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 contemporary culture (2009) and co-editor, with Roshi Naidoo, of The Politics of Heritage: The Legacies of ‘Race’ (2005).
"This is a marvellously rich and timely book. It is meticulously
researched and wide ranging in focus. Jo Littler pins down with
precision the key role played by the idea of meritocracy in the
political and cultural neoliberal strategy." - Professor Angela
McRobbie, Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of
London, UK"Against Meritocracy is a tour de force of political
analysis. But it's also a landmark political book, charting
pathways beyond the leading social beliefs of our time."- Professor
Andrew Ross, Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University,
USA"In Against Meritocracy, Jo Littler elegantly and persuasively
weaves together histories and discourses of the concept
"meritocracy," and theorizes about the longevity of this concept
even in the face of overwhelming evidence that this concept does
not "work" in culture, in politics, in our everyday lives. Here she
offers an important new angle on the familiar assumptions about
meritocracy, and importantly demonstrates how these assumptions are
put into practice in ways that benefit the privileged. This
brilliant book is so important; Littler’s refusal to make
totalizing statements about what, and how, meritocracy means, is a
major, and necessary, contribution."- Professor Sarah Banet-Weiser,
Communication, USC Annenberg, USA"Meritocracy, as legitimating
creed for capitalism-as-culture, has been widely studied, but less
than adequately theorized. In a commanding new study, Jo Littler
subjects the myth of upward mobility to searching critical
analysis, probing its historical resilience, its pervasive presence
in popular discourse, and its insidious effects as an ideology that
continues, amidst plutocratic rule and widening structural
inequality, to promote faith in the elusive "ladder of
opportunity"."- Professor Jean Comaroff, African and African
American Studies, Harvard University, USA"Against Meritocracy has
an important role to play in informing the growing movement working
to sweep away the Tory government."- IAN SINCLAIR, Peace
News"Littler’s compelling argument of the damage, both ideological
and material, caused by the workings of meritocracy needs to be
heeded. […] Against Meritocracy is an important and timely book
that reminds us it is time to abandon meritocracy as elitist,
inequitable, and well past its sell-by-date."- Professor Diane
Reay, University of Cambridge "Littler offers a systematic and
brilliant analysis of the kind of cultural work that the
incorporation of meritocratic ideals has carried out in the
Anglo-American world, particularly since the 1980s"- Dr Catherine
Rottenberg, Cultural Studies "One of those unusual academic books
which is actually pleasurable to read from cover to cover ….a
rewarding site for collective thinking and action vis-à-vis
building a better – fairer – social world." - Dr Sarah Burton, LSE
Review of Books "Engaging and important [..] This book offers a
valuable set of tools through which we can not only debunk
neoliberal meritocracy but also begin to generate alternative ways
to work toward a more egalitarian and progressive society that
benefits the many and not just the few." - Dr Kim Allen in Cultural
Politics"Littler’s analyses are subtle, and the research informing
them is impressively wide-ranging. Littler leaves readers
indignant. She leaves neoliberal targets weakened, morally
concussed [...] Constant alertness to gender complications apt to
be overlooked by people writing about meritocracy in a broad-brush
way is one of her book’s great strengths."- Professor Andrew
Pinnock in Cultural Trends ‘A well-researched and compelling
book... shows the many ways in which this seemingly progressive yet
insidious idea and its material manifestations have seeped into
contemporary life’ - Dr Marjana Johansson, Organization
"This is a marvellously rich and timely book. It is meticulously
researched and wide ranging in focus. Jo Littler pins down with
precision the key role played by the idea of meritocracy in the
political and cultural neoliberal strategy." - Professor Angela
McRobbie, Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of
London, UK"Against Meritocracy is a tour de force of political
analysis. But it's also a landmark political book, charting
pathways beyond the leading social beliefs of our time."- Professor
Andrew Ross, Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University,
USA"In Against Meritocracy, Jo Littler elegantly and persuasively
weaves together histories and discourses of the concept
"meritocracy," and theorizes about the longevity of this concept
even in the face of overwhelming evidence that this concept does
not "work" in culture, in politics, in our everyday lives. Here she
offers an important new angle on the familiar assumptions about
meritocracy, and importantly demonstrates how these assumptions are
put into practice in ways that benefit the privileged. This
brilliant book is so important; Littler’s refusal to make
totalizing statements about what, and how, meritocracy means, is a
major, and necessary, contribution."- Professor Sarah Banet-Weiser,
Communication, USC Annenberg, USA"Meritocracy, as legitimating
creed for capitalism-as-culture, has been widely studied, but less
than adequately theorized. In a commanding new study, Jo Littler
subjects the myth of upward mobility to searching critical
analysis, probing its historical resilience, its pervasive presence
in popular discourse, and its insidious effects as an ideology that
continues, amidst plutocratic rule and widening structural
inequality, to promote faith in the elusive "ladder of
opportunity"."- Professor Jean Comaroff, African and African
American Studies, Harvard University, USA"Against Meritocracy has
an important role to play in informing the growing movement working
to sweep away the Tory government."- IAN SINCLAIR, Peace
News"Littler’s compelling argument of the damage, both ideological
and material, caused by the workings of meritocracy needs to be
heeded. […] Against Meritocracy is an important and timely book
that reminds us it is time to abandon meritocracy as elitist,
inequitable, and well past its sell-by-date."- Professor Diane
Reay, University of Cambridge "Littler offers a systematic and
brilliant analysis of the kind of cultural work that the
incorporation of meritocratic ideals has carried out in the
Anglo-American world, particularly since the 1980s"- Dr Catherine
Rottenberg, Cultural Studies "One of those unusual academic books
which is actually pleasurable to read from cover to cover ….a
rewarding site for collective thinking and action vis-à-vis
building a better – fairer – social world." - Dr Sarah Burton, LSE
Review of Books "Engaging and important [..] This book offers a
valuable set of tools through which we can not only debunk
neoliberal meritocracy but also begin to generate alternative ways
to work toward a more egalitarian and progressive society that
benefits the many and not just the few." - Dr Kim Allen in Cultural
Politics"Littler’s analyses are subtle, and the research informing
them is impressively wide-ranging. Littler leaves readers
indignant. She leaves neoliberal targets weakened, morally
concussed [...] Constant alertness to gender complications apt to
be overlooked by people writing about meritocracy in a broad-brush
way is one of her book’s great strengths."- Professor Andrew
Pinnock in Cultural Trends ‘A well-researched and compelling
book... shows the many ways in which this seemingly progressive yet
insidious idea and its material manifestations have seeped into
contemporary life’ - Dr Marjana Johansson, Organization
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