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On April 19-20th 2002, Princeton’s Department of Sociology hosted a
conference titled “Race/Ethnicity, Self/Culture, and Inequality.” Michèle
Lamont (Sociology, Princeton University), the conference’s organizer, put
together the conference with the explicit goal of promoting greater
dialogue among scholars working separately on similar topics. The meeting,
generously funded by Princeton University's Department of Sociology,
Center for Migration and Development, Center for International Studies,
Council for the Humanities, Council on Regional Studies, Program in
African-American Studies, and
Program in American Studies, brought together eminent scholars from the
fields of sociology, anthropology, and psychology in an attempt to
formulate a more integrated disciplinary and interdisciplinary research
agenda for the study of inequality. In order to complement the field’s
structural focus, the conference explored the role of culture in the
production and reproduction of inequality. Traditionally, the literature
on inequality has considered culture through the lens of norms and
beliefs, for instance in the culture of poverty thesis. The approaches
represented at this conference incorporated more nuanced analyses of
meaning-making and repertoires. To begin the discussion, Lamont outlined
three objectives for the meeting: to integrate cultural, social
psychological, and structural aspects of inequality; to explore how the
self is shaped by race and class identity; and to explore the potential
contributions of comparative approaches to research on the topic.
The opening panel, “Self, Culture, and Structure in Theoretical
Perspective,” laid out some of the analytical tools for the study of
culture and inequality. Ann Swidler (Sociology, University of California
at Berkeley) outlined a framework for thinking about culture that
acknowledges that culture contains multiple meanings and that people draw
differently from cultural repertoires at different times. Swidler believes
that culture does not match the domains of institutions closely; it is
precisely the less institutionalized arenas of life that generate new
cultural idioms most profusely. Drawing from her book Talk of Love (2000),
she noted that, when the institution of marriage does not solve problems,
people use repertoires to fill in the gaps. In tying this work to recent
research on identity, Swidler argues that action schemas – a default
option people employ to understand the world – are used to draw boundaries
between social groups. At the same time, people are not bound by a unitary
identity; they activate different identity labels according to context. By
desimplifying the notion of a one-size-fits-all culture, Swidler
acknowledges human agency while also recognizing that choices are limited;
culture is thus both enabling and constraining.
The relationship between the self and the collective was also addressed by
Mustafa Emirbayer (Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison). Emirbayer
draws on the works of Sorokin (1957) and Parsons and Shils (1951), which
distinguishes among three analytically distinct relational contexts of
action (social systems, cultural systems, and personality systems).
However, Emirbayer’s point of departure is neither the system nor the
individual; he conceptualizes the personality system (the
collective-psychological) in transpersonal or collective terms. More
specifically, he focuses on emotional ties to argue that they are
themselves a potential source of structure. Emirbayer stresses that
expanding our understanding of racial inequality requires further
elaboration of mappings (the typology of the three contexts of action) and
mechanisms (recurrent causal sequences, such as identification,
idealization, and projection). He calls for an expanded inventory of such
mechanisms and mappings, which would yield a more generalizable approach
to the role of emotions in inequality.
In contrast to these two largely theoretical approaches to inequality,
Nicole Shelton (Psychology, Princeton University) offered empirical
findings on the effects of discrimination from the field of social
psychology. Shelton’s studies address the implications of discrimination
from the target’s perspective, as well as the influence of discrimination
on mental health outcomes. Her work emphasizes how variations in the
meaning and salience of ethnic groups moderate minority individuals’
experience of discrimination. Her findings show that a high degree of
group identification can help buffer those individuals from the adverse
effects of discrimination. In addition, the studies show that endorsing a
nationalist group ideology dampens the effects of discrimination. Finally,
because it is less ambiguous, blatant displays of discrimination produce
less stress than subtle displays. These results show how powerful
perceptions of inequality are while also highlighting the malleability of
those perceptions.
Discussant Dale Miller (Psychology, Princeton University) outlined how
social psychologists think about the self, culture, and identity. Miller
pointed out that substantial inequalities do not automatically yield
substantial differences in psychological experiences. Social psychologists
like Shelton try to understand these patterns by looking at the perception
of discrimination. For instance, discrimination often occurs through
in-group favoritism, which is rarely acknowledged by in-group members as
active discrimination. Miller noted that these studies would benefit
greatly from more precise definitions and accurate measures of fundamental
concepts. The issue of basic definitions and language was taken up even
more vociferously by John Borneman (Anthropology, Princeton University),
who called for greater examination of words like emotions and
discrimination and expressed skepticism at the ability of sociological
theory to elaborate generalizable frameworks in the study of culture and
inequality.
