TY - JOUR A1 - Lamont, Michèle T1 - From ‘having’ to ‘being’: self-worth and the current crisis of American society JF - The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 70 (No. 3, 2019), pp. 660-707. N2 - With growing inequality, the American dream is becoming less effective as a collective myth. With its focus on material success, competition and self-reliance, the intensified diffusion of neoliberal scripts of the self is leading the uppermiddle class toward a mental health crisis while the working class and lowincome groups do not have the resources needed to live the dream. African Americans, Latinos and undocumented immigrants, who are presumed to lack self-reliance, face more rigid boundaries. One possible way forward is broadening cultural membership by promoting new narratives of hope centered on a plurality of criteria of worth, ‘ordinary universalism’ and destigmatizing stigmatized groups. Y1 - 2019 ER -