[Ideas Festival] Michèle Lamont: Seeing Others

Taking as her key insight the fact that recognition & inclusion are at least as important as income or power in assessing and reaching equality, Michèle Lamont unpacks the power of recognition - how others see us and value us - by drawing on nearly forty years of research and new interviews with young adults, cultural icons and change agents. She shows how new narratives are essential for everyone to feel respect and assert their dignity.

She describes how decades of neoliberalism have negatively impacted our sense of self-worth; by prioritizing material and professional success, we have judged ourselves and others in terms of self-reliance, competition, and diplomas. The foregrounding of these attributes feeds into the marginalisation of minority groups. The solution, Lamont argues, is to shift our focus towards what we have in common while actively working to recognise the diverse ways one can live a life.

Seeing Others delivers a realistic sources of hope: by reducing stigma, we put equality within reach.