2025-2026 Spring Seminar II

The Weatherhead Research Cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion draws on expertise from across disciplines to gain international and comparative perspectives on how to extend cultural membership to the greatest number in society, to gain a better understanding of the social and cultural processes behind recognition gaps, and to determine how social scientists and policy makers can better respond to help make societies more inclusive. 

Advanced industrial societies have become increasingly characterized by two trends: growing inequality and an increasing recognition gap. As the distribution of wealth and income have grown more unequal, a growing number of groups are making claims for recognition as the poor, workers, immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ people, and various ethnoracial and religious minority groups experience stigmatization. This double tension will serve as a fruitful point of entry for future multidisciplinary inquiries into the conditions for collective well-being.

A major challenge for contemporary societies is to extend cultural membership to the greatest number. Thus we need to gain a better understanding of the social and cultural processes behind recognition gaps, and determine how social scientists and policy makers can better respond to help make societies more inclusive. 

This seminar brings together cluster affiliates and colleagues across departments to share their published and in-progress work in an effort to find responses to the timely questions related to inequality and the recognition gap. For more information, please check the seminar’s upcoming events. 

Presenters:

Cat O’Donnell (Harvard University, Department of Sociology)

“Capturing the Party Shell: Organizational Conflict and Institutional Transformation in American Political Parties”

Abstract: What happens when anti-establishment actors become the political establishment? Through 18 months of fieldwork, I explore how outsider movements reconfigure political parties from the inside by reshaping what authority means, what the organization is for, and how its rules are interpreted. These findings extend prior work on “hollow parties” and movement-party interaction with important implications for American political culture and democracy.  

Paulus Wagner (Marie-Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellow (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellow) 

with Georgios Georgarakis and Jan Rovny

“Does Elite Recognition of Popular Economic Worries reduce Political Resentment? Evidence from a Survey Experiment”

Abstract: A growing literature describes how political resentment among the public is driven by a sense of lacking social recognition. Addressing a core element of this debate, we ask whether elite cues expressing recognition of socio-economic problems lived by ordinary citizens impact respondents’ views of politics. Focusing on France and Germany, we design a survey experiment around the experience of recent inflation and stagnating wages. Treatments come as ideal-typical statements by politicians that vary symbolic recognition (positive, negative, neutral). We measure effects on a set of political perceptions among participants, including anti-elite sentiment, cynicism towards institutions, sense of people-elite alienation, and relative deprivation. We hypothesize that elite recognition cues matter to citizens’ views of politics, especially for affected groups. Moreover, our design includes open questions to shed light on subjective understandings and recognition mechanisms in political communication.

Fumiya Uchikoshi (Harvard Academy)

“The Role of Imagined Futures in Gendered Educational Trajectories: Adolescents’ Expectations and the Leaky Pipeline in Japanese Selective College Admissions”

Abstract: When students are sorted into different schools based on academic achievement, it is widely believed that they consequently make more realistic educational choices. However, findings from large-scale nationwide mock exam data and qualitative interviews with students and teachers in selective high schools in Japan—where still only one in five applicants to the nation’s top university are women—challenge this understanding. Specifically, I find that, controlling for test scores in the mock exam, male applicants are significantly more likely than their female counterparts to aspire to and apply to “reach” schools. Qualitative interviews further reveal that male students use narrower school choice criteria, aiming for selective “reach” schools to maintain their broader, albeit less clearly defined, future opportunities when they graduate and enter the labor market. By contrast, female students exhibit a broader school choice set in terms of selectivity and prestige but have much clearer, though narrower, occupational plans. Their emphasis on vocational education and marketable skills reflects anticipation of career interruptions due to family responsibilities. Taken together, these findings provide theoretical insights into how cultural and institutional forces sustain gender divergence in educational and occupational trajectories by narrowing the universe of “imagined futures” available to women, with potential implications for inequality in higher education in other sociocultural contexts.