2026-2027 Fall Seminar I

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:

Michèle Lamont (Sociology, Harvard University), Chelsea King

(Sociology, Harvard University), and Sydney Black (Harvard University)

“Seeking Recognition through Environmental Stewardship and Work: Indigenous Peoples in the Marianas Pacific and Kichi Zibi Region”

Abstract: A major thread in cross-disciplinary literature on Indigenous Peoples and global environmental inequalities highlights environmental justice as a dominant repertoire through which Indigenous peoples access social recognition. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews with Chamorro and Rafaluwasch peoples living on the island of Saipan in Micronesia, as well as 30 interviews with Algonquin Anishinaabe members of the Kebaowek First Nation in the Kishi Zibi region of Eastern Canada, we show that various meanings about place, Indigenous collective identity, and challenges under the rule of colonial empire contribute to heterogeneous relations with the environment. Saipan interviewees define their collective identity largely through place/land, family/clan and providing/consuming, and less through indigeneity proper or through environmental care. Among members of Kebaowek First Nation, environmental stewardship and intimate relations to the environment are primary pathways for social recognition. While social scientists often posit a tight linkage between environmental stewardship and indigeneity, they have overlooked how “ordinary” Indigenous people (in contrast to political leaders or cultural intermediaries/agents) relate to the environment. We aim to address this blind spot to improve our understanding of how Indigenous Peoples gain dignity and respect amidst global inequalities.

Dean Ray (WSP, Harvard University)

“Death Against the State: How do social movements mobilize death to contest state sovereignty?”

Abstract: This article examines how social movements mobilize human remains, funerals, memorials, and rituals of mourning to challenge state sovereignty. I call these practices death against the state. Through a comparative analysis of Kurdish mourning in Turkey, ACT UP’s militant funerals and Ashes Actions in the United States, and Indigenous responses to the unmarked graves of children at former residential schools in Canada, I show how struggles over death become struggles over political authority. In each case, states classified certain deaths as shameful, threatening, forgettable, or outside the boundaries of public concern. Movements challenged those classifications through a shared set of repertoires. Yet, similar repertoires produced different political claims. Kurdish activists used the dead to sustain an alternative political community and claims to their own sovereignty; ACT UP demanded recognition and protection from the existing sovereign; and Indigenous communities asserted authority over their dead through refusal and resurgence. These cases show that sovereignty is not exercised only through law, borders, and coercion. It is also performed through struggles over who may be mourned, how the dead are remembered, and who has the right to decide.

Lewis Krashinsky (Canada Program)

“Across the Detroit River: Why the American and Canadian White Working-Class Votes Differently (Chapter 5)”

Abstract: From 2015 to 2025, the majority of white working-class voters in Ontario supported left-wing parties. From 2012 to 2024, the majority of white working-class voters across the American Midwest supported the Republican Party. This book examines this electoral divergence, heretofore omitted from political scholarship, by utilizing original survey data, a novel conjoint experiment, and qualitative fieldwork in Windsor and Macomb County. Chapter Five turns to national identity and conceptions of the nation among white working-class voters in both countries. The chapter shows that national identity is strongly correlated with Republican partisanship and voting among white working-class voters from the Midwest. However, among white working-class voters from Ontario, national identity is instead linked with support for and affiliation with the center-left Liberal Party. In fact, national identity is one of the strongest factors that predicts partisan alignment with the Liberals, and serves as a major reason why the party generates support among the white working class. A key question is how the public conceives of the nation and what the public believes constitutes membership and belonging to that nation. Through both qualitative and quantitative evidence, I show that conceptions of the nation are markedly different between Canada and the United States.