Publications by Author: Lamont%2C%20Mich%C3%A8le

This special issue offers a first systematic qualitative cross-national exploration of how diverse minority groups respond to stigmatization in a wide variety of contexts. This research is the culmination of a coordinated study of stigmatized groups in Brazil, Israel, and the USA, as well as of connected research projects conducted in Canada, France, South Africa, and Sweden. The issue sheds light on the range of destigmatization strategies ordinary people adopt in the course of their daily life. Articles analyze the cultural frames they mobilize to make sense of their experiences and to determine how to respond; how they negotiate and transform social and symbolic boundaries; and how responses are enabled and constrained by institutions, national ideologies, cultural repertoires, and contexts. The similarities and differences across sites provide points of departure for further systematic research, which is particularly needed in light of the challenges for liberal democracy raised by multiculturalism.

Related Links

• Interview: MP3 audio
• Interview: Transcript [PDF: 81KB]
• Special Issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies (WCFIA website)
• Taylor & Francis Online (publisher website)

Over the past quarter century, researchers have successfully explored the inner workings of the physical and biological sciences using a variety of social and historical lenses. Inspired by these advances, the contributors to Social Knowledge in the Making turn their attention to the social sciences, broadly construed. The result is the first comprehensive effort to study and understand the day-to-day activities involved in the creation of social-scientific and related forms of knowledge about the social world.

The essays collected here tackle a range of previously unexplored questions about the practices involved in the production, assessment, and use of diverse forms of social knowledge. A stellar cast of multidisciplinary scholars addresses topics such as the changing practices of historical research, anthropological data collection, library usage, peer review, and institutional review boards. Turning to the world beyond the academy, other essays focus on global banks, survey research organizations, and national security and economic policy makers. Social Knowledge in the Making is a landmark volume for a new field of inquiry, and the bold new research agenda it proposes will be welcomed in the social science, the humanities, and a broad range of nonacademic settings.

Between February and June 2009, French universities were the theatre of an exceptional protest movement against the latest flavour of governmental reform concerning academic careers. Protest sometimes seems to be a way of life in the French academy, and in France at large, but this time the situation is serious, with potentially huge consequences for the future of the sector. Indeed, the nation that gave birth to je pense, donc je suis is in a deep crisis on the intellectual front, and nowhere is this as obvious as in academic evaluation.

The protest movement did not take off in the grandes écoles (which train much of the French elite), or in professional and technical schools. Instead, it took off in the 80 comprehensive universités – the public institutions that are the backbone of the French educational system. Until two years ago, they were required to admit any high-school graduate on a first-come, first-served basis. A selection process was recently introduced, but even today most students are there because they could not gain entry elsewhere. Faculty work conditions are generally poor, as their institutions are chronically underfunded. Classes are large and programmes are understaffed. More than half of all students leave without any kind of diploma.

Public universities can be very different from each other and are research-intensive in varying degrees, but they carry out the bulk of French scientific research. Research is largely conducted in centres that are located within these institutions, and which often bring together overworked university teachers and full-time researchers who are attached to national institutes such as the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). In a context where the output of these joint centres is not, or is only partially, covered by international ratings, French academics feel doubly underrated owing to the combination of low salaries and low ratings.

This feeling was exacerbated on 22 January when President Nicolas Sarkozy declared that the poor performance of French universities in international rankings was, above all, the consequence of the absence of continuous evaluation, which encourages sloth. Of course, he was displeased that the extensive set of higher education reforms undertaken by his Government during the preceding two years were met with opposition by large segments of the academic community.

Everyone agrees that the current system poses a great many problems, but there is no agreement on how to improve it and get beyond the current gridlock. It is la société bloquée all over again. To wit:

While most academics believe that the system is far too centralised, a 2007 law establishing the progressive financial “autonomy” (and accountability) of universities has been met with criticism and resistance, because it is perceived to be part of a strategy of withdrawal on the part of the State that will result in fewer resources being available for higher education. A number of scholars also fear that the increased decision-making power conferred on university presidents is a threat to the autonomy of faculty members.

