Against Meritocracy Culture, power and myths of mobility
Auteur : Littler Jo
Meritocracy today involves the idea that whatever your social position at birth, society ought to offer enough opportunity and mobility for ?talent? to combine with ?effort? in order to ?rise to the top?. This idea is one of the most prevalent social and cultural tropes of our time, as palpable in the speeches of politicians as in popular culture. In this book Jo Littler argues that meritocracy is the key cultural means of legitimation for contemporary neoliberal culture ? and that whilst it promises opportunity, it in fact creates new forms of social division.
Against Meritocracy is split into two parts. Part I explores the genealogies of meritocracy within social theory, political discourse and working cultures. It traces the dramatic U-turn in meritocracy?s meaning, from socialist slur to a contemporary ideal of how a society should be organised. Part II uses a series of case studies to analyse the cultural pull of popular ?parables of progress?, from reality TV to the super-rich and celebrity CEOs, from social media controversies to the rise of the ?mumpreneur?. Paying special attention to the role of gender, ?race? and class, this book provides new conceptualisations of the meaning of meritocracy in contemporary culture and society.
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Ladders and Snakes
Meritocracy as plutocracy
What’s wrong with meritocracy? Five problems
Meritocracy as social system and as ideological discourse
How this book is organised
Part one: Genealogies
Chapter one: Meritocracy’s genealogies in social theory
Never start with the dictionary
Early genealogies, histories and geographies
Ladders and level playing field
Socialist roots and critique
Social democratic meritocracy
The critique of educational essentialism
‘Just’ meritocracy? The beginnings of neoliberal meritocracy
Meritocracy in the neoliberal meritocracy
Chapter two: ‘Rising up’: gender, ethnicity, class and the meritocratic deficit
See where your talent takes you
Partial progression and painful ladders: mid century welfare
Pulling rank: problems with welfarist ‘rising up’
Selling 1968
Parables of progress: luminous media fables
Not so cool: unequal employment
Selling inequality: post-feminism, post-race….post-class?
Neoliberal justice narratives
The egalitarian and the meritocratic deficit
Chapter three: The movement of meritocracy in political rhetoric
Meritocratic feeling
Thatcherism in Britain
Major meritocracy
Blairism and beyond
Aspiration Nation
Tragi-comedy: Bojo’s ‘hard work’
Blue-collar billionaires: Farage, Trump and the destabilisation of merit
Theresa May and the Middle England meritocrats
Aspiration for all?
Meritocracy vs. mutuality
Part two: Popular parables
Chapter four: Just like us? Normcore plutocrats and the popularisation of elitism
Meritocracy and the extension of privilege
The 1%, the new rentiers and transnational asset-stripping
Normcore plutocrats
Normcore aristocrats
The kind parent
Luxury-flaunters
The new rich are different
Chapter five: #Damonsplaining and the unbearable whiteness of ‘merit’
#Damonsplaining and externalised white male privilege
Post-racial meritocracy
The racialization of merit: people
The racialization of merit: products
The racialization of merit: production
Trying to shut women up
Calling out the myth of postracial meritocracy
Externalised and internalised neoliberal meritocracy
Chapter six: Desperate success: Managing the mumpreneur
Doing it all
Child labour
Desperate success
Entrepreneurial Man
Magical femininity
The mumpreneur and the branded self
Disaggregation and alternatives
Conclusion: Beyond neoliberal meritocracy
Failing to convince
The journeys of meritocracy
What’s the alternative?
Changing the cultural pull of meritocratic hope
Alternatives to the ladder
Index
Jo Littler is a Reader in the Centre for Culture and Creative Industries in the Department of Sociology at City, University of London. She is the author of Radical Consumption: Shopping for change in contemporaryculture (2009) and co-editor, with Roshi Naidoo, of The Politics of Heritage: The Legacies of ‘Race’ (2005).
Date de parution : 08-2017
13.8x21.6 cm
Date de parution : 08-2017
13.8x21.6 cm
Disponible chez l'éditeur (délai d'approvisionnement : 14 jours).
Prix indicatif 73,30 €
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Mots-clés :
Neoliberal Meritocratic; Low Income Minority Neighborhoods; social mobility; Public Sector Spending Cuts; social inequality; Social Reproduction; media and society; Meritocratic Discourse; popular culture; Desperate Success; cultural studies; Universal Caregiver Model; Jo Littler; Universal Breadwinner Model; Meritocracy; Daddy Warbucks; Mommy Bloggers; Project Greenlight; Reality Tv Show; UK Version; Prime Ministerial Personas; Fox’s Article; Universal Breadwinner; Meritocratic Dream; Plutocratic Elites; Alan Fox; Reality Tv; UK Conservative Party; Young Men; Pop Stars; UK Civil Service; 1960s Social Movements