In this episode, we host a special guest: Michèle Lamont (professor of Sociology at Harvard). We discuss her new book Seeing Others: How Recognition Works--And How It Can Heal a Divided World, which centers on the role of recognition and dignity in countering inequality after decades of neoliberalism. Based on interviews with cultural change agents in the American cultural industries and Gen Z college students, we unpack how new narratives of hope may lead to a more equal and inclusive future. We also discuss the role of sociology in taking part in a the conversation on inequality, dignity and recognition, nuancing the work of psychologists and economists.

Guest: Michèle Lamont (professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University)

Host: Giselinde Kuipers (professor of Sociology at KU Leuven university)

Editing: Luuc Brans (PhD student at KU Leuven University)

Book links

EU + UK: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/319027/seeing-others-by-lamont-michele/9780241454633

USA: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Seeing-Others/Michele-Lamont/9781982153786

***This is a rerecording, updated, and better version of our very first episode, which we originally recorded in 2020. We hope you will enjoy this new version! ***

In this first pilot episode, we discuss the core themes of the course: how do culture and inequality relate? This meeting will discuss why and how this has become such a central theme in sociology and other disciplines (notably cultural studies, anthropology), how this relation this been theorized in various theoretical traditions (notable Bourdieu's field theory, British cultural studies inspired by Stuart Hall , and American cultural sociology in the vein of Michele Lamont); and how has this been empirically analyzed? Moreover, we will offer a first exploration of the continued relevance of these insights on culture and inequality for contemporary societies, and for the everyday life of (young) people today.

--- This week's readings:

Bourdieu, P. (1994). Social space and symbolic space. In Calhoun, Craig et al. (eds.) Contemporary Sociologi-cal Theory, 345-358.

Bourdieu, P. (1986) The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, 241-258. New York: Greenwood.

Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/decoding. In Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Love, and Paul Willis (eds.), Culture, Media, Language, pp. 128–38. London: Hutchinson. Link: https://we.riseup.net/as-sets/102142/appadurai.pdf#page=202

Lamont, M. (1992). Implications, contributions and unanswered questions. In Money, Morals and Manners, 174-192. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kuipers, G. (2006). Television and taste hierarchy: The case of Dutch television comedy. Media, Culture & Society 28(3): 359-378.

Additional materials

Video: Carle, Pierre (2002). La sociologie est un sport de combat. Pierre Bourdieu. Documentary.

https://vimeo.com/92709274

Video: Hall, Stuart (1997). Representation and media. Open University. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGh64E_XiVM

Video: Lamont, Michele (2016). Doing sociology. American Sociological Association. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIR1mYsy510

Presentation: Giselinde Kuipers & Luuc Brans

Audio production edit: Luuc Brans

Theme music by Timothy Dowd

We are grateful for the generous support from European Centre for the Study of Culture and Inequality

This episode is about conspiracy theories and their relation to inequality. We talk about this with Elisa Sobo and Jaron Harambam, two scholars who have studied contemporary conspiracy theories in a range of domains, from vaccines, Covid-19 and Big Pharma, to theories that claim the moon is an abandoned spaceship brought here by reptilians who control our world leaders. Both, moreover, have argued -- somewhat controversially -- that “we need to move beyond the positivistic reflex to debunk conspiracy theories as unfounded and irrational”. The arguments they offer for taking conspiracy theories seriously – though maybe not literally—are strongly connected with inequality: inclusivity, democracy, and social justice. Today, therefore, we ask: how are conspiracy connected with inequalities, and how can – or should -- this connection with inequality inform our stance towards conspiracy theories?

Guests:

- Elisa Sobo, professor and chair of Anthropology, San Diego State University

- Jaron Harambam, assistant professor of participatory AI, VU University Amsterdam

Hosted by Giselinde Kuipers, professor of cultural sociology at KU Leuven

Readings and materials:

1. Grodzicka, Elżbieta Drążkiewicz, and Jaron Harambam. "What should academics do about conspiracy theories? Moving beyond debunking to better deal with conspiratorial movements, misinformation and post-truth." Journal for Cultural Research 25.1 (2021): 1-11.