While there is a need to design new, more universalistic procedures for evaluating performance and distributing resources, many academics are sceptical of the new institutions recently created to do this, namely the national agencies for the evaluation of universities and research units (Agence d’Evaluation de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Superieur, or AERES) and research projects (Agence Nationale de la Recherche, or ANR). The former, in particular, has been criticised for its reliance on bibliometrics (publication and citation counts), even if the agency is now moving towards using less quantitative standards. Moreover, whereas the former mechanisms for distributing research funds depended on the decisions of elected peers (for instance, on the national committee of the CNRS), AERES appoints its panel members, and this is seen as a blow to researchers’ autonomy. For this and other reasons, many academics have refused to serve on its evaluation panels.

- While academics often agree that the old CNRS needed further integration with the universities, many denounce its gradual downsizing and transformation from a comprehensive research institution to a simple funding and programming agency as the work of uninformed politicians and technocrats intent on dismantling what works best in French research. In 2004, a widespread national protest arose against this dismantling, with 74,000 scholars signing a petition against it. Critics also say that the ongoing reorganisation of the CNRS into disciplinary institutes will reinforce the separation between the sciences, reorient research towards more applied fields and work against the interdisciplinary collaborations that are crucial to innovation in many fields.

While many agree on the need to improve teaching, moves to increase the number of teaching hours are among the most strongly contested reforms. French academics, who very rarely have sabbaticals, already perceive themselves as overworked in a system where time for research is increasingly scarce. These factors help to explain the resistance to expanded classroom hours and new administrative duties.

In the longest strike ever organised by the French scientific community, tens of thousands of lecturers and researchers began in early February to hold protests over a period of several weeks, demonstrating in the streets and (with the support of some students) blocking access to some university campuses. Many also participated in a national debate via print, online and broadcast media, and in general meetings. Some faculty members held teach-ins and action-oriented “alternative courses” for students. Several universities saw their final exams and summer holidays delayed and many foreign exchange students were called back by their home institutions. Despite this frontal assault, the Government did not back down: the much disparaged decree reorganising academic careers (with regard to recruitment, teaching loads, evaluations and promotions) and giving more prerogatives and autonomy to university presidents came into effect on 23 April.

This outcome will probably lead academics and their unions to rethink their strategies and repertoires of collective action. The traditional protest forms are losing legitimacy. As the dust settles, it is becoming clear that demonstrating has little traction in a context where the French public increasingly perceives academics as an elite bent on defending its privileges, even if it requires depriving students of their courses. Negotiation is also perceived as ineffectual, as many suspect that governmental consultations were conducted to buy time until the end of the academic year, when mobilisation would peter out. A third strategy—the radical option that would have prevented the scheduling of exams and the handing out of diplomas at the end of this spring – was ruled out even on the campuses most committed to the cause for fear of alienating the public even further.

As yet, however, no clear alternative has surfaced. We are now witnessing a cleavage between those who voice their opposition (in the main, scholars in the humanities) and the increasing number of academics (primarily scientists) who espouse a “wait-and-see” or a collaborative position as the only realistic path to improving the situation in their own universities. If the majority of academics appear to share the same diagnosis about what needs to be changed in the French system, they disagree on the solution (and on its scale—national or local). The root of the crisis lies not only in the Government’s difficulties in generating consensus, but also in the academics’ own scepticism, cynicism or fatalism about meritocracy, the absence of the administrative resources needed to support proper evaluation, the possibility of impartial evaluation, and the system’s ability to recognise and reward merit.

Deep problems remain in the institutions charged with evaluating the work of academics. The interference of political power, and the (admittedly diminishing) influence of trade unions and corporatist associations have long been viewed as obstacles to a collegial system of academic evaluation. The legitimacy of the 70 disciplinary sections of the Conseil National des Universites (CNU)—charged with certifying individuals as eligible for faculty positions, and with directly granting some promotions – is under question. Some of its committee members are appointed by the Government and as such are suspected of being second-rate, of benefiting from governmental patronage, or of defending governmental interests. Others are chosen from electoral lists that include a disproportionate number of partisan members, who are often perceived to be there because of their political involvement rather than because of their scientific status.

The legitimacy of these committees is further called into question because they include only academics employed by French institutions and are often viewed as perpetuating a longstanding tradition of favouritism. To give only one particularly scandalous example: in June, panellists in the sociology section allocated to themselves half of the promotions that they were charged with assigning across the entire discipline of sociology. This led to the resignation of the rest of the commission and to multiple protests. Such an occurrence sent deep waves of distrust not only between academics, but also towards the civil servants charged with reforming a system that is increasingly viewed as flawed.

