Lamont, Michèle. 2014. “
How Do University, Higher Education and Research Contribute toSocietal Well-Being?”. Pp. 8-17 in
Higher Education in Societies: A Multi Scale Perspective. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
PDF Lamont, Michèle, and Nicolas Duvoux. 2014. “
How Neo-Liberalism has Transformed France's Symbolic Boundaries?”.
French Politics, Culture and Society 32 (2):57-75.
Abstract
This paper considers changes in the symbolic boundaries of French society under the influence of neo-liberalism. As compared to the early nineties, stronger boundaries toward the poor and Blacks are now being drawn while North-African immigrants and their offsprings continue to be largely perceived as outside the community of those who deserve recognition and protection. Moreover, while the social reproduction of upper-middle class privileges has largely remained unchanged, there is a blurring of the symbolic boundaries separating the middle and working class as the latter has undergone strong individualization. Also, the youth is now bearing the brunt of France’s non-adaptation to changes in the economy and is increasingly marginalized. The result is a dramatic change in the overall contours of the French symbolic community, with a narrowed definition of cultural membership, and this, against a background of growing inequality, unemployment, and intolerance in a more open and deregulated labor market.
PDF Lamont, Michèle, and Ann Swidler. 2014. “
Methodological Pluralism and the Possibilities and Limits of Interviewing”.
Qualitative Sociology 37 (2):153-171.
Abstract
Against the background of recent methodological debates pitting ethnography against interviewing, this paper offers a defense of the latter and argues for methodological pluralism and pragmatism and against methodological tribalism. Drawing on our own work and on other sources, we discuss some of the strengths and weaknesses of interviewing, especially for work in the sociology of culture. We argue that concern over whether attitudes correspond to behavior is a misguided focus of the recent literature, and offer that we should instead consider what interviewing and other data gathering techniques are best suited for. In our own work, we suggest, we have used somewhat unusual interviewing techniques not to explore individuals’ characteristics, but to reveal how institutional systems and the construction of social categories, boundaries, and status hierarchies organize social experience. We also point to new methodological challenges ahead, particularly concerning the incorporation of historical and institutional dimensions into interview-based studies. We finally describe fruitful directions for future research, which may result in methodological advances while bringing together the strengths of various data collection techniques.
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