Against Meritocracy : Culture, Power and Myths of Mobility
Jo Littler;Jo Littler
Meritocracy today involves the idea that whatever your social position at birth, socie...
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Against Meritocracy : Culture, Power and Myths of Mobility
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.
2017
Subject terms:
Plutocracy - Social mobility - Power (Social sciences)Content provider:
eBook Collection (EBSCOhost)
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The tyranny of the meritocracy : democratizing higher education in America / Lani Guinier.
Book
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2015
Book
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2015
Available at LC Collection (LA227.4 .G85 2015)
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Is Confucian Political Meritocracy a Viable Alternative to Democracy? A Critical Engagement with Tongdong Bai.
Academic Journal
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Journal of Value Inquiry. Dec2023, Vol. 57 Issue 4, p625-640. 16p.
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Tang, Yun
Academic Journal
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Journal of Value Inquiry. Dec2023, Vol. 57 Issue 4, p625-640. 16p.
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Lost in the meritocracy : the undereducation of an overachiever / Walter Kirn.
Book
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2009
Book
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2009
Available at LC Collection (PS3561.I746 Z46 2009)
Zachary M. Howlett;Zachary M. Howlett
Meritocracy and Its Discontents investigates the wider social, political, religious, a...
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2021
Subject terms:
Achievement tests--China - Gaokao (Educational test)--Social aspects - Universities and colleges--China--Entrance examinationsContent provider:
eBook Collection (EBSCOhost)
The meritocracy myth / Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, Jr.
Book
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2004
Book
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2004
Available at Dewey Collection (305.5130973 M2326m)
Redefining Ability, Saving Educational Meritocracy .
Academic Journal
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Journal of Ethics. Sep2023, Vol. 27 Issue 3, p263-283. 21p.
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Harel Ben Shahar, Tammy
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Journal of Ethics. Sep2023, Vol. 27 Issue 3, p263-283. 21p.
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The meritocratic principle of educational justice maintains that it is unfair that ind...
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Redefining Ability, Saving Educational Meritocracy .
Journal of Ethics. Sep2023, Vol. 27 Issue 3, p263-283. 21p.
The meritocratic principle of educational justice maintains that it is unfair that individuals with similar ability who invest equal effort, have unequal educational prospects. In this paper I argue that the conception of ability that meritocracy assumes, namely as an innate trait, is critically flawed. Absent a coherent conception of ability, meritocracy loses its ability to morally evaluate educational practices and policies, rendering it an unworkable principle of educational justice. Replacing innate ability with an alternative conception of ability is, therefore, crucial for meritocratic educational justice. I propose incorporating an alternative conception of ability into meritocracy —as the ″current limits of student ability″. The account of meritocracy that follows entails that unequal educational prospects are fair only when they result from the constraints of individual potential (or from differential effort). I argue that this potential-based account of meritocracy , though demanding, is a plausible and attractive account of educational justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Subject terms:
MERITOCRACY - EQUAL pay for equal work - JUSTICEContent provider:
Academic Search Elite
Meritocracy and economic inequality / Kenneth Arrow, Samuel Bowles, and Steven Durlauf, editors.
Book
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2000
Book
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2000
Available at Dewey Collection (305.513 M545)
Competitive and cooperative practices in education: How teachers’ beliefs in school meritocracy are related to their daily practices with students
Academic Journal
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Social Psychology of Education: An International Journal. 26(6):1789-1805
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Darnon, Céline;Jury, Mickaël;Goudeau, Sébastien;Portex, Marine
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Social Psychology of Education: An International Journal. 26(6):1789-1805
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The rise of the meritocracy, 1870-2033 ; an essay on education and equality.
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1967
Book
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1967
Available at LC Collection (HM213 .Y6 1967)
Culture of Meritocracy , Political Hegemony, and Singapore’s Development
Academic Journal
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International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. :1-26
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Cheang, Bryan;Choy, Donovan
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International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. :1-26
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Negotiating meritocracy and gender equality across organisational spaces: the case of a tenure track system
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Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education Research. :1-20
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Broström, Anders;Ekman, Marianne;Geschwind, Lars;Lindgren, Monica;Packendor...
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Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education Research. :1-20
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Success and luck : good fortune and the myth of meritocracy / Robert H. Frank.
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2016
Book
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2016
Available at Dewey Collection (650.1 F8516s)
Moriguchi, Chiaki;Narita, Yusuke;Tanaka, Mari
What happens if selective colleges change their admission policies? We answer this que...
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06/02/2024
What happens if selective colleges change their admission policies? We answer this question by analyzing the world's first introduction of nationally centralized meritocratic admissions in the early twentieth century. We find a persistent meritocracy -equity tradeoff. Compared to the decentralized system, the centralized system admitted more high-achieving applicants, producing a greater number of top elite bureaucrats in the long run. However, this impact came at the distributional cost of equal regional access to elite higher education and career advancement. Several decades later, the meritocratic centralization increased the number of urban-born career elites (e.g., top income earners) relative to rural-born ones.