Peer review is also in crisis at the local level. While selecting young doctoral recipients to be maîtres de conférences (the entry level permanent position in the French academy, similar to the British lecturer), French universities on average fill 30 per cent of available posts with their own graduates, to the point where local clientelism is often decried as symbolising the corruption of the entire system. The typical (and only) job interview for such a post lasts 20 to 30 minutes—probably the European record for brevity and surely too short to determine whether an individual deserves what is essentially a lifelong appointment. Many view the selection process as little more than a means to legitimise the appointment of pre-selected candidates—although the extent to which this is genuinely the case varies across institutions.

What is to be done? Because both the CNU and the local selection committees have recently been reorganised or granted new responsibilities, it seems the right moment to think about how to improve the evaluation processes in very practical ways. As part of a new start, academics should aim to generate a system of true self-governance at each level, grounded in more explicit principles for peer review. This would put them in a position to defend academic autonomy against the much-feared and maligned governmental or managerial control. While this is certainly occurring in some disciplines and institutions, progress is far from being equally spread across the sector.

Obvious and costless regulatory measures could easily be implemented—for instance, discouraging universities from hiring their own PhD graduates (as AERES recently started to), or forbidding selection committees from promoting their own members. One could also look abroad for examples of “best practice”. The UK’s Economic and Social Research Council has created colleges of trained academic evaluators who are charged with maintaining academic and ethical standards in peer review; although not all aspects of the British approach to academic reform should be emulated, this one is particularly worthy.

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) uses teams of elected experts to evaluate proposals, and academic reputation weighs heavily in determining which names will be put on electoral lists and who will serve on evaluation panels. Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council recently asked an independent panel of international experts to evaluate its peer review process in order to improve impartiality and effectiveness.

In a recent book on peer review in the US, one of the present authors (Michéle Lamont) showed the ways in which American social scientists and humanists operate to maintain their faith in the idea that peer review works and that the academic system of evaluation is fair. In this case, academics exercise their right as the only legitimate evaluators of knowledge by providing detailed assessment of intellectual production in light of their extensive expertise in specialised topics. The exercise of peer evaluation sustains and expresses professional status and professional autonomy. But it requires significant time (and thus good working conditions) and moral commitment—time spent comparing dossiers, making principled decisions about when it is necessary to withdraw on the grounds of personal interest, and so forth. Of course no peer review works perfectly, but US academics, while being aware of its limitations, appear to view the system as relatively healthy and they engage in many actions that contribute to sustaining this faith.

In our view, fixing the current flaws in the French system does not merely demand organisational reforms, including giving academics more time to evaluate the research of colleagues and candidates properly. It may also require French academics to think long and hard about their own cynicism and fatalism concerning their ability to make judgments about quality that would not be driven by cronyism or particularism, and that would honour their own expertise and connoisseurship.

Not that proper governmental reform is not needed, but sometimes blaming the Government may be an easy way out. Above all, it is increasingly a very ineffectual way of tackling a substantial part of the problem. A little more collaborative thinking and a little less cynicism among both academics and administrators—if at all possible—may very well help French universities find a way out of the crisis. And it will help the French academic and research community to become, once again, much more than the sum of its parts.

Between February and June 2009, French universities were the theatre of an exceptional protest movement against the latest flavour of governmental reform concerning academic careers. Protest sometimes seems to be a way of life in the French academy, and in France at large, but this time the situation is serious, with potentially huge consequences for the future of the sector. Indeed, the nation that gave birth to je pense, donc je suis is in a deep crisis on the intellectual front, and nowhere is this as obvious as in academic evaluation.

The protest movement did not take off in the grandes écoles (which train much of the French elite), or in professional and technical schools. Instead, it took off in the 80 comprehensive universités—the public institutions that are the backbone of the French educational system. Until two years ago, they were required to admit any high-school graduate on a first-come, first-served basis. A selection process was recently introduced, but even today most students are there because they could not gain entry elsewhere. Faculty work conditions are generally poor, as their institutions are chronically underfunded. Classes are large and programmes are understaffed. More than half of all students leave without any kind of diploma.

