Toward a Comparative Sociology of Valuation and Evaluation

This paper discusses North-American and European research from the sociology of valuation and evaluation (SVE), a research topic that has attracted considerable attention in recent years. The goal is to bring various bodies of work into conversation with one another to stimulate more cumulative theory building. This is accomplished by focusing on 1) sub-processes such as categorization and legitimation; 2) the conditions that sustain heterarchies; and 3) valuation and evaluative practices. The paper reviews these literatures and provides directions for a future research agenda.Sociolog

What makes a Society Successful?

Following the fall of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe, many people expected life spans in these countries to increase as new freedoms and opportunities became available. Subsequently, male life expectancy in the Czech Republic increased to 72 years by 2001, but dropped to barely 59 years in Russia. That is a difference of thirteen years of life, on average, per man. You would not see that kind of discrepancy between two societies, even if one had a cure for cancer and the other did not. What do these findings mean? Do they reflect the difference between a successful and a less successful society? Does it even make sense to compare societies in terms of their relative success? Below I discuss the work of social scientists who came to be convinced that we should take this question seriously

Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things: Responses to Stigmatization in Comparative Perspective

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 United States, 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 raised by multiculturalism and diversity for liberal democracy.African and African American StudiesSociolog

Competence and Religion in the Cultural Repertoire of the African American Elite

This exploratory study makes a contribution to the literature on antiracism by unpacking the cultural categories through which everyday antiracism is experienced and practiced by extraordinarily successful African Americans. Using a phenomenological approach, we focus on processes of classification to analyze the criteria that members of the African American elite mobilize to compare racial groups and establish their equality. We first summarize results from earlier work on the antiracist strategies of White and African American workers. Second, drawing upon in-depth interviews with members of the Black elite, we show that demonstrating intelligence and competence, and gaining knowledge, are particularly valued strategies of equalization, while religion has a subordinate role within their antiracist repertoire. Thus, gaining cultural membership is often equated with educational and occupational attainment. Antiracist strategies that value college education and achievement by the standards of American individualism may exclude many poor and working-class African Americans from cultural membership. In this way, strategies of equalization based on educational and professional competence may prove dysfunctional for racial solidarity.African and African American StudiesSociolog

How Culture Matters: Enriching Our Understandings of Poverty

African and African American StudiesSociolog

Cultural Diversity and Poverty Eradication

African and African American StudiesSociolog

Looking back at Social Knowledge in the Making

Sociolog

African Americans respond to stigmatization: the meanings and salience of confronting, deflecting conflict, educating the ignorant and ‘managing the self’

Drawing on interviews with 150 randomly sampled African Americans, we analyse how members of a stigmatized group understand their experience of stigmatization and assess appropriate responses when asked about the best approach to deal with stigmatization and about responses to specific incidents. Combining in-depth interviews with a systematic coding of the data, we make original contributions to the previous literature by identifying the relative salience of modalities and tools for responding. We also examine closely through qualitative data the two most salient modalities of response, ‘confronting’ and ‘deflating’ conflict, the most salient tools, teaching out-group members about African Americans, and ‘the management of the self’, a rationale for deflating conflict that is largely overlooked in previous studies. We find that ‘confronting’ is the more popular modality for responding to stigmatization among African Americans.African and African American StudiesSociolog