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.

/pdf/the-weirdest-people-in-the-world-480wr4m3kb.pdf

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

This article examines how ordinary victims of racism rebut racist beliefs communicated to them by the mass media and encountered in daily life. We describe the rhetorical devices that North African immigrant men in France use to respond to French racism, drawing on thirty in-depth interviews conducted with randomly selected blue-collar immigrants residing in the Paris suburbs. We argue that while French anti-racist rhetorics, both elite and popular, draw on universalistic principles informed by the Enlightenment as well as French Republican ideals, North African immigrants rebut racism by drawing instead on their daily experience and on a 'particular universalism', i.e. a moral universalism informed by Islam. Their arguments frequently centre on claims of equality or similarity between all human beings, or between North Africans and the French. Available cultural repertoires and the structural positions of immigrants help to account for the rhetorical devices that immigrants use to rebut racism.

Particular universalisms: North African immigrants respond to French racism

This exploratory study makes a contribution to the literature on antiracism by unpacking the cultural categories through which everyday antiracism is experienced and practiced by extraordinarily successful African Americans. Using a phenomenological approach, we focus on processes of classification to analyze the criteria that members of the African American elite mobilize to compare racial groups and establish their equality. We first summarize results from earlier work on the antiracist strategies of White and African American workers. Second, drawing upon in-depth interviews with members of the Black elite, we show that demonstrating intelligence and competence, and gaining knowledge, are particularly valued strategies of equalization, while religion has a subordinate role within their antiracist repertoire. Thus, gaining cultural membership is often equated with educational and occupational attainment. Antiracist strategies that value college education and achievement by the standards of American individualism may exclude many poor and working-class African Americans from cultural membership. In this way, strategies of equalization based on educational and professional competence may prove dysfunctional for racial solidarity.

/pdf/everyday-antiracism-competence-and-religion-in-the-cultural-24ykt6ntkx.pdf

EVERYDAY ANTIRACISM: Competence and Religion in the Cultural Repertoire of the African American Elite

A comparative look at how discrimination is experienced by stigmatized groups in the United States, Brazil, and Israel Racism is a common occurrence for members of marginalized groups around the world. Getting Respect illuminates their experiences by comparing three countries with enduring group boundaries: the United States, Brazil and Israel. The authors delve into what kinds of stigmatizing or discriminatory incidents individuals encounter in each country, how they respond to these occurrences, and what they view as the best strategy-whether individually, collectively, through confrontation, or through self-improvement-for dealing with such events. This deeply collaborative and integrated study draws on more than four hundred in-depth interviews with middle- and working-class men and women residing in and around multiethnic cities-New York City, Rio de Janeiro, and Tel Aviv-to compare the discriminatory experiences of African Americans, black Brazilians, and Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel, as well as Israeli Ethiopian Jews and Mizrahi (Sephardic) Jews. Detailed analysis reveals significant differences in group behavior: Arab Palestinians frequently remain silent due to resignation and cynicism while black Brazilians see more stigmatization by class than by race, and African Americans confront situations with less hesitation than do Ethiopian Jews and Mizrahim, who tend to downplay their exclusion. The authors account for these patterns by considering the extent to which each group is actually a group, the sociohistorical context of intergroup conflict, and the national ideologies and other cultural repertoires that group members rely on. Getting Respect is a rich and daring book that opens many new perspectives into, and sets a new global agenda for, the comparative analysis of race and ethnicity.

Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel

/pdf/how-culture-matters-enriching-our-understandings-of-poverty-wyozi6kk85.pdf

How Culture Matters: Enriching Our Understandings of Poverty

With growing inequality, the American dream is becoming less effective as a collective myth. With its focus on material success, competition and self-reliance, the intensified diffusion of neoliberal scripts of the self is leading the upper-middle class toward a mental health crisis while the working class and low-income groups do not have the resources needed to live the dream. African Americans, Latinos and undocumented immigrants, who are presumed to lack self-reliance, face more rigid boundaries. One possible way forward is broadening cultural membership by promoting new narratives of hope centered on a plurality of criteria of worth, 'ordinary universalism' and destigmatizing stigmatized groups.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1468-4446.12667

Michèle Lamont

Papers

Particular universalisms: North African immigrants respond to French racism

EVERYDAY ANTIRACISM: Competence and Religion in the Cultural Repertoire of the African American Elite

Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel

How Culture Matters: Enriching Our Understandings of Poverty

From 'having' to 'being': self-worth and the current crisis of American society.