2. Harambam, Jaron, and Stef Aupers. "Contesting epistemic authority: Conspiracy theories on the boundaries of science." Public understanding of science 24.4 (2015): 466-480.

3. Harambam, Jaron. "Against modernist illusions: why we need more democratic and constructivist alternatives to debunking conspiracy theories." Journal for Cultural Research 25.1 (2021): 104-122.

4. Sobo, Elisa J. "Conspiracy theories in political-economic context: lessons from parents with vaccine and other pharmaceutical concerns." Journal for Cultural Research 25.1 (2021): 51-68.

5. Sobo, Elisa. “What Does the American Dream Have to do With the COVID-19 Vaccine?” Sapiens.org, 25 February 2021. https://www.sapiens.org/culture/covid-19-vaccine-protestors/

Migration has been a characteristic of societies for centuries. Humans have always migrated to either escape harsh lives, search for better ones, or both. Continuing immigration flows and increasing diversity in many societies have led to more complex processes of belonging and integration, as well as the emergence of cross-border engagements of migrants, organizations and institutions. In this episode, we focus on the role played by media and communication in the different aspects of migration, ranging from media representations of migrants to the mediated communication exchanges conducted in digital spaces, from interactions between relevant stakeholders in the different levels of migration governance through the political and economic side of migrants’ lives to the role played by hands-on intercultural mediation and digital solidarity projects. To talk about these topics, Amanda Paz Alencar (Dept of Media and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam) invited Myria Georgiou (Dept of Media and Communications, LSE) and Earvin Cabalquinto (School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University) – experts on the topic of media and migration.

Migration special 2: Football, Race and Racism by Culture & Inequality Podcast

In this first episode of the special Culture & Inequality x IMISCOE The Migration Podcast trilogy, we discuss the linkages between migration and music. For centuries, music has been a powerful source of individual and social well-being, something which studies from psychology to sociology to medicine continue to demonstrate. As people migrated, music migrated with them – causing the rapid and continuing spread of hundreds of music genres in countries across the globe. Since digitalization, music has become more mobile than ever before, as people can connect with their favorite music as long as they have an internet connection. This leads us to ask: How do migrants in the 21st century use music during processes of migration? To talk about this, Julian Schaap (Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands) has invited Daniela Jaramillo Dent (Universidad de Huelva, Spain and Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands) and Marco Martiniello (Université de Liège, Belgium).

This a special crossover episode between the Migration Podcast and the Culture and Inequality Podcast. The first in a series of three, this episode investigates how Music and Social Media matter in Migration (and vice-versa). Head over to The Migration Podcast to learn more about migration: https://www.imiscoe.org/news-and-blog/podcast?msclkid=47f01fb5d06a11ec8cee483d0b0b504f

During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we will be hosting a series of special episodes on the cultural aspects of war. New events like war crequire meaning making, new icons, symbols, ideas to make sense of what is going on in life. But war also suppresse culture as some things cannot be said anymore or have dangerous consequences. We dive into these and related topics over the next weeks with scholars from Ukraine, Russia, and across the world.

This week, we talk with Anastasiya Fiadotova* and Ksenia** about the humour emerging during the current war. How do people joke and why do people do so? We talk about the functions of humor are in war and its limits. Rooted in Estonia, Belarus and Russia, our guests are close to this war and provide a candid assessment of the war’s cultural implications.

* Anastasiya (Nastya) Fiadotova is a research fellow in the department of Folkloristics at the Estonian Literary Museum in Tartu, Estonia.

**last name and institutional affiliation withheld for personal security reasons.

Presentation by prof. dr. Giselinde Kuipers (Sociology, KU Leuven)

Editing by Luuc Brans

Race is a pervasive and omnipresent dimension of inequality, both within societies and at a global scale. Yet it is the one dimension that is most difficult to talk about. Even the word itself, race, is fraught. How to use the concept of race? How is race done in practice? And how does it create and perpetuate social inequalities? We talk about this with our guests Amade M’Charek, professor in anthropology of science at the University of Amsterdam, and our regular Julian Schaap, assistant professor in the sociology of music at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. We discuss how race is done in domains like forensics and music, and what this tells us about the limits and potentialities of the concept.

