[...]
MICHELE LAMONT: Well, I am moved by a desire both for
social justice and also a desire to produce knowledge that is []
just taken for granted, revealing aspects of reality
that are not self-evident.
Less is more, for me this means it's better to publish less work
but work that is more significant, that is truly
original and breaking boundaries of knowledge. It's better to do
higher quality work than a lot of work that does not
have an impact.
Well, I'm a social scientist so we don't really do experiments.
I would say that I would, maybe, for a social scientist like me
reframe the question as what are the first moments that led me to
be curious about social processes, and I can tell you
exactly what this is. I was at the house of one of my friends
and they had the book by Germaine Greer, the Feminist
Mystique, it was the Feminist Mystique and the word stereotype
was in there and I was very puzzled by what the word
stereotype was and to discover this concept, I felt opened to
me a new reality of knowledge that I didn't know existed. The
idea that we would have standard ways of depicting specific
groups that were caricatural, that did not do justice to the
complexity of their life. So that's basically I have a very,
very clear memory of this.
The unexpected, I feel like it's constant stimulation. You never
know when the readings or when your thinking are going to be
bringing you to a new direction. So, I think it's the way to
have a lot of fun without consuming and it's a job that is
extremely fulfilling and the curiosity is infinite
so the fun is infinite.
Determination. Another good piece of advice for me when I
was a grad -- beginning graduate student was academic success is
five percent intelligence, 95% determination and I think that
maybe, that was slightly exaggerated but there's a lot to
it. I think being able to have the courage to return to a
project for which you've received a revised and resubmit
or really be able to bring a project to completion and to its
publication so that there can be a conversation with colleagues
and the general public around it, is absolutely crucial. It's
easy, I see it with our graduate students to get discouraged
along the way.
There are many, I think, that through the analytical tools
that sociologists have, it's possible for us to shed light on
social processes that most people don't understand with
just to give you an example, with the Occupy Wall Street
Movement, I was asked two days ago to comment to the Canadian
media about the meaning of the movement. And I emphasized the
Utopian character of the movement and connected that to
the pre-New Deal era when there was a lot of Utopian ideas in
the air, the one that ended [] is the New Deal which has
transformed 20th Century America. So this is an example
where if you're not aware of the Utopian strand of thinking
in Western thought you cannot make that link. If you
interview Joe Blow on the street he will not know about this
connection, so it's having in your head the whole set of
references about how societies evolve that allows you to see
things that other people cannot see.
I was a graduate student in Paris. I worked with Pierre
Bourdieu [ph] who was one of the great sociologists
of the 20th Century. He was absolutely mind blowing.
There were moments where I felt like
he was really opening a world of new questions for me,
so that was extremely important. I think my father, who was not a
researcher, he had been trained as a, in theology. I think a lot
of the basic questions that I pursue are an extension of the
questions that were interesting for my father, who was a
businessman yet trained in theology.
Well, I think most people just cannot understand that a field
like mine exists. It's not like astronomy or chemistry, it's
something that is in some ways so unusual that most people
don't know that people like me make a living doing this and
it's very hard for people to understand what we do. I really
believe very strongly that a social scientist will develop
analytical tools that are far superior to what the scientists
would do, if they looked at what social scientists do. We are
able to – we have at our fingertips a toolkit, conceptual
toolkit, empirical knowledge, that allows us to make
sense of social realities in a way that is qualitatively much
more sophisticated, precise, empirically grounded than people
who don't have that training.
Oh, it certainly will be my computer.
I really like independent musician who you know, world
music. I'm Canadian so I have – I'm following what's going on in
France a lot. I spent last year on sabbatical in France. I'm
following what's going on in Canada so not necessarily groups
that most people would know about, more underground music.
I have a brother who follows the music and fills my iPod with
very interesting stuff.