These problems of definition have been tackled in many ways by scholars of
race. In the second panel, “Self, Racism, and Intra-Racial Differences,”
the presenters addressed various types of settings in which race impacts
the construction of the self. Claude Steele (Psychology, Stanford
University) drew on a general stereotype threat theory that posits that as
people engage in a social setting they sometimes face the possibility of
being devalued based on one or more identities. Cues indicating this
possibility can trigger an appraisal process in which Steele has
identified as a major tension: When the threat of devaluation emerges in a
setting to which the individual aspires to belong, the impulse to be
vigilant about threats conflicts with the impulse to overlook those same
cues. This tension can become a long-term characteristic of the
individual’s experience in that particular setting. Steele illustrated
this theory by summarizing several experiments, one of which tested
minority students’ perceptions of bias in instructor evaluations. His
conclusion that ambiguity isolates the individual from the feedback,
leading to a loss of motivation, resonates with Shelton’s findings that
ambiguity in displays of discrimination produces adverse mental health
outcomes.
Whereas Steele studied a variety of social settings, anthropologist John
Jackson (Harvard Society of Fellows) focused on a specific setting to
illustrate the richness and fluidity of symbolic meanings. Jackson drew on
his recently published book Harlemworld (2001), an ethnography of class
relationships among Harlem residents. Jackson explained that
gentrification has prompted Harlemites to draw on different discourses to
justify who belongs in the neighborhood. For example, the hip-hop
generation of Harlemites has constructed a fantasy Harlem -- a Disneyfied
“Harlemworld” -- that is completely abstracted from the realities of the
flesh-and-blood neighborhood. In hip-hop songs, Harlemworld is a
homogenous landscape of mansions, limos, and private jets. This mythical
reinterpretation -- an act of rejection and renewal -- shows how local
identities are reshaped through cultural production.
Religion is often a key moderator in this process. Nancy DiTomaso
(Business School, Rutgers University) talked about her interview-based
research exploring attitudes towards racial inequality among working class
and middle class people by focusing on their interplay with political
orientation and religious beliefs. DiTomaso sees the construction of
meaning about both identity and politics as cultural productions that are
mediated by religion. She has found a correlation between conservative
political opinions of race relations and social welfare topics and the
degree of religious identity.
A more longitudinal approach was seen in the presentation by Frank
Furstenberg (Sociology, University of Pennsylvania) who provided an
overview of his thirty-year study on the impact of teenage pregnancy.
Furstenberg conducted three waves of interviews beginning in the
mid-sixties and found that by the mid-nineties the differences between
teenage mothers and their peers had diminished considerably. He uses these
results to critique the popular notion that teen mothers become
chronically welfare-dependent. Furstenberg has found that many of the
women in his study eventually went back to school and successfully entered
the job market. His study contradicts the culture of poverty literature by
illustrating how culture and structure interact: rather than assuming that
a specific set of values yields consistently negative outcomes, he shows
that many of these women, with their families’ support, were able to
overcome structural barriers through resilience and strategy.
In his discussion of Furstenberg’s paper, Mitchell Duneier (Sociology,
University of Wisconsin-Madison and UCSB) framed those findings explicitly
in terms of cultural repertoires, highlighting that the women in the study
led their lives in a continuing dialogue with the stereotypes attached to
them. Likewise, Duneier called for the incorporation of social
psychological approaches into studies of inequality. He pointed out that
Steele’s paper shows that, while stereotypes are powerful, even small
encouragements can lead to substantially more positive outcomes. Duneier
also addressed the work of Jackson and DiTomaso in terms of cultural
production, noting that macro-structural change in Harlem can be seen in
the neighborhood’s changing identity and that political leanings are
strongly influenced by religious beliefs.
The variety of methods used to study race also characterizes approaches in
class and in part reflects competing definitions of class. In the third
panel, “Self and Class Differences,” class was operationalized either in
terms of lifestyles or in terms of occupation. Annette Lareau (Sociology,
Temple University) presented her ethnographic work on the parenting
practices of middle-class mothers. Lareau notes that scholars of
inequality tend to focus on unequal distribution of resources; she focuses
instead on the strategies that people employ when using those resources to
solve day-to-day problems. She also points out that sometimes studies of
inequality focus too narrowly on race at the expense of class; she
therefore tackles these two dimensions simultaneously. More specifically,
she argues that, while black middle-class families often encounter
race-specific problems, they draw on generic middle-class resources to
solve them. Her vivid account of the Marshall family shows how black
middle-class mothers transmit to their children the sense of entitlement
and negotiation skills that are typical of middle-class, while also
transmitting the strategies needed to navigate situations of potential
discrimination.