Public universities can be very different from each other and are research-intensive in varying degrees, but they carry out the bulk of French scientific research. Research is largely conducted in centres that are located within these institutions, and which often bring together overworked university teachers and full-time researchers who are attached to national institutes such as the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). In a context where the output of these joint centres is not, or is only partially, covered by international ratings, French academics feel doubly underrated owing to the combination of low salaries and low ratings.

This feeling was exacerbated on 22 January when President Nicolas Sarkozy declared that the poor performance of French universities in international rankings was, above all, the consequence of the absence of continuous evaluation, which encourages sloth. Of course, he was displeased that the extensive set of higher education reforms undertaken by his Government during the preceding two years were met with opposition by large segments of the academic community.

Everyone agrees that the current system poses a great many problems, but there is no agreement on how to improve it and get beyond the current gridlock. It is la société bloquée all over again. To wit:

- While most academics believe that the system is far too centralised, a 2007 law establishing the progressive financial “autonomy” (and accountability) of universities has been met with criticism and resistance, because it is perceived to be part of a strategy of withdrawal on the part of the State that will result in fewer resources being available for higher education. A number of scholars also fear that the increased decision-making power conferred on university presidents is a threat to the autonomy of faculty members.

- While there is a need to design new, more universalistic procedures for evaluating performance and distributing resources, many academics are sceptical of the new institutions recently created to do this, namely the national agencies for the evaluation of universities and research units (Agence d'Evaluation de la Recherche et de l'Enseignement Superieur, or AERES) and research projects (Agence Nationale de la Recherche, or ANR). The former, in particular, has been criticised for its reliance on bibliometrics (publication and citation counts), even if the agency is now moving towards using less quantitative standards. Moreover, whereas the former mechanisms for distributing research funds depended on the decisions of elected peers (for instance, on the national committee of the CNRS), AERES appoints its panel members, and this is seen as a blow to researchers' autonomy. For this and other reasons, many academics have refused to serve on its evaluation panels.

- While academics often agree that the old CNRS needed further integration with the universities, many denounce its gradual downsizing and transformation from a comprehensive research institution to a simple funding and programming agency as the work of uninformed politicians and technocrats intent on dismantling what works best in French research. In 2004, a widespread national protest arose against this dismantling, with 74,000 scholars signing a petition against it. Critics also say that the ongoing reorganisation of the CNRS into disciplinary institutes will reinforce the separation between the sciences, reorient research towards more applied fields and work against the interdisciplinary collaborations that are crucial to innovation in many fields.

- While many agree on the need to improve teaching, moves to increase the number of teaching hours are among the most strongly contested reforms. French academics, who very rarely have sabbaticals, already perceive themselves as overworked in a system where time for research is increasingly scarce. These factors help to explain the resistance to expanded classroom hours and new administrative duties.

In the longest strike ever organised by the French scientific community, tens of thousands of lecturers and researchers began in early February to hold protests over a period of several weeks, demonstrating in the streets and (with the support of some students) blocking access to some university campuses. Many also participated in a national debate via print, online and broadcast media, and in general meetings. Some faculty members held teach-ins and action-oriented “alternative courses” for students. Several universities saw their final exams and summer holidays delayed and many foreign exchange students were called back by their home institutions. Despite this frontal assault, the Government did not back down: the much disparaged decree reorganising academic careers (with regard to recruitment, teaching loads, evaluations and promotions) and giving more prerogatives and autonomy to university presidents came into effect on 23 April.

This outcome will probably lead academics and their unions to rethink their strategies and repertoires of collective action. The traditional protest forms are losing legitimacy. As the dust settles, it is becoming clear that demonstrating has little traction in a context where the French public increasingly perceives academics as an elite bent on defending its privileges, even if it requires depriving students of their courses. Negotiation is also perceived as ineffectual, as many suspect that governmental consultations were conducted to buy time until the end of the academic year, when mobilisation would peter out. A third strategy—the radical option that would have prevented the scheduling of exams and the handing out of diplomas at the end of this spring—was ruled out even on the campuses most committed to the cause for fear of alienating the public even further.

