississippi, from 1933 to 1935. It then evaluates the classic book that emerged from that research: Deep South (1941), along with Allison Davis’s memo to Gunnar Myrdal, which informed parts of Myrdal’s highly influential Carnegie Corporation study of American race relations: An American Dilemma (1944). Finally, the chapter explores the reception of Deep South among social scientists and the larger reading public. As many commentators understood, the book resulted in an unprecedented depth and breadth of ethnographic material on life within the southern United States. It breathed life into the world of Jim Crow, and it explained how racial caste and class intersected to stratify life in Natchez. Less appreciated was how Allison and Elizabeth transgressed racial mores in the academy by taking the lead in an interracial community study, with Allison serving as first author of the book.Less

Modeling the Dynamics of Urban Growth

in Ancient Mesopotamia at the Dawn of Civilization: The Evolution of an Urban Landscape

This chapter examines models of modern urban growth. It looks back at the ideas proposed by economist David Ricardo almost two centuries ago about the importance of trade for economic development and ... More

This chapter examines models of modern urban growth. It looks back at the ideas proposed by economist David Ricardo almost two centuries ago about the importance of trade for economic development and the role of comparative advantage between regions as a spur to trade. It also considers the ideas of Jane Jacobs on how trade spurs and sustains settlement growth; the work of Paul Krugman and other adherents of the self-styled “new economic geography” explaining how unequal gains from trade structure differentially complex urban systems; and the work of Gunnar Myrdal explaining the mechanisms that allow systems of cities to expand, once created, and thus become the primary motor of development in the regions they occupy. Their views, when combined, provide an explicitly evolutionary perspective on the origins and development of cities that adds much to the analytical schema that have characterized the study of early Near Eastern urban origins thus far, which, as noted in Chapter 2, are largely descriptive in nature and devoid of a historical dimension.Less