Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

Introduction 1. Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle 2. Images of Relationship 3. Concepts of Self and Morality 4. Crisis and Transition 5. Women's Rights and Women's Judgment 6. Visions of Maturity References Index of Study Participants General Index

In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 1982.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers - often implicitly - assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these "standard subjects" are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species - frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior - hence, there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.

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The WEIRDest People in the World

Since critics first allegedthat feminism claimed tospeak universally for all
women, feminist researchers havebeen acutely aware ofthe limitations of 
genderas a single analyticalcategory. In fact, feministsare perhaps alone in
the academy in theextent to which theyhave embraced intersectionality – the 
relationshipsamong multiple dimensions andmodalities of social relations
and subject formations – as itselfa central category ofanalysis. One could 
evensay that intersectionality isthe most important theoreticalcontribution 
that women’s studies,in conjunction with relatedfields, has made sofar.1

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/426800

The Complexity of Intersectionality

Faisant appel aux etudes recentes portant sur la reconnaissance et l’identite sociale, nous analysons les changements dans la categorisation de l’identite collective des groupes stigmatises en Israel, en Irlande du Nord, au Quebec et au Bresil. Alors que la litterature sur la reconnaissance tend a presumer une opposition nette entre « nous » et « eux », l’analyse de la litterature empirique demontre la complexification et la multiplication des categories d’identite. Dans les quatre cas nous avons observe le processus de reconnaissance, en explorant les transformations de la signification des frontieres internes et externes de l’identite collective pour ses membres ainsi que pour ceux qui lui sont exterieurs. Nous soutenons que la nature conditionnelle de la reconnaissance devrait conduire les chercheurs a considerer non seulement les composantes normatives du conflit ethnique mais aussi, en leur accordant une importance particuliere, le langage et la categorisation qui fondent ce type de debat.

Sur les Frontières de la Reconnaissance: Les Catégories Internes et Externes de l'Identité Collective

This essay engages with Wimmer's Ethnic Boundary Making to consider how cultural processes feed into inequality. It describes the strengths of the book, relates it to my early work, and draws on Lamont, Beljean, and Clair (forthcoming), to describe two types of identification processes (racialization and stigmatization) and two types of rationalization processes (standardization and evaluation) that contribute to an understanding of the relationship between symbolic and social boundaries. It stresses similarities and differences between approaches and suggests possible points for convergence.

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/lamont/files/lamont_reflectionsinspiredbyethnicboundarymaking.pdf

Reflections inspired by Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks by Andreas Wimmer

Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology

A post-Bourdieusian sociology of valuation and evaluation for the field of cultural production

French society has experienced dramatic social changes over the past decades, which have resulted in a significant reshuffling of its symbolic boundaries, moving the poor and ethno-racial minorities toward the periphery of the community of those worthy of recognition, protection, and assistance.* 1 As we move into the twenty-first century, the redrawing of the lines that divide this national community needs to be better understood, as it echoes profound changes found elsewhere in Europe. While an abundance of literature details some of these changes, this essay provides a bird’s-eye view of the recent transformations in the French case in the hope of inspiring more research on the inequalities and divisions at play in contemporary France. When writing about social transformation in France, social scientists often start with a diagnosis of French republicanism and other central cultural traditions, such as Catholicism and socialism. Even though these traditions enable different types of cultural identities and behaviors, scholars agree that all three currents contributed to producing symbolic boundary patterns where internal ethno-racial differences and poverty were downplayed as principles of division. 2 Following a specific interpretation of the central tenets of liberalism, French republicanism has traditionally awarded citizens equal rights as a result of which they entered into a covenant with the state, whose role is to define and promote the common good and insure universalism by downplaying ethno-racial and religious differences between citizens. 3 Until quite recently, the fusion of this liberal republican ideology with the Marxian rhetoric of class warfare also encouraged French workers to downplay divi

/pdf/how-neo-liberalism-has-transformed-france-s-symbolic-5bd7bxgvu7.pdf

Michèle Lamont

Papers

Sur les Frontières de la Reconnaissance: Les Catégories Internes et Externes de l'Identité Collective

Reflections inspired by Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks by Andreas Wimmer

Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology

A post-Bourdieusian sociology of valuation and evaluation for the field of cultural production

How neo-liberalism has transformed france's symbolic boundaries?