As yet, however, no clear alternative has surfaced. We are now witnessing a cleavage between those who voice their opposition (in the main, scholars in the humanities) and the increasing number of academics (primarily scientists) who espouse a “wait-and-see” or a collaborative position as the only realistic path to improving the situation in their own universities. If the majority of academics appear to share the same diagnosis about what needs to be changed in the French system, they disagree on the solution (and on its scale—national or local). The root of the crisis lies not only in the Government's difficulties in generating consensus, but also in the academics' own scepticism, cynicism or fatalism about meritocracy, the absence of the administrative resources needed to support proper evaluation, the possibility of impartial evaluation, and the system's ability to recognise and reward merit.

Deep problems remain in the institutions charged with evaluating the work of academics. The interference of political power, and the (admittedly diminishing) influence of trade unions and corporatist associations have long been viewed as obstacles to a collegial system of academic evaluation. The legitimacy of the 70 disciplinary sections of the Conseil National des Universites (CNU)—charged with certifying individuals as eligible for faculty positions, and with directly granting some promotions—is under question. Some of its committee members are appointed by the Government and as such are suspected of being second-rate, of benefiting from governmental patronage, or of defending governmental interests. Others are chosen from electoral lists that include a disproportionate number of partisan members, who are often perceived to be there because of their political involvement rather than because of their scientific status.

The legitimacy of these committees is further called into question because they include only academics employed by French institutions and are often viewed as perpetuating a longstanding tradition of favouritism. To give only one particularly scandalous example: in June, panellists in the sociology section allocated to themselves half of the promotions that they were charged with assigning across the entire discipline of sociology. This led to the resignation of the rest of the commission and to multiple protests. Such an occurrence sent deep waves of distrust not only between academics, but also towards the civil servants charged with reforming a system that is increasingly viewed as flawed.

Peer review is also in crisis at the local level. While selecting young doctoral recipients to be maîtres de conférences (the entry level permanent position in the French academy, similar to the British lecturer), French universities on average fill 30 per cent of available posts with their own graduates, to the point where local clientelism is often decried as symbolising the corruption of the entire system. The typical (and only) job interview for such a post lasts 20 to 30 minutes—probably the European record for brevity and surely too short to determine whether an individual deserves what is essentially a lifelong appointment. Many view the selection process as little more than a means to legitimise the appointment of pre-selected candidates—although the extent to which this is genuinely the case varies across institutions.

What is to be done? Because both the CNU and the local selection committees have recently been reorganised or granted new responsibilities, it seems the right moment to think about how to improve the evaluation processes in very practical ways. As part of a new start, academics should aim to generate a system of true self-governance at each level, grounded in more explicit principles for peer review. This would put them in a position to defend academic autonomy against the much-feared and maligned governmental or managerial control. While this is certainly occurring in some disciplines and institutions, progress is far from being equally spread across the sector.

Obvious and costless regulatory measures could easily be implemented—for instance, discouraging universities from hiring their own PhD graduates (as AERES recently started to), or forbidding selection committees from promoting their own members. One could also look abroad for examples of “best practice”. The UK's Economic and Social Research Council has created colleges of trained academic evaluators who are charged with maintaining academic and ethical standards in peer review; although not all aspects of the British approach to academic reform should be emulated, this one is particularly worthy.

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) uses teams of elected experts to evaluate proposals, and academic reputation weighs heavily in determining which names will be put on electoral lists and who will serve on evaluation panels. Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council recently asked an independent panel of international experts to evaluate its peer review process in order to improve impartiality and effectiveness.

In a recent book on peer review in the US, one of the present authors (Michele Lamont) showed the ways in which American social scientists and humanists operate to maintain their faith in the idea that peer review works and that the academic system of evaluation is fair. In this case, academics exercise their right as the only legitimate evaluators of knowledge by providing detailed assessment of intellectual production in light of their extensive expertise in specialised topics. The exercise of peer evaluation sustains and expresses professional status and professional autonomy. But it requires significant time (and thus good working conditions) and moral commitment—time spent comparing dossiers, making principled decisions about when it is necessary to withdraw on the grounds of personal interest, and so forth. Of course no peer review works perfectly, but US academics, while being aware of its limitations, appear to view the system as relatively healthy and they engage in many actions that contribute to sustaining this faith.

