Michèle Lamont

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Michèle Lamont
Lamont in 2018
Born1957 (age 66–67)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Children3
Academic background
Alma mater
Academic work
DisciplineSociology
Institutions
Doctoral studentsCrystal Marie Fleming

Michèle Lamont is a sociologist and is the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and a Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Harvard University. She served as President of the American Sociological Association from 2016 to 2017.[1] A recipient of the prestigious Erasmus award and other prestigious international awards, she has received honorary degrees from University of Ottawa, Université de Bordeaux and University of Amsterdam, University of Warwick, and University of Uppsala.[2] She is married to sociologist Frank Dobbin and together they have three children.

Biography

Lamont (born 1957 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada[3]) completed her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in political theory at the University of Ottawa in 1979. She received her Doctor of Philosophy degree in sociology from the French university of La Sorbonne in 1983 and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University from 1983 to 1985. Lamont served as professor at the University of Texas-Austin (1985–1987), Princeton University (1987–2003), and Harvard University (2003–present).

Career

Lamont is an important contributor to the study of culture, inequality, evaluation, racism and anti-racism, cultural and social change. She is an expert in qualitative research and has coauthored an influential NSF report on the evaluation of qualitative research.

Lamont has also contributed to interdisciplinary social science research. From 2002 to 2019, Lamont served as co-director of the Successful Societies Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.[4] The interdisciplinary program brings together leading social scientists who meet three times a year to discuss how societies met various types of challenges. The group has produced two books: Successful Societies: How Institutions and Culture Affect Health[5] (2009) and Social Resilience in the Neo-Liberal Era[6] (2013). Both books were co-edited with Peter A. Hall [de] and published by Cambridge University Press. The research program also produced a special issue of Daedalus on "Inequality as a Multidimensional Process," which Lamont co-edited with Paul Pierson (2019).[7] These important contributions have also fed the agenda of the "Culture of Health Program" of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: With the Foundation's vice president for research, Lamont co-edited a special issue of Social Science and Medicine (2016) on "Mutuality, Mobilization, and Messaging".[8] She also collaborated with a leading team of ecologists and economists at the Beijer Institute for Resilience at the Royal Academy of Sweden, which resulted in a paper on "Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere" (2021).[9] She is co-chairing the 2022 UNDP Human Development report on social resilience in unsettled times.

In 2009 and 2010, Lamont served as Senior Advisor on Faculty Development and Diversity in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. In this role she put in place a universal mentoring program for tenure-track faculty. And from 2014-2021 Lamont served as acting director and director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA).[10] With a large endowment and 235 faculty associates, this center is among the largest social science centers at Harvard.

From 2006-2009, Lamont was the chair of the Council for European Studies and from 2016-2018, she served as president elect, president, and past president of the American Sociological Association.[1]

Lamont has been a visiting professor at various institutions including the Collège de France, SciencesPo, Université de Paris 8, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Mainz University, and Tel Aviv University. She has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Studies at Stanford University, the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship,[11] and a fellow of the Russell Sage Foundation in 1996 and again from 2019 to 2020.

In 2017, she received the Erasmus Prize, for her "devoted contribution to social science research into the relationship between knowledge, power, and diversity."[12]

In February 2022, Lamont was one of 38 Harvard faculty to sign a letter to the Harvard Crimson defending Professor John Comaroff, who had been found to have violated the university's sexual and professional conduct policies. [13] After students filed a lawsuit with detailed allegations of Comaroff's actions and the university's failure to respond, Lamont was one of several signatories to say that she wished to retract her signature. [14]

Contributions to sociology

Lamont's major works compare how people's shared concepts of worth influence and sustain a variety of social hierarchies and inequality. She is concerned with the role of various cultural processes in the creation and reproduction of inequality. Recent publications include the Erasmus Prize-winning essay, Prisms of Inequality: Moral Boundaries, Exclusion, and Academic Evaluation; her co-authored book, Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel; and her presidential address to the ASA (ASR June 2018). She currently serves on various scientific boards including: American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) and Nordic Centre for Research on Gender Equality in Research and Innovation (NORDICORE).[2]

Lamont's early writing formulated influential criticisms of the work of Pierre Bourdieu, a leading sociologist with whom she studied in Paris. Her first book, Money, Morals, Manners,[15] showed that Bourdieu's theories of cultural capital and habitus ignore moral status signals and national repertoires that explain differences in American and French class cultures. This criticism set the stage for a large American literature that was critical of, but built upon, the work of Bourdieu. This movement coincided with the development of cultural sociology in American sociology. With fellow sociologists Ann Swidler, Michael Schudson, and numerous others, Lamont contributed to setting the agenda for the scholarly study of "meaning-making" in sociology. The research of Lamont and colleagues demonstrated the importance of considering various aspects of culture as explanans and explanandum in the social sciences as something more than a "residual category".