**Readings:

* Abu El-Haj, Nadia (2007) “The Genetic Reinscription of Race.” Annual Review of Anthropology 36: 283–300.

* Essed, Philomena (1991) Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory. Newbury Park: Sage - Chapter 5: The integration of racism into everyday life: The story of Rosa N. and Chapter 7: Conclusions.

* M'charek, Amade. (2020) "Tentacular faces: Race and the return of the phenotype in forensic identification." American anthropologist 122.2: 369-380.

Recommended readings:

Schaap, Julian, and Pauwke Berkers. (2020) "“Maybe it’s… skin colour?” How race-ethnicity and gender function in consumers’ formation of classification styles of cultural content." Consumption Markets & Culture 23.6: 599-615.

Essed, P., & Trienekens, S. (2008). ‘Who wants to feel white?’Race, Dutch culture and contested identities.Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(1), 52-72.

In this episode, we are joined by Hartmut Rosa, one of today’s ‘big thinkers’ in sociology, to talk about his work on the concept of resonance and how it relates to inequalities. After becoming popular in Germany, his work is now gaining ground in anglophone sociology too. But what does resonance mean? What is a sociology of the good life? And how does resonance theory affect how we think about and understand social inequalities? By dealing with these questions, we discover blindspots of current inequality studies and explore directions for new research. Join us for this special episode with Hartmut Rosa to learn more about his social theory of resonance.

Hartmut Rosa is a professor of Sociology at the Friedrich Schiller Universität in Jena and Director of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies in Erfurt (both in Germany). He is interviewed by dr. Julian Schaap (Erasmus University Rotterdam) & prof. dr. Giselinde Kuipers (KU Leuven).

Readings:

‘Escalation: the crisis of dynamic stabilisation and the prospect of resonance’

in: Dörre, K.; S. Hertenich & H. Rosa (2015) Sociology, Capitalism, Critique. New York: Verso (translated by Loren Balhorn & Jan-Peter Herrmann)

Introduction to: Rosa, H. (2019) Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World. London: Polity (translated by James Wagner)

In this episode, we talk with prof. dr. Ashley Mears (Boston University) and dr. Anne Monier (ESSEC Paris) about gender and the body in contemporary elites. Both sociologists have done extensive ethnographic research on elites – respectively the global VIP party circuit, and the Philantropic scene of the 'American friends' of French cultural institutions. Their ethnographic work sheds light on the way gender operates in contemporary elites.

What can a “gender lens” contribute to our understanding of today’s elites? And more specifically: what is the role of women – as a dominated social category – in this exclusive and dominant segment of society? And how does ethnographic work help us to answer these questions?

Readings and materials:

Glucksberg, Luna (2018) A gendered ethnography of elites: women, inequality, and social reproduction. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 81. pp. 16-28.

Mears, A. (2015). Girls as elite distinction: The appropriation of bodily capital. Poetics, 53, 22-37.

Mears, A. (2020) Five Surprising Things I Learned from Partying with Rich People. Literary Hub https://lithub.com/five-surprising-things-i-learned-from-partying-with-rich-people/

Monier, A. (2018). The role of social capital in transnational elite philanthropy: the example of the American Friends groups of French cultural institutions. Socio-Economic Review, 16(2), 387-410.

Monier, A. (2021) Women’s philanthropy: an invisible phenomenon. The conversation

https://theconversation.com/womens-philanthropy-an-invisible-phenomenon-157927

Recommended readings

Bessiere, C. & Gollac, S. (2020). Le genre du capital (the Gender of Capital). Paris: La Découverte. https://celinebessiere.ovh/index.php/the-gender-of-capital/

Mears, A. (2020). Very important people: Status and beauty in the global party circuit. Princeton University Press.