In our view, fixing the current flaws in the French system does not merely demand organisational reforms, including giving academics more time to evaluate the research of colleagues and candidates properly. It may also require French academics to think long and hard about their own cynicism and fatalism concerning their ability to make judgments about quality that would not be driven by cronyism or particularism, and that would honour their own expertise and connoisseurship.

Not that proper governmental reform is not needed, but sometimes blaming the Government may be an easy way out. Above all, it is increasingly a very ineffectual way of tackling a substantial part of the problem. A little more collaborative thinking and a little less cynicism among both academics and administrators—if at all possible - may very well help French universities find a way out of the crisis. And it will help the French academic and research community to become, once again, much more than the sum of its parts.

Diversity is largely accepted as a positive value in American society. Nevertheless, policies to encourage diversity, e.g. affirmative action, language policies and legalising illegal immigrants, are still largely disputed, and often understood as having contradictory and largely negative consequences. The implementation of diversity is still seen as a threat to meritocracy, national cohesion, and democracy. This paper analyses how excellence and diversity are discussed in two academic decision-making processes: admission at two elite public universities and the distribution of competitive research fellowships. We argue that excellence and diversity are not alternative but additive considerations in the allocation of resources. The administrators and academics we studied factor diversity in as an additional consideration when decisions are to be made between applicants of roughly equal standing.

Excellence. Originality. Intelligence. Everyone in academia stresses quality. But what exactly is it, and how do professors identify it?

In the academic evaluation system known as "peer review," highly respected professors pass judgment, usually confidentially, on the work of others. But only those present in the deliberative chambers know exactly what is said. Michèle Lamont observed deliberations for fellowships and research grants, and interviewed panel members at length. In How Professors Think, she reveals what she discovered about this secretive, powerful, peculiar world.

Anthropologists, political scientists, literary scholars, economists, historians, and philosophers don’t share the same standards. Economists prefer mathematical models, historians favor different kinds of evidence, and philosophers don’t care much if only other philosophers understand them. But when they come together for peer assessment, academics are expected to explain their criteria, respect each other’s expertise, and guard against admiring only work that resembles their own. They must decide: Is the research original and important? Brave, or glib? Timely, or merely trendy? Pro-diversity or interdisciplinary enough?

Judging quality isn’t robotically rational; it’s emotional, cognitive, and social, too. Yet most academics’ self-respect is rooted in their ability to analyze complexity and recognize quality, in order to come to the fairest decisions about that elusive god, “excellence.” In How Professors Think, Lamont aims to illuminate the confidential process of evaluation and to push the gatekeepers to both better understand and perform their role.

This paper examines the relationship between culture and poverty, paying special attention to cultural diversity, economic development, and the challenges facing the reduction of poverty in a culturally complex world. Over the last several decades, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and even economists have examined the relationship between culture and poverty in an international context, producing a remarkably diverse and in recent years increasingly sophisticated literature (Rao and Walton 2004). Yet the term “culture” has meant different things to different scholars, and part of our challenge is to assess those meanings against what we know about poverty and development. We cannot hope in these few pages to cover all this work, address all its complexities, or even summarize it faithfully. Instead, we cover a narrow but critical set of issues we find especially important for those attempting to reduce poverty or its consequences in the globalized world in which we live.

More than six months have passed since last fall's violent urban riots, and France finds itself engaged in another parliamentary debate on the integration of immigrants. The right wing, which advocates a “chosen immigration,” and the left, which anticipates a “disposable immigration,” share a firm belief in French Républicanisme, a social contract that owes much to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's fantasy of an irresistible general will overcoming particular interest.

Républicanisme, the French ideological equivalent of the American dream, proposes that a universal citizen, abstracted from social and economic conditions (whether residential, religious, ethnic, or racial), engages in a direct relationship with the state. It reciprocates by downplaying the role of such identities in the political process. In so doing, the state rejects what it perceives as political balkanization and identity politics as incompatible with the realization of the common good. The main flaw of this near-sacrosanct ideal of Républicanisme is that it inhibits the use of anti-discrimination laws. Even while studies repeatedly reveal widespread discrimination in France, few people are motivated to seek legal redress. The first report of the new anti-discrimination authority shows that only 1,800 claims were filed in 2005, and that only 600 have been followed by action.