Lamont's distinction between "symbolic" and "social" boundaries provides a framework within which to analyze the independent causal role of individual's worldviews in explaining structural phenomena such as inequality. Symbolic boundaries are "conceptual distinctions made by social actors ... that separate people into groups and generate feelings of similarity and group membership."[16] Conversely, "social boundaries are objectified forms of social differences manifested in unequal access to an unequal distribution of resources… and social opportunities."[17] In making this distinction, Lamont acknowledges that symbolic boundaries are a "necessary but insufficient" condition for social change. "Only when symbolic boundaries are widely agreed upon can they take on a constraining character… and become social boundaries."[17]

Lamont's work has applied the "boundary-work" framework to the case of American and French race relations. In her award-winning[18] Dignity of Working Men, Lamont shows how white and African-American conceptions of class are grounded in vastly different conceptions of self-worth. In Getting Respect, Lamont compares how stigmatized groups respond to ethnoracial exclusion in the United States, Brazil, and Israel.

In her 2009 book, How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment, Lamont analyzes how experts in the social sciences and the humanities debate what defines originality, social and intellectual significance, and more. It also analyzes the place of the self, emotion and interaction in evaluation. This book has influenced current debates on funding, evaluation, and audit culture in the United States and Europe.[19] Of particular interest is the question of whether social sciences should be evaluated with different criteria than the sciences. With this book, Lamont has launched a broader program in the sociology of evaluation (including her 2012 paper "Toward a Sociology of Valuation and Evaluation"[20]), which also links to the growing interest in the sociology of valuation.

Lamont is at work on a trade book titled “What we Value: Redefining Worth in the Second Gilded Age” to be published by Simon and Schuster/Penguin in 2023 (One Signal). This research is supported by Carnegie fellowship, RSF and Harvard. This book builds on her British Journal of Sociology paper "From 'having' to 'being': Self-worth and the current crisis of American society."

Selected awards and honors

  • Erasmus Prize (2017)[12]
  • Andrew Carnegie Fellow, Carnegie Corporation of New York (2019)[11]
  • Honorary Doctorate, University of Warwick (2020)[21]
  • Honorary Doctorate, University of Uppsala (2020)[22]
  • Elected Corresponding Fellow, The British Academy[23]
  • Honorary Doctorate, University of Ottawa (2017)[24]
  • Honorary Doctorate, Université de Bordeaux (2017)[25]
  • Honorary Doctorate, University of Amsterdam (2017)[26]
  • 108th President, American Sociological Association (President-elect: 2015–16; Past-president, 2017–2018)[1]
  • Elected Member, Royal Society of Canada (2015)[27]
  • Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, Gouvernement Français (2014)[28]
  • Gutenberg Research Award, Johannes Gutenberg University (2014)[29]

Selected bibliography

  • Lamont, Michèle; Moraes Silva, Graziella; Welburn, Jessica S.; Guetzkow, Joshua; Mizrachi, Nissim; Herzog, Hanna; Reislast, Elisa (2017). Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-16707-7.
  • Lamont, Michele; Hall, Peter A., eds. (2013). Social Resilience in the Neoliberal Era. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-54242-5.
  • Lamont, Michele (2009). How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-05733-3.
  • Lamont, Michele (2002). The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration. Cambridge: Harvard University Press and New York: Russell Sage Foundation. ISBN 978-0-674-00992-9.
  • Lamont, Michele (1992). Wolfe, Alan (ed.). Money, Morals and Manners: The Culture of the French and the American Upper-Middle Class. Morality and Society series. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-674-00992-9.
  • Lamont, Michele; Pierson, Paul (2019). "Inequality as a Multidimensional Process". Daedalus. 148 (3). doi:10.1162/daed_a_01748. S2CID 84181880.
  • Lamont, Michele (2019). "From 'having' to 'being': self-worth and the current crisis of American society". The British Journal of Sociology. 70 (3): 660–707. doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12667. PMID 31190392. S2CID 189815689.
  • Lamont, Michele (2018). "Addressing Recognition Gaps: Destigmatization and the Reduction of Inequality". American Sociological Review. 83 (3): 419–444. doi:10.1177/0003122418773775. S2CID 149672040.
  • Lamont, Michele; Beljean, Stefan; Clair, Matthew (2014). "What is missing? Cultural processes and causal pathways to inequality". Socio-Economic Review. 12 (3): 573–608. doi:10.1093/ser/mwu011.

