Bob, please don’t retreat, it was a question to your question and your contribution helped spark the above.

Now if American professional and working class women have such radically different attitudes toward class from their male counterparts that they must be studied separately, well, that’s interesting in itself, isn’t it? Women do trend more liberal and Democratic than men, I think, but not so much that political pollsters exclude them from generalized questions.

Yup. See 4.3.

“Michèle Lamont provides a rare and revealing collective portrait of the upper-middle class—the managers, professionals, entrepreneurs, and experts at the center of power in society. Her book is a subtle, textured description of how these men define the values and attitudes they consider essential in separating themselves—and their class—from everyone else.” …blurb

Sorry. Don’t know about you, but my instant reaction to this is: Why not women? They are professionals and entrepeneurs and Ivy League Grads too.

Maybe not so much in France? It was just a question. Honest.

As to the first, it think the fact that social scientists restrict their studies to a single race, demographic, cohort etc – one that always just happens to be white men – is a poor excuse for such exclusionary practices, and contibutes to the very exclusion of voices other than white, male ones.

Clarity is right in one respect though – would you have asked the question if Lamont were a man, Bob? And if not, why not?

But I agree with Clarity, the upper middle class is still mostly made up of white men. The choice of subjects was probably inevitable.

Or all four (five if Richard counts) Pankhursts, and discuss why Emmeline and Christabel moderated their socialism over time while Adele and Sylvia became active communists.

I was expecting something as simple as wanting to limit the variables in a comparative study, and presumed it was covered in her introductions.

There are, of course, arguments on the far left about whether class, or race, gender, colonial history should be the controlling independent variables, and since Lamont apparently does include a discussion of racial differences (“Workers also draw rigid racial boundaries…” from the blurb) I again found the removal of gender interesting.

No, you don’t. Be free.

As I am free to ask a question that contains not a hint of criticism or judgement.

Perhaps there’s a reason for her choice. For example, most of our leaders are male and thus the drip-down effect in society negates women being the social protagonists in her chosen works. Perhaps she might tackle Emmeline Pankhurst afterwards?

As a woman I have to ask, why does she HAVE to write about women? Is she less of a writer or teacher because of that? Why can’t she be judged on her work and not her chromosomes?