Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of figures -- 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 -- Notes -- References -- PART I: Genealogies -- 1. Meritocracy's genealogies in social theory -- Never start with the dictionary -- Early genealogies, histories and geographies -- Ladders and level playing -- Socialist roots and critique -- Social democratic meritocracy -- The critique of educational essentialism -- A 'just meritocracy'? the beginnings of neoliberal meritocracy -- Meritocracy in the neoliberal laboratory -- Notes -- References -- 2. 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 -- Egalitarian and meritocratic deficits -- Notes -- References -- 3. Meritocratic feeling: 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 versus mutuality -- Notes -- References -- PART II: Popular parables -- 4. 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 -- Notes -- References -- 5. #Damonsplaining and the unbearable whiteness of merit -- #Damonsplaining and externalised white male privilege -- Post-racial meritocracy -- The racialisation of merit: people -- The racialisation of merit: products -- The racialisation of merit: production -- Trying to shut women up -- Calling out the myth of post-racial meritocracy -- Externalised and internalised neoliberal meritocracy -- Notes -- References -- 6. 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 -- Notes -- References -- Conclusion: Beyond neoliberal meritocracy -- Failing to convince -- The journeys of meritocracy -- What is the alternative? -- Changing the cultural pull of meritocratic hope -- Alternatives to the ladder -- Notes -- References -- Index.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2023. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.