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

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Social categorisation and group identification: How African-Americans shape their collective identity through consumption

/pdf/presentation-le-capital-culturel-4zqx4t7cbq.pdf

Présentation : le capital culturel

Revisiting How Professors Think through the lens of the evaluative cultures of Spanish peer reviewers and those of American policy experts raises diverse unanticipated challenges. Below I first discuss the three contributions that consider How Professors Think via cross-national comparisons (Diez Medrano, Lasen, and Valiente) before turning to the discussion of cognitive autonomy at the center of Medvetz’s comments, which are inspired by his own particularly illuminating study of American think tanks (Medvetz 2012). Before proceeding, I wish to thank our four colleagues for making time to seriously think about some of the implications of How Professors Think that I had not previously considered. I am greatly appreciative of their thoughtful contributions, as I am of Alvaro Santana-Acuna and Xavier Coller for suggesting this symposium and for so skillfully orchestrating it. They have created a much valued opportunity for me to reflect on How Professors Think four years after the publication of the book in English, and after that, it has made its way into various international audiences via translations in Korean, Chinese, and soon Spanish. How Professors Think concluded on whether it is desirable and possible for peer review “a la americana” to diffuse beyond U.S. borders. In the last chapter I described some of the conditions that make this type of evaluative practice possible in the United States (focusing on factors such as the significant demographic weight of the U.S. research community, the spatial distance and decentralization of its institutions of higher education, and the lengthy graduate education process that brings students in close contact with mentors who impact their self-concept while diffusing implicit evaluation standards). This chapter also suggested why it would not be reasonable to expect that the same customary rules of evaluation I described to appear in countries where different conditions for scientific work prevail. This has been confirmed in

/pdf/revisiting-how-professors-think-across-national-and-23fjyc7drv.pdf

Revisiting How Professors Think across National and Occupational Contexts

Fin de Siècle Social Theory is Jeffrey Alexander’s response to recent development in sociological (and social) theorizing. In this book, the author tackles everything “post” and improved (including things modern, “anti,” and “neo”). At the request of the book review editor, I will only comment on the chapter that has not been previously published and which makes up almost half of the book, the author’s attaque en règle on the work of Pierre Bourdieu. This is true, genuine, feisty, polemical Alexander, and he takes no prisoners. His argument can be schematized as follows. (1) Bourdieu’s critique of structuralism and attempt to restore agency ignores the tradition of practical action theory (namely Peircian pragmatism), with the result that he inflates the originality of his own theoretical contribution while turning structuralism into a “vulgarized enemytradition” (p. 135). (2) His concept of habitus “binds actors tightly to the social world” (p. 143) and downplays the relative autonomy of culture (i.e., the existence of universalistic ideals that can be generalized across contexts and exist beyond the hierarchical structures of material life). In a provocative and original comparison between Bourdieu’s work and psychoanalytic and developmental theories of the self (p. 145), Alexander argues that in the former, there is no self or moral choice possible since a critical distance from social structure cannot be attained. (3) Bourdieu conceptualizes action as only cognitive and strategic, at the exclusion of communication and collective obligations; affective dispositions and symbolic schemas cannot be motivational sources for action, only “practice as profit-seeking.” (4) Similarly, Bourdieu’s concept of field is reductionist because it presumes a homology between field dynamic and broader social relations. (5) Bourdieu’s empirical work is primarily a means to elaborating discursive commitments. It suffers from the same problems as the theoretical work, namely “the impoverished understanding of meaning, the caricature of motivation, the inability to conceptualize the interplay of sensible self and differentiated institutions in contemporary society” (p. 171). (6) Bourdieu’s critical theory is not critical because it leaves no room for differentiating between democratic and totalitarian societies and for capturing the place of moral judgment and deliberation in the public sphere. (7) Bourdieu is less original than he claims because, in fact, he is a closet neo-Marxist who “conceives of actors as motivated by a structure of disposition which merely translates material structures into the subjective domain” (p. 136). Responding to Alexander’s polemical spirit, Bourdieu aficionados will undoubtedly take exception to many of his interpretations, grounding their own reading in the sanctioned guidelines that Bourdieu kindly provides. A fair and dispassionate assessment of the merit of each critical

Book ReviewsFin de Siècle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction, and the Problem of Reason. By Jeffrey C. Alexander. London: Verso, 1995. Pp. vii+231.

Les membres de groupes stigmatises s’attendent souvent a ce que l’on scrute leurs moindres faits et gestes, et a etre ignores, rabaisses, incompris et meprises dans leur vie quotidienne. Cet article porte sur une etude comparative qui a porte sur les points suivants : comment interpretent-ils la realite qu’ils vivent et reagissent-ils ? De quelles ressources disposent-ils pour ce faire ? En quoi leurs reactions sont-elles faconnees par le neo-liberalisme ? Comment les reactions a la stigmatisation peuvent-elles contribuer a la resilience sociale ?

Michèle Lamont

Papers

Social categorisation and group identification: How African-Americans shape their collective identity through consumption

Présentation : le capital culturel

Revisiting How Professors Think across National and Occupational Contexts

Book ReviewsFin de Siècle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction, and the Problem of Reason. By Jeffrey C. Alexander. London: Verso, 1995. Pp. vii+231.

Réactions à la discrimination raciale et résilience sociale dans le contexte néolibéral aux États-Unis