Michèle Lamont

Bio: Michèle Lamont is an academic researcher from Harvard University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Sociology of culture & Racism. The author has an hindex of 49, co-authored 160 publications receiving 17307 citations. Previous affiliations of Michèle Lamont include Princeton University & University of Michigan.

European Workers: Meaning-Making Beings

Abstract: Purpose – This concluding essay suggests how contemporary developments in cultural sociology can enrich and extend the American sociology of work. While recent studies in the sociology of work consider more fully the role of sense making and representations in workers’ lives, we propose additional possibilities for conceptual and theoretical cross-pollination. We propose questions that a cultural sociologist might ask about European workers in the age of neo-liberalism. Methodology/approach – We examine how authors in this volume and its companion (Brady, 2011), and other students of workers approach culture-related phenomena. In particular we focus on how they use culture as explanans and explananda. Borrowing from Lamont and Small (2008) and Small, Harding, and Lamont (2010), we present a set of analytical tools that cultural sociologists use widely. We then draw from culturally focused studies of workers to illustrate how researchers have used these concepts. Findings – Research on European workers documents important political and economic trends that affect this group, but it examines less frequently how individuals understand, experience, and respond to these changes. With tools from cultural sociology, we can explore these understudied aspects of the conditions and lives of European workers. Originality/value of paper – To our knowledge, this is the first systematic discussion of how concepts from contemporary cultural sociology can enrich research on European workers.

Accounting for Differences

Abstract: This chapter describes the multidimensional framework used to explain the quotidian experiences and responses of ordinary people to ethnoracial exclusion. The framework analytically distinguishes between three dimensions to make sense of how they influence the ways in which each ethnoracial group (from Brazil, Israel, and the United States) experiences ethnoracial exclusion. These dimensions pertain to history and the socioeconomic and institutional context; the strength and mode of groupness; and available cultural repertoires. The chapter considers how various explanatory dimensions are articulated differently in each case, arguing that a combination of elements interact with cultural repertoires and groupness to enable various types of excluding experiences and responses to those experiences across contexts. It also relates these themes to several approaches in the literature, including social psychology and the comparative literature on race and ethnicity.

Michèle Lamont: A Portrait of a Capacious Sociologist

Abstract: Michèle Lamont is Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies and the Robert I Goldman Professor of European Studies at Harvard University. She currently serves as the President-Elect of the American Sociological Association. She is also the Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University and the Co-Director of the Successful Societies Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. A cultural sociologist, Lamont is co-author of Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel (Princeton University Press). She is also the author of a dozen award-winning books and edited volumes, which include studies of group boundaries, class, and ethnoracial dynamics in the United States and France, cultures of excellence in higher education, social resilience and neo-liberalism, and comparative cultural repertoires and the evaluation of qualitative social science research.

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

Abstract: 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

The WEIRDest People in the World

Abstract: 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.

The Complexity of Intersectionality

Abstract: 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