The frustration and resentment expressed by French minorities is largely caused by the contradiction between a fantasized equality and real-life discrimination. Yet, there is nothing inevitable in this sorry state of affairs.

Over the last few months, developments have opened new perspectives. Last November, the first federation of “Blacks of France” was created, bringing together blacks who are French citizens by birth, because they were born in French overseas departments such as Martinique and Guadeloupe; black youth of the second generation, often from Sub-Saharan Africa, who become citizens when they turn 18; and other blacks, who have a range of backgrounds.

Another positive development was the appointment in March of the first black prime-time anchor on the most widely watched television channel. Only a few weeks ago, the cover of an influential newsmagazine read “Us, Blacks of France” and featured Keyza Nubret, a French black woman manager.

Not surprisingly, this colorful France (estimates vary between 2.5 million and 5 million for the number of blacks in France) is made visible outside of the realm of the Republican state. May 10, the commemoration day of the abolition of slavery, was marked by tensions between the austere gravitas of the Republic and the wish of most black associations for more lively ceremonies.

Still these events signal the official entry into the French public sphere of an interest group whose “groupness” is based on shared ascribed characteristics—a minor earthquake in the French political landscape.

Sadly, since this welcomed wind of change has started to blow, the academic world has remained intriguingly silent. With the exception of a few courageous souls, what still marks so many members of the French intellectual class is their overall commitment to the ideology of Républicanisme and its ideal of assimilation. While Paul Gilroy's “There Ain't no Black in the Union Jack” had a palpable effect on debates about what Englishness means, France has yet to produce an intellectual of comparable influence. Only by coming to terms with their own cultural imperialism will French intellectuals contribute to the challenges of better incorporating the members of minority groups into the French polity. Only then will they live up to the powerful (Sartrian) tradition of the engaged intellectual.

The slowly emerging reality of a colorful France does not mean that the principles of French citizenship are to be thrown overboard and that ethnic quotas have to be instituted everywhere from prime time to public service. Rather, it means that representation matters, and that France cannot prosper if it continues to deceive its immigrants by promising equality while delivering segregation.

Michèle Lamont is professor of sociology and African and African-American Studies at Harvard University. She is also a faculty associate of the Weatherhead Center. Éloi Laurent is an economist at l'Observatoire Français des Conjonctures Economiques in Paris and a visiting scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University.

La presse américaine la plus féroce a chroniqué avec consternation et délice l'annus horribilis de la France, et c'est peu dire, que les réactions à l'épisode funeste du CPE ne furent pas tendres. Mais, dans le concert harmonieux des moqueries faciles, des critiques narquoises et des attaques virulentes (pas toutes injustifiées), une note dissonante s'est fait entendre. Alors que le New York Times avait fait paraître quelques jours plus tôt un article particulièrement fielleux à l'endroit du «modèle» français, certains de ses lecteurs, dont les opinions furent reproduites plus tard, ont réagit vigoureusement—en sens inverse. L'un des réfractaires, s'étonnant que les Américains eux-mêmes ne défilent pas dans les rues, s'indignait du fait que ses concitoyens aient accepté «sans broncher» au cours des années récentes «la disparition de la sécurité des emplois, la destruction du système des retraites et l'érosion des revenus au profit du 1% d'Américains les plus riches». Il accuse ces derniers d'avoir confisqué les fruits de la croissance économique.

Aussi sommaire que puisse paraître ce constat, il n'est pas très éloigné de la réalité qu'économistes et sociologues dévoilent, étude après étude, depuis dix ans. C'est l'économiste Edward Wolff qui, parmi les premiers, dans un ouvrage de 1995, attira l'attention de l'opinion américaine sur le creusement vertigineux des inégalités de revenu et de richesse depuis le milieu des années 80. Dans un article d'octobre 2002, s'appuyant en partie sur les travaux de Thomas Piketty et d'Emmanuel Saez, Paul Krugman exprimait même la crainte d'une régression collective vers les niveaux d'inégalité victoriens du «Gilded Age» («l'âge doré», et non «l'âge d'or», du début du XXe siècle). Il y a quelques mois, les recherches de Robert Gordon ont confirmé que cette tendance s'était encore accélérée dans la période la plus contemporaine, alors même que la productivité de l'économie américaine atteint des sommets. Au total, selon l'économiste de Northwestern, la croissance annuelle des revenus de 90% des Américains n'a été que de 0,3% depuis 1973, contre 3,4% pour les 1% les plus riches et 5,6% pour les 0,1% encore plus riches. Une des conséquences de ce retournement du progrès social est que les inégalités de revenus entre le PDG et le travailleur américain moyen sont passées d'un facteur 27 en 1973 à un facteur 300 en 2000.

