Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Jin, Jin
• Ball, Stephen J.

Titel

Meritocracy, social mobility and a new form of class domination

Ist Teil von

• British journal of sociology of education, 2020-01, Vol.41 (1), p.64-79

Ort / Verlag

Oxford: Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts (ASSIA)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Meritocracy is used by governments in many societies as an 'effective' way to represent social justice and legitimise - explain away - class inequality. By focusing on a small number of working-class students who achieve academic 'success' and have reached elite universities in an ideal meritocratic environment - Chinese schooling - this paper aims to discuss the relation of meritocracy to upward social mobility and class domination. Our analysis raises questions about the notion of 'success' in a meritocratic environment and suggests the operation of a new form of symbolic domination in relation to these working-class high-achievers. Through their 'successes' at school, they are distanced from their working-class localities and histories, while they also remain outside of the middle-class sensibilities that they aspire to - they become a 'third class' whose core values reside in meritocracy itself. There is no transcendence of class here rather a different form of distinction and exclusion.