Comment: Keywords: Elite Education, Market Design, Strategic Behavior, Regional Mobility, Universal Access, Persistent Effects
Comment: Keywords: Elite Education, Market Design, Strategic Behavior, Regional Mobility, Universal Access, Persistent Effects
Subject terms:
Economics - General EconomicsContent provider:
arXiv
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The big test : the secret history of the American meritocracy / Nicholas Lemann.
Book
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1999
Book
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1999
Available at Dewey Collection (371.260973 L5412b)
Toby Napoletano
Academic Journal
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Theory and Research in Education. 2024 22(1):3-18.
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There are two ways, broadly speaking, that one might conceive of meritocratic educatio...
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Theory and Research in Education. 2024 22(1):3-18.
There are two ways, broadly speaking, that one might conceive of meritocratic education. On a standard, 'narrow' conception, a meritocratic approach to education is one which distributes certain educational goods and opportunities according to merit. On a second, 'broader' conception, however, meritocratic education is an educational system suited to a commitment to meritocracy - where 'meritocracy ' refers to a particular conception of distributive justice. In this article, I argue that these two conceptions are incompatible with each other, and so the standard 'narrow' conception of meritocratic education is, in fact, incompatible with a commitment to meritocracy , at least given the typical way of understanding meritocracy . Of particular importance is that while meritocracy , as a view of distributive justice, requires a commitment to equality of opportunity principles, the narrowly meritocratic conception of education does not. The reason has to do with differences in the underlying justifications of the merit-based principles in each: Meritocracy appeals to moral desert, while the educational desert that is grounded by one's merits is best thought of as a kind of institutional desert. Thus, I will argue, while meritocracy (and so the broad conception of meritocratic education) is constrained by a fair equality of opportunity requirement, narrowly meritocratic education is not. Recognizing the relationships between meritocracy , meritocratic education, and equality of opportunity, I argue, sheds considerable light on disagreements in the debate over equality of opportunity in education.
Content provider:
ERIC
Simultaneously Achieving Group Exposure Fairness and Within-Group Meritocracy in Stochastic Bandits
Pokhriyal, Subham;Jain, Shweta;Ghalme, Ganesh;Dhamal, Swapnil;Gujar, Sujit
Existing approaches to fairness in stochastic multi-armed bandits (MAB) primarily focu...
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Simultaneously Achieving Group Exposure Fairness and Within-Group Meritocracy in Stochastic Bandits
08/02/2024
Existing approaches to fairness in stochastic multi-armed bandits (MAB) primarily focus on exposure guarantee to individual arms. When arms are naturally grouped by certain attribute(s), we propose Bi-Level Fairness, which considers two levels of fairness. At the first level, Bi-Level Fairness guarantees a certain minimum exposure to each group. To address the unbalanced allocation of pulls to individual arms within a group, we consider meritocratic fairness at the second level, which ensures that each arm is pulled according to its merit within the group. Our work shows that we can adapt a UCB-based algorithm to achieve a Bi-Level Fairness by providing (i) anytime Group Exposure Fairness guarantees and (ii) ensuring individual-level Meritocratic Fairness within each group. We first show that one can decompose regret bounds into two components: (a) regret due to anytime group exposure fairness and (b) regret due to meritocratic fairness within each group. Our proposed algorithm BF-UCB balances these two regrets optimally to achieve the upper bound of $O(\sqrt{T})$ on regret; $T$ being the stopping time. With the help of simulated experiments, we further show that BF-UCB achieves sub-linear regret; provides better group and individual exposure guarantees compared to existing algorithms; and does not result in a significant drop in reward with respect to UCB algorithm, which does not impose any fairness constraint.
Comment: Accepted in AAMAS 2024
Comment: Accepted in AAMAS 2024
Subject terms:
Computer Science - Machine Learning - Computer Science - Artificial Intelligence - Computer Science - Computers and Society - Computer Science - Multiagent SystemsContent provider:
arXiv
A Case for Communitarian Meritocracy : A Critical Engagement with Michael Sandel
Academic Journal
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Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences. :1-23
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Hung, Andrew Tsz Wan
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Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences. :1-23
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Burn it down : power, complicity, and a call for change in Hollywood / Maureen Ryan.
Book
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2023
Book
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2023
Available at LC Collection (PN1993.5.U65 R93 2023)
Recent Work on Meritocracy .
Academic Journal
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Analysis. Jan2023, Vol. 83 Issue 1, p171-185. 15p.
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Sachs-Cobbe, Benjamin
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Analysis. Jan2023, Vol. 83 Issue 1, p171-185. 15p.
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