This lifestyle-based definition of class is also central to Maria Kefalas’
(Sociology, St. Joseph’s University) study of housewives in a
predominately white working-class suburb of Chicago. Kefalas focuses on
the relationship between consumption and post-industrial cultural labor,
arguing that home ownership and care in this setting are fundamental to
definitions of self-worth and mutual moral pronouncements. The houseproud
women, some of whom get down on their knees to trim the grass with
scissors, engage in a social performance that is simultaneously a genuine
process of identity construction. The house becomes an extension of the
self, and the housewives use cleanliness and domesticity to uphold their
family’s respectability. Kefalas interprets this symbolic work as a
symptom of the economic insecurity of working-class families aspiring to
middle-class status. Her work resonates with Michèle Lamont’s work on
boundaries in that it illustrates how social groups sometimes draw on
moral criteria to assert their dignity.
In contrast to Lareau and Kefalas’ ethnographic work, David Grusky
(Sociology, Cornell University) employs a quantitative approach to class
analysis by tackling the postmodern view that classes are losing their
historical role as pivotal axes of social organization. In his work with
Kim Weeden, he argues that there is inadequate evidence to support this
perspective and proposes that students of class focus on a more
disaggregated level, that of relatively small clusters of detailed
occupations. At the level of these disaggregated “micro-classes,” the
effects of class are stronger because the division of labor gives rise to
deeply institutionalized social groups. According to this perspective,
social closure operates not at the aggregate level but rather at the
disaggregate level of occupations. Grusky and Weeden compared the effects
of class at those two levels of analysis and found a decline in
differences between the effects of conventional class categories but great
stability in class structuration at the micro-class level. Their study is
particularly original because it allows them to identify what aspects of
class structuration (identity, lifestyle, political, attitudes, etc.)
change at the big-class and micro-class levels.
Discussant Carolyn Rouse (Anthropology, Princeton University) commented on
the importance of Kefalas’ work for looking at consumption as a means of
identity construction. Additionally, she noted that work on inequality
should also look at institutions as contributing to social mobility.
Likewise, Paul DiMaggio (Sociology, Princeton University) noted that
Lareau’s account of the Marshall family is precisely what Swidler means
when she says that culture differs in the availability and use of
toolkits. DiMaggio pointed out that the intimate connection that people
make between their homes and their selves reflects the important role of
emotions in constituting identity that Emirbayer elaborates in his paper.
The comments by Rouse and DiMaggio highlighted the common quest -- seen in
all three presentations -- to establish where and how, both culturally and
structurally, social boundaries develop.
Boundary formation was explored within the context of immigration by Mary
Waters (Sociology, Harvard University) in the opening presentation of the
third panel, “Immigration and Culture: European and American
Perspectives.” In her collaborative work with Philip Kasinitz and John
Mollenkopf on the second generation in New York City, Waters assesses how
young adults construct their identities vis-à-vis both their parents’
original cultural practices and the complex mainstream cultural landscape
of New York. Her presentation stressed the role of local immigration
history in shaping the institutions that facilitate integration. In
particular, she cited past waves of white immigration and the legacy of
the civil rights movement in rendering New York immigrant institutions as
uniquely accommodating. These ideas are bolstered by the research
project’s multi-method, comparative study of six immigrant groups. Waters
concluded by calling for a reassessment of the term generation and for
greater attention to the complexity of “mainstream” culture.
Yet another dimension of generation -- the increasingly transnational
aspects of immigration -- was analyzed by Peggy Levitt (Sociology
Wellesley College and Harvard University). Levitt drew on her study of
Pakistani immigrants living in Massachusetts and their families back home
to show how immigrant groups can selectively assimilate by drawing on two
national cultural repertoires. In the case of Pakistanis, this
transnational array of cultural tools leads immigrants to selectively
adapt their practices and institutions to the local context. While
religion plays a key role in the assimilation process, class shapes
institutional templates and the nature of immigrants’ contact with other
groups. These highly educated Pakistani immigrants work alongside
native-born Americans yet seldom interact with them in social settings.
The immigrants maintain those cultural practices that are most easily
translatable to the local cultural context and either discard or modify
those that seem inconsistent with the perceived advantages of the local
environment. This selectivity is facilitated by the malleability of
“Pakistaniness,” which is itself an identity in flux. Levitt highlights
the need for reference to the country of origin, since immigration often
entails cultural change there as well as in the country of destination.
The issue of second generation was addressed from a cross-national
comparative perspective by Richard Alba (Sociology, SUNY-Albany). By
examining the institutions that define the mainstream and therefore shape
assimilation in the US, France, and Germany, Alba compares processes of
boundary blurring with those of boundary crossing. His key idea is that
boundaries separate the mainstream from the minority, and that their
salience and permeability shape the process of immigrant incorporation.
He argues that France and Germany have more crystallized mainstreams
because their histories’ of state formation and major religious conflicts
yielded less permeable boundaries. In the US, on the other hand,
boundaries have shifted to accommodate more groups, particularly Jews and
Catholics. Alba’s work, like that of Waters and Levitt, suggests that
comparative international approaches to immigration would produce much
more sophisticated understandings of boundary work across settings and
generations.
