Michèle Lamont is a cultural sociologist who studies morality, group boundaries, and inequality. She has tackled topics such as dignity, respect, stigma, racism, and how we evaluate social worth across societies in Money, Morals and Manners, The Dignity of Working Men, How Professors Think, and the coauthored Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the US, Brazil and Israel. Her most recent book is Seeing Others: How Recognition Works and How It Can Heal a Divided World (Penguin/Simon & Schuster 2023). She is at work on a book tentatively titled “Recognition Globally.” The recipient of various awards, she served as President of the American Sociological Association in 2016 and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the British Academy, and the Royal Society of Canada.
Recognition, Globally
I am spending AY 2024-25 researching my new book project tentatively titled "Recognition Globally" where I will analyze recognition claims in a variety of contexts and help us better understand how to move toward a more inclusive society. The project explores claims for political recognition by “invisible” US and UK working class youth living in Manchester New Hampshire and Manchester, UK; environmental justice claims by indigenous groups in the Northern Mariana Islands (Micronesia) and Algonquin territories in Canada; recognition through work for high-tech creators in video games and visual effects; and other cases.
This project is supported by various programs at Harvard (Asia Center, Canada Program, FAS Dean’s Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship, The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, and the Weatherhead Center for Advanced Research), and by sabbatical leave supported by various academic centers where I will be in residency during this period:
September 2024 - January 2025 at the Netherland Institute for Advanced Studies (Amsterdam)
February 2025 at the University of Hong Kong with the support of a Distinguished Social Science Scholar Fellowship
March - May 2025 at the University of Manchester (UK) with the support of a Leverhulme International fellowship
June 2025 at the Institut d'etudes avancées (Paris), with the support of a Residency Senior Fellowship
In this book project conducted in collaboration with research assistants and British social scientists, I will mobilize comparative case studies to consider similarities and differences between three types of recognition: political recognition for the “invisible” working class youth in the US and the UK; environmental recognition for two indigenous groups in Micronesia and Eastern Canada; and recognition at work for high tech creators involved in the global production of videogames and special effects (VFX).
These studies all concern recognition in a different context of uncertainty about the future. They also concern groups that vary in terms of their “groupness” (the fluidity of their group identity and experienced symbolic boundaries) whether and how they voice claims about recognition, and whether and how they experience misrecognition.
This research will draw on over 300 interviews and on a global multi-sited organizational ethnography.
News
“The Kohli Foundation for Sociology is delighted to announce this year’s laureate of the Kohli Prize for Sociology. This year’s prize goes to Michèle Lamont. With her path-breaking comparative research on culture, social inequality and inclusion, she has made a significant imprint on sociological knowledge. We are already looking forward to the award ceremony at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center on 13 November 2024.”
2024 Distinguished Career Award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity.
Election to the American Philosophical Society. “The American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States, was founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin for the purpose of “promoting useful knowledge.” It contains less than a thousand members today.
Events for Fall 2024 and Spring 2025: European book tour for Seeing Others
August 24: “The Politics of Recognition”, Workshop on “Religion, the radical right, and how to respond: analyzing for alternatives”, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
August 27: Keynote speaker at the Sustainable Cooperation (SCOOP) Annual Conference, Utrecht, Netherlands.
August 30: Semi-plenary speaker, session on “Social Conflicts at Work and around Work: Challenging Inequalities and Redefining Boundaries”, European Sociological Association Meetings, Porto, Portugal.
October 7: Helsinki Inequality Initiative (INEQ), the University of Helsinki, Finland.
October 22: Online lecture, Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, NYU Law School.
October 28: “Experiences of (in)dignity and (in)equality in work and unemployment” Workshop, Roskilde University, Copenhagen, Denmark.
November 13: Kohli Prize for Sociology award ceremony and lecture, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany.
November 14: Keynote at “Selective Solidarities in Times of Multiple Crises” Conference, Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, Germany.
November 21: Public Lecture, De Dépendance and Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
November 29: Keynote, Potsdam University workshop on diversity and organizations networks, Germany.
December 2: Keynote, Berlin University Alliance conference, Berlin, Germany.
December 4: Max Weber Lecture, European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
December 6: Seminar Lecture, L'École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris, France.
Recent Publications
Book
Seeing Others: How Recognition Works and How It Can Heal a Divided World
2023 Simon and Schuster (US), Penguin (UK)
One of “The 8 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023 That You Need To Read in 2024” — Book Riot
Recent Article in the Popular Press
“Kamala Harris must lean in: The left doesn’t have to pick between woke and working class” — Article in Salon Magazine, Aug 04 2024
“Europe’s Invisible Provinces: How the Urban-Rural Divide Drives Political Polarization” — Article (co-written with Mari Hyland and Massimiliano Mascherini) in Foreign Affairs, May 23 2024
“Gen Z and the Art of Incentivized Self-Actualization” — Article in Wired Magazine, Jan 8 2024
“Ordinary Universalism” — Article and book excerpt in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Oct 24 2023
“Michèle Lamont: Businesses should ‘broaden who is valued and viewed as worthy’” — OpEd in Management Today, Oct 03 2023
“Yes, the Supreme Court has taken away rights and resources. But it’s so much worse” — OpEd in the Los Angeles Times, July 24 2023
"Is Your DEI Progress Undermined by Attention Inequality?" — Article in Harvard Business Review with Sheen S. Levine and David Stark, Oct 24 2022
Scholarly Publications and Interviews
2024: “Feeling overlooked: A rural–urban divide in recognition.” (with Marie Hyland and Massimiliano Mascherini). Global Policy, 00, 1–16. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13454.
2024: “Reflections on the emergence of a research field. An interview with Michèle Lamont” (with Anne K. Krüger and Thorsten Peetz). In Routledge International Handbook of Valuation and Society, edited by A.K. Krüger, T. Peetz, and H. Schäfer. London: Routledge.
2023: "Recreating a Plausible Future: Combining Cultural Repertoires in Unsettled Times." (with Shira Zilberstein and Mari Sanchez). Sociological Science, 10(1): 348-373.
2022: “How American College Students Understand Social Resilience and Navigate towards the Future during Covid and the Movement for Racial Justice.” (with Mari Sanchez and Shira Zilberstein). Social Science & Medicine 301:114890.
2021: “Our Future in the Anthropocene Biosphere: Global sustainability and resilient societies.” (with Carl Folke, et al.) Ambio 50:834-869. (Also in Nobel Prize Summit: Our Planet, Our Future. Stockholm, Sweden: Beijer Discussion Paper Series No. 272. 2020.)