Symposium on Michèle Lamont's Seeing Others: How Recognition Works – And How It Can Heal a Divided World

We are pleased to be able to include in this issue a wide-ranging discussion of Michèle Lamont's Seeing Others (Lamont 2023). Lamont's work over the past few decades has been at the forefront of research on questions of culture and sociology, and this book is an empirically grounded and theoretically informed exploration of the question of how we see others. It weaves together, in a style that has become emblematic of her work, personal biographical narratives with broader reflections on the challenges we face in the contemporary social and political environment.

The four contributions to this symposium address key aspects of the analysis that frame Lamont's book. The first commentary is by Lorenza Fontana and it explores in particular the way she sees Lamont using the narratives that run through the book to explore key facets of how we see ourselves and others (Fontana 2024). Fontana uses this engagement with Lamont's work to explore the possibility of hope in the contemporary environment. Fontana's reflections are followed by Tiffany Joseph's commentary, which seeks to explore the questions of how the narratives that help to shape our societies can be transformed so that everyone, especially those in marginalized groups, is truly seen (Joseph 2024). Joseph argues that Lamont's work helps us to address this issue from a range of angles. However, she also suggests that much more research needs to be developed in order to better understand how and why marginalized groups remain in many ways unseen in the world around us.

The third contribution is by Ann Morning and it begins by locating Seeing Others against the background of Lamont's longstanding interest in the social and political processes that help to shape how we see ourselves and also how we see others (Morning 2024). Morning's intervention explores a number of issues that are raised by Lamont's book, suggesting that it provides important tools for further research and reflection. The final contribution to the symposium is by Ali Meghji and it seeks to explore the ways in which sociologists can engage with issues of social change in the world around us (Meghji 2024). One strand in Meghji's contribution involves bringing Lamont's account into conversation with the work of Du Bois, particularly on the role of sociologists as change agents. In developing this suggestion, Meghji engages with the implications of Lamont's account for thinking about sociologists as change agents.

The concluding contribution to the symposium is a rejoinder to the four commentaries by Michèle Lamont (2024). Lamont takes the opportunity in her rejoinder to engage in a conversation with some of the key issues that are raised by the four commentaries. In developing this conversation, she also suggests the kinds of issues that we need to address more fully as we seek to make sense of the changing ways in which we see ourselves and others.

The issues that are touched upon in this symposium are all important in the range of subjects that we seek to cover in Ethnic and Racial Studies. In particular, an important theme of the book, namely the question of how we can develop research and scholarship in directions that help marginalized others to be seen and treated as equals, lies at the heart of the kinds of work that is to be found in the journal.