Both discussants for this panel, Mario Small (Sociology and Office of
Population Research, Princeton University) and Louise Lamphere
(Anthropology, University of New Mexico and Russell Sage Foundation),
noted that the cultural and the political are often conflated; for
instance Small wondered whether the differences in assimilation seen in
Alba’s work were the result of different national cultures or different
political systems. While the cultural and the political obviously interact
at a number of different levels, distinguishing them analytically would
produce a clearer picture of how historical legacies and institutional
frameworks impact patterns of assimilation.
Analytical distinctions were the main preoccupation of the concluding
panel, which brought together scholars from the three fields represented
in the conference to discuss to the overarching theme of comparative
research. Rogers Brubaker (Sociology, UCLA) warned against imposing
prefabricated schemas when studying inequality and culture comparatively.
His principal concern regarding cross-national research is the use of
aggregated units of analysis like the nation. Brubaker drew a distinction
between comparative research and comparativism, arguing that studies of
the self and culture are intrinsically comparative. He proposes that
researchers let go of their presumptions about collective boundaries and
instead identify important loci of action over the course of research.
A similar concern was voiced by Adrian Favell (Sociology, UCLA), who noted
that the rise of the nation state has led sociologists to erroneously
carve up the world into self-contained social systems. In fact, noted
Favell, boundaries are porous and cultural systems interpenetrate,
particularly in this age of massive immigration. Moreover, much of
present-day cross-national research -- particularly that focusing on the
US and Western Europe -- tends to err on the side of exceptionalism.
Favell is especially concerned with the habit of drawing comparisons
between the US and individual Western European countries; a more
appropriate point of departure would be to compare the United States with
Europe as a whole.
Comparative research in each field would benefit from incorporation of
work done in other areas. For instance, Shibonu Kitayama (Psychology,
University of Kyoto) showed how different cultural environments in Japan
and the United States produce differences in cognitive styles. One of his
key points is that people will focus on and feel most emotional about
those things that are emphasized within their culture. The extent to which
people are engaged in patterns of collective action influence how they
perceive the self and human agency. Kitayama suggests that psychology may
be far more social in origin than psychologists have so far assumed and
that psychological processes are far more real than social scientists have
so far imagined.
Despite the strong argument for interdisciplinary dialogue supported by
Kitayama’s work, persistent differences in definitions create obstacles
for this type of collaboration. Vincent Crapanzano (Anthropology, CUNY)
reiterated John Borneman’s skepticism about the language of inequality.
Crapanzano noted that the category of race does not translate smoothly
across national contexts. Like Brubaker, he criticized the use of such
categories on the grounds that they are products of researchers’
presuppositions. Crapanzano insists that scholars resist the temptation to
simplify excessively, stressing that discussions at the meta-level are
necessary for grasping the complexity of social life. He thus cautions
against overextending comparisons across contexts when the basic
communicative exchanges imply nuanced yet vastly different interpretative
frameworks.
John Bowen (Anthropology, Washington University) proposed a way to tackle
these conceptual problems by arguing that comparative research would
benefit from the further consideration of three key concepts:
distribution, trajectories, and repertoires. Bowen criticizes the emphasis
that social scientists place on differences between means and their
negligence of within-group variation, noting for instance that often the
most enduring and vicious debates are internal to groups. He thus proposes
a shift from means and groups to trajectories, which allow us to think
more deeply about discontinuous variables. Some of this variability is due
to the different accessibility of repertoires, which generate a multitude
of interpretations.
The extent to which these discussions will foster interdisciplinary
research remains to be seen. The presentations outlined above showcased
the wealth of theoretical frameworks and methodologies available to
researchers of inequality, yet they also revealed disciplinary fault lines
that often obstruct dialogue between researchers interested in the same
topic. Gaps along another axis – that between theory and empiricism – also
persist even within disciplines and could profit from refinement of the
language and measurements used to study the various facets of inequality.
At the same time, the conference highlighted certain key themes that seem
particularly promising in the effort to further consolidate cultural
approaches to inequality. In general, serious and systematic consideration
of perceptions of inequality is needed for a more sophisticated
understanding of how the self, context, and collectivities interact,
including boundary-related processes. For instance, several presentations
explored from different angles how ambiguity in situations of potential
discrimination can influence outcomes that are both internal and external
to the individual. Likewise, perceptions of mobility are powerful
determinants of behavior and yet are highly susceptible to change. A
related theme, the role of emotions in inequality, has also been given
short rift by sociologists and yet offers ample opportunities for
exploring patterns of individual and collective behavior. Finally, all of
these interdisciplinary bridges would benefit from further comparative
research exploring the multiple ways in which culture shapes the
production and reproduction of inequality.
* A version of this report is being published in the American
Sociological Association's Culture newsletter.
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