Making Meritocracy

Making Meritocracy PDF Author: Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor Tarun Khanna
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197602460
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
How do societies identify and promote merit? Enabling all people to fulfill their potential, and ensuring the selection of competent and capable leaders are central challenges for any society. These are not new concerns. Scholars, educators, and political and economic elites in China and India have been pondering them for centuries and continue to do so today, with enormously high stakes. In Making Meritocracy, Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi have gathered over a dozen experts from a range of intellectual perspectives--political science, history, philosophy, anthropology, economics, and applied mathematics--to discuss how the two most populous societies in the world have addressed the issue of building meritocracy historically, philosophically, and in practice. They focus on how contemporary policy makers, educators, and private-sector practitioners seek to promote it today. Importantly, they also discuss Singapore, which is home to large Chinese and Indian populations and the most successful meritocracy in recent times. Both China and India look to it for lessons. Though the past, present, and future of meritocracy building in China and India have distinctive local inflections, their attempts to enhance their power, influence, and social well-being by prioritizing merit-based advancement offers rich lessons both for one another and for the rest of the world--including rich countries like the United States, which are currently witnessing broad-based attacks on the very idea of meritocracy.

Making Meritocracy

Making Meritocracy PDF Author: Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor Tarun Khanna
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197602460
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Get Book Here

Book Description
How do societies identify and promote merit? Enabling all people to fulfill their potential, and ensuring the selection of competent and capable leaders are central challenges for any society. These are not new concerns. Scholars, educators, and political and economic elites in China and India have been pondering them for centuries and continue to do so today, with enormously high stakes. In Making Meritocracy, Tarun Khanna and Michael Szonyi have gathered over a dozen experts from a range of intellectual perspectives--political science, history, philosophy, anthropology, economics, and applied mathematics--to discuss how the two most populous societies in the world have addressed the issue of building meritocracy historically, philosophically, and in practice. They focus on how contemporary policy makers, educators, and private-sector practitioners seek to promote it today. Importantly, they also discuss Singapore, which is home to large Chinese and Indian populations and the most successful meritocracy in recent times. Both China and India look to it for lessons. Though the past, present, and future of meritocracy building in China and India have distinctive local inflections, their attempts to enhance their power, influence, and social well-being by prioritizing merit-based advancement offers rich lessons both for one another and for the rest of the world--including rich countries like the United States, which are currently witnessing broad-based attacks on the very idea of meritocracy.

The Meritocracy Trap

The Meritocracy Trap PDF Author: Daniel Markovits
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735222010
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
A revolutionary new argument from eminent Yale Law professor Daniel Markovits attacking the false promise of meritocracy It is an axiom of American life that advantage should be earned through ability and effort. Even as the country divides itself at every turn, the meritocratic ideal – that social and economic rewards should follow achievement rather than breeding – reigns supreme. Both Democrats and Republicans insistently repeat meritocratic notions. Meritocracy cuts to the heart of who we are. It sustains the American dream. But what if, both up and down the social ladder, meritocracy is a sham? Today, meritocracy has become exactly what it was conceived to resist: a mechanism for the concentration and dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations. Upward mobility has become a fantasy, and the embattled middle