Abstract
The Swedish Nobel Laureate Gunnar Myrdal is the dissenting social scientist par excellence. A distinction is made between immanent and transcendent dissent. After a discussion of the nature of dissent, five lines of Myrdal's criticism of conventional economics are analyzed: 1. (a) “inadequacy to reality,” misplaced aggregation, illegitimate isolation and “opportunistic ignorance” 2. (b) abstracting from actual valuations of people; 3. (c) the self-imposed limits of academic disciplines; 4. (d) spurious objectivity 5. (e) twisted and diplomatic terminology. Can the inclusion of all relevant variables and the explicit formulation of valuations save the social sciences? The answer is “it depends.” Myrdal's notion of circular or cumulative causation is then critically examined. He formulated early a theory of self-interest and rent-seeking in the public sector, was one of the first to draw attention to corruption and reminded us of the importance of climate in development.
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