Le problème crucial n'est pas seulement que les inégalités de revenu augmentent, c'est que la mobilité sociale qui les rend tolérables décline, comme le montrent plusieurs études, complexes et discutées, dans la période récente. L'accès de plus en plus difficile à une éducation supérieure, qui se privatise à tous les niveaux de sélectivité (droits d'inscription en hausse, financements publics en baisse), est au centre du blocage de l'ascension sociale et du caractère explosif de la dynamique inégalitaire. Parce que l'université fonctionne de moins en moins bien comme machine à redistribuer les cartes sociales, les classes se sédimentent progressivement, et la peur du déclassement, bien analysé par Barbara Ehrenreich, grandit.

Pour spectaculaires qu'ils soient, les écarts de revenu et d'éducation ne sont qu'une partie de l'iceberg d'inégalités que l'Amérique est en train de découvrir. Sous la plume de deux journalistes du New York Times, une série d'articles a montré l'année dernière comment les inégalités sociales conduisaient à des inégalités de santé et finalement de qualité de vie, la possibilité de pouvoir se faire soigner correctement et à temps impliquant des conséquences souvent irréversibles dans un pays où l'espérance de vie est effroyablement faible compte tenu du poids des dépenses de santé (parmi les plus élevées du monde). L'inefficacité du système n'explique pourtant pas tout de l'exclusion sociale. Les inégalités de santé sont encore aggravées par les codes et les structures culturels, qui laissent peu de place symbolique aux perdants sociaux. Et pourtant, dans le cadre d'un programme d'étude de la Russell Sage Foundation, la sociologue Leslie McCall a montré que les Américains sont non seulement en majorité défavorables aux inégalités sociales, mais qu'ils y sont de plus en plus sensibles.

Sans faire de psychologie collective hasardeuse, il n'est donc pas impossible que la volée de bois vert administrée à une France jugée «malade», «archaïque» et «dépassée» soit au moins en partie le symptôme des doutes et des frustrations des Américains au sujet de leur propre adaptation à un nouvel ordre économique dans lequel les insécurités individuelles augmentent et les protections collectives s'affaiblissent. Cette charge peut se lire comme la revanche de l'Amérique sur un système culturel en quête de refondation. Mais qu'importe la rhétorique: le (la) prochain(e) président(e) devra impérieusement répondre à la montée de l'angoisse sociale et au dénouement du lien civique d'un côté comme de l'autre de l'Atlantique.

Michèle Lamont is professor of sociology and African and African-American Studies at Harvard University. She is also a faculty associate of the Weatherhead Center. Éloi Laurent is an economist at l'Observatoire Français des Conjonctures Economiques in Paris and a visiting scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University.

Michèle Lamont takes us into the world inhabited by working-class men—the world as they understand it. Interviewing black and white working-class men who, because they are not college graduates, have limited access to high-paying jobs and other social benefits, she constructs a revealing portrait of how they see themselves and the rest of society.

Morality is at the center of these workers’ worlds. They find their identity and self-worth in their ability to discipline themselves and conduct responsible but caring lives. These moral standards function as an alternative to economic definitions of success, offering them a way to maintain dignity in an out-of-reach American dreamland. But these standards also enable them to draw class boundaries toward the poor and, to a lesser extent, the upper half. Workers also draw rigid racial boundaries, with white workers placing emphasis on the “disciplined self” and blacks on the “caring self.” Whites thereby often construe blacks as morally inferior because they are lazy, while blacks depict whites as domineering, uncaring, and overly disciplined.

This book also opens up a wider perspective by examining American workers in comparison with French workers, who take the poor as “part of us” and are far less critical of blacks than they are of upper-middle-class people and immigrants. By singling out different “moral offenders” in the two societies, workers reveal contrasting definitions of “cultural membership” that help us understand and challenge the forms of inequality found in both societies.