Against Meritocracy

Abstract

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 cultureand 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.

The (RE)Production of Meritocracy: Challenges from the Romanian Higher Education System Under Neoliberalism

“…Littler (2013) has confirmed that meritocracy is a way to extend the interests and powers of elites through rankings of key professions, fields of study and subjects. Consequently, the salience of meritocracy revolves around reinterpretations and modes of change under political and economic discourses that make meritocracy to entail a tautological structure (Littler, 2018). Such a transformation is likely to vitiate the qualities of individuals, disrupt collective work, and link them to power spheres (political, economic or education) that project failures on individuals.…”

“…Interventions in higher education (HE) have embraced the umbrella of neoliberalism (Doherty, 2015) mobilizing discourses of excellence and marketization by extending the logic of competition (Littler, 2018). They embody a powerful strategy that aspires to reinvent the university (Marginson and Considine, 2000) and to proliferate the knowledge capitalism (Olssen and Peters, 2005).…”

Occupying the intersection: RuPaul’s celebration of meritocracy

“…Ru’s denial of structural inequality and meritocratic convictions prohibit her from thinking like the intersectional hero she is for us. (Indeed, research into meritocratic convictions illustrates that those who hold these simply have no truck with intersectional understanding, see Cech and Blair-Loy, 2010; Crenshaw, 1991; Littler, 2017). While Drag Race is the ultimate case for ‘post-television’ as a hopeful and exciting multiple transition, it is at the same time limited by the ambitions that created it.…”

Crazy Rich Asians: Exploring Discourses of Orientalism, Neoliberal Feminism, Privilege and Inequality

“…With sufficient hard work and enterprising attitudes like passion and initiative, anyone can 'make it' -the 'American dream'. Of course, the fiction of the merit trope is that it is individuals and not a collective who climb the metaphorical ladder, celebrating individualistic 'progress', and not collective well-being and egalitarianism (Littler 2017).…”