References

  1. ^ a b c "American Sociological Association: Harvard Professor Elected President of the American Sociological Association". www.asanet.org. 12 August 2015. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
  2. ^ a b Lamont, Michele (June 2018). "Michele Lamont Long CV" (PDF). Harvard University.
  3. ^ "Biographical Note". Retrieved 2017-10-15.
  4. ^ "Michèle Lamont". Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
  5. ^ "Successful Societies". Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
  6. ^ "Social Resilience in the Neoliberal Era". Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
  7. ^ "Inequality as a Multidimensional Process". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2021-06-28.
  8. ^ "Social Science & Medicine | Vol 165, Pages 1-296 (September 2016) | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier". www.sciencedirect.com. Retrieved 2021-06-28.
  9. ^ Folke, Carl; Polasky, Stephen; Rockström, Johan; Galaz, Victor; Westley, Frances; Lamont, Michèle; Scheffer, Marten; Österblom, Henrik; Carpenter, Stephen R.; Chapin, F. Stuart; Seto, Karen C. (2021-04-01). "Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere". Ambio. 50 (4): 834–869. doi:10.1007/s13280-021-01544-8. ISSN 1654-7209. PMC 7955950. PMID 33715097.
  10. ^ "Weatherhead Center Names Permanent Director a Year After Its Last Leader Resigned". The Harvard Crimson. 2014-05-27. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
  11. ^ a b "Carnegie Corporation names fellowship winners". Harvard Gazette. 2019-04-23. Retrieved 2019-05-01.
  12. ^ a b "Harvard's Michèle Lamont receives Erasmus Prize for her social science research". Harvard Gazette. 2017-11-28. Retrieved 2018-06-06.
  13. ^ "38 Harvard Faculty Sign Open Letter Questioning Results of Misconduct Investigations into Prof. John Comaroff". www.thecrimson.com. The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 9 Feb 2022.
  14. ^ "3 graduate students file sexual harassment suit against prominent Harvard anthropology professor". www.bostonglobe.com. The Boston Globe. Retrieved 9 Feb 2022.
  15. ^ Money, Morals, and Manners. Retrieved 2015-10-15. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  16. ^ McLeod, Jane; Lawler, Edward; Schwalbe, Michael (2014). Handbook of the Social Psychology of Inequality. Springer. p. 140. ISBN 978-94-017-9002-4.
  17. ^ a b Lamont, Michèle and Virag Molnar. 2002. "The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences". Annual Review of Sociology. 28:167–195
  18. ^ "Society for the Study of Social Problems | Past Winners". www.sssp1.org. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
  19. ^ Cohen, Patricia (2010-08-23). "For Scholars, Web Changes Sacred Rite of Peer Review". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
  20. ^ Lamont, Michèle (2012-01-01). "Toward a Comparative Sociology of Valuation and Evaluation". Annual Review of Sociology. 38 (1): 201–221. doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-120022.
  21. ^ "List of all Honorary Graduates and Chancellor's Medallists". warwick.ac.uk. Retrieved 2021-06-23.
  22. ^ "New Honorary Doctors Appointed at Uppsala University". Viet Thanh Nguyen. 2019-10-22. Retrieved 2021-06-23.
  23. ^ "Professor Michèle Lamont FBA". The British Academy. Retrieved 2021-06-28.
  24. ^ "University honours outstanding individuals". Gazette. Retrieved 2021-06-23.
  25. ^ "Lamont receives honorary degree". sociology.fas.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2021-06-23.
  26. ^ Amsterdam, Universiteit van (2016-10-11). "Honorary doctorates for refugee law expert, cultural sociologist and Aids advocate". University of Amsterdam. Retrieved 2021-06-23.
  27. ^ "CIFAR Researchers appointed to the Royal Society of Canada and RSC College". CIFAR. 2015-10-09. Retrieved 2021-06-23.
  28. ^ "Biographical Note". scholar.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2021-06-28.
  29. ^ "Ernst Fehr and Michèle Lamont receive Gutenberg Research Award 2014". www.uni-mainz.de. Retrieved 2021-06-28.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Michèle_Lamont&oldid=1070949227"