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

Description

This event will also be available via live webcast at the following link on October 13 starting at 1:30pm:
http://hosting2.desire2learncapture.com/MUNK/1/live/382.aspx

Inaugural lecture as a Distinguished Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs.

Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel illuminates 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 comparative 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. Our detailed analysis reveals significant differences in narratives about behavior. We account for these patterns by the extent to which each group is actually a group, the socio-historical context of intergroup conflict, and the national ideologies, neo-liberal repertoires, and other narrativesthat group members rely on. We also consider similarities and differences between the middle class and the working class, as well as between men and women, and older and younger interviewees, to capture the extent to which racial identity overshadows the daily experiences of stigmatized groups across contexts. Our hope is that our book will be viewed as making a contribution to the study of everyday racism and stigma management, the quest for recognition and the comparative study of inequality and processes of cultural change.

Michèle Lamont is Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies at Harvard University. She serves as the 108th President of the American Sociological Association in 2016-2017. A cultural and comparative sociologist, Lamont is the author of a dozen books and edited volumes and close to one hundred articles and chapters on a range of topics including culture and inequality, racism and stigma, academia and knowledge, social change and Successful Societies, and qualitative methods. She is currently working on a monograph titled Being Worthy. Her most recent publications include the coauthored book Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel (Princeton University Press, 2016) and a special issue of Social Science and Medicine on “Mutuality, Health Promotion, and Collective Cultural Change.” Lamont is Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University; and Co-director of the Successful Societies Program, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel (Princeton University Press, 2016) will be available for sale at the event.