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Against Meritocracy AGAINST MERITOCRACY 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 neo- liberal 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. 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). AGAINST MERITOCRACY Culture, power and myths of mobility Jo Littler First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Jo Littler The right of Jo Littler to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis. com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution- Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Littler, Jo, 1972- author. Title: Against meritocracy : culture, power and myths of mobility / Jo Littler. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; NewYork, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017002013 | ISBN 9781138889545 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138889552 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315712802 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Social mobility. | Plutocracy. | Power (Social sciences) Classification: LCC HT612 .L57 2017 | DDC 305.5/13--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002013 ISBN: 978-1-138-88954-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-88955-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-71280-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books For Jeremy, For Robin and Isla, And for everyone who reads it CONTENTS List of figures ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction: Ladders and snakes 1 PART I Genealogies 21 1 Meritocracy’s genealogies in social theory 23 2 Rising up: Gender, ethnicity, class and the meritocratic deficit 48 3 Meritocratic feeling: The movement of meritocracy in political rhetoric 78 PART II Popular parables 113 4 Just like us?: Normcore plutocrats and the popularisation of elitism 115 viii Contents 5 #Damonsplaining and the unbearable whiteness of merit 147 6 Desperate success: Managing the mumpreneur 179 Conclusion: Beyond neoliberal meritocracy 212 Index 227 FIGURES I.1 ‘Upward Mobility’ by Gloria Pritschet and Tobias Mixer, exhibited at Grammar of the Elite, The Gallery Project, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2012. Photograph by Jennifer Metsker. Reproduced courtesy of the photographer, the artists and the Gallery Project. 6 1.1 Gyanbazi game from Gujarat/Rajasthan, India, late 19th or 20th century. Watercolour on cloth. Reproduced courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. 29 1.2 Snakes and ladders board game. Designed in England and manufactured in Germany, c.1900. Chromolithographed paper on card. Reproduced courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. 30 3.1 UK newspaper The Sun announces that Prime Minister Theresa May is offering ‘Mayritocracy’ through a new wave of grammar schools. Photograph by Nick Ansell / PA Wire / PA Images (PA.28579747). Reproduced courtesy of The Sun and the Press Association. 98 4.1 Cover of Duncan Bannatyne, Anyone Can Do It. Reproduced courtesy of Orion Books. 122 6.1 Cover of Annabel Karmel, Mumpreneur. Reproduced courtesy of the Random House Group Ltd. 181 x List of figures 6.2 ‘Are You on the Passion Ladder?’, CEO Mums. Reproduced courtesy of Nicola Huelin and CEO Mums. 202 C.1 Altgen graphic. Design by Constance Laisné for Altgen. Reproduced courtesy of Constance Laisné and Altgen via a Creative Commons License. 223 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have always loved acknowledgements in academic books. As an under- graduate they were evidence that these authors were indeed living, breathing, feeling people with lives. They offered slivers of insight into what the existence of this strange breed called academics might actually be like. Plus! they seemed to be one of the few ways to find out something of how these books actually got written. My all-time favourite academic preface is in Alan Sinfield’s book Faultlines (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), where he dissects this miniature paratextual genre with arch wisdom (‘we might’,he writes, ‘call it the higher gossip’). Noting that, at least these days, fewer prefaces end with ‘the ultimate solecism: thanking the wife for typing it all’, Sinfield thanks his male partner and concludes with a flourish: ‘Oh, and I typed it myself.’ I cannot match Alan Sinfield’s sardonic prowess and only occasionally stray into the confessional. However, I share the sense that it is useful to expose a little of the process involved in writing, in order to dramatise the palpable fact that books are not the singular product of the name on the spine but the result of multiple apparatuses and flows of communication (although I also typed it myself). There are many thanks to give – indeed, given the nature of interdependent relationality, infinite thanks – but I’ll try and keep it brief. First and foremost I want to thank my partner Jeremy Gilbert, not just for my extensive exploitation of our mutual editing service but for his love xii Acknowledgements and support and for making everyday life more meaningful than I could otherwise imagine. Thanks and lots of love to our daughters Robin and Isla: yes, I have finished my work now. At least for the moment. Many thanks to all of my extended family and friends, from Aachen to Swansea, from Lucky Cloud to the locals, who I look forward to seeing more of now the intense stage of completing the book is over. This book would not have been finished – nor indeed properly started, as at least half of it was written at this time – without a three-month research sabbatical from City, University of London where I have worked for the last few years. It was my first sabbatical for ten years, and it is not a coincidence that is also my first single-authored book in ten years. I would like to thank all my colleagues in Sociology (especially Rachel Cohen, who pointed me in the direction of some useful statistics) and in particular my colleagues in the Centre for Culture and Creative Industries: Debbie Dickinson, Cecilia Dinardi, Ana Gaio, Ros Gill, Jenny Mbaye, Janet Merkel, Andy Pratt, Marisol Sandoval, Alex Williams and Diana Yeh. A small proportion of this work appeared in earlier versions in previous publications. ‘Meritocracy as Plutocracy: The Marketising of “Equality” within Neoliberalism’ (New Formations 80–81 [2013] pp. 52–72) appears in chapters 1 and 2. I am grateful to Lawrence & Wishart for permission to use this piece. A couple of small (and adapted) paragraphs from ‘Consumer Culture and Cultural Studies’ (in Deirdre Shaw, Michal Carrington and Andreas Chatzidakis [eds], Ethics and Morality in Consumer Culture: Inter- disciplinary Perspectives [New York: Routledge, 2016]) and from ‘The New Victorians: Celebrity Charity and the Demise of the Welfare State’ (Celebrity Studies 6[4] [2015] pp. 471–485) appear in chapters 2 and 4. A few para- graphs in chapter 4 thematically update my earlier work on celebrity CEOs that Su Holmes and Sean Redmond supported and published, and I am still grateful to them for that. The writing in this book on The Apprentice is indebted to Nick Couldry, for the work we did together to produce our two articles on the subject, back when Donald Trump was but a mere media mogul and corporate CEO. The discussion of Downton Abbey in chapter 6 is the result of many conversations with Roshi Naidoo on the matter, and part of a paper we are writing, and I am grateful to Roshi for her laser-like sense of humour and for being a wonderful friend. I am also grateful for the wit and wisdom of friends, colleagues and casual acquaintances, who now due to my age suddenly seem more numerous: it is hard to compile a comprehensive list. Academia seems like a small world at first, but when you stay a while, suddenly doors open into other Acknowledgements xiii academic rooms. So thanks to everyone who was supportive along the way. Particular thanks to those who offered – or who were bribed – to read chunks or chapters of this book: Doreen Massey, Roshi Naidoo, Emma Dowling, Anamik Saha, Gil Rodman, Ros Gill, Milly Williamson, Jeremy Gilbert (who heroically read the entire manuscript) and Sara Hackenberg (who gets a special endurance medal for reading so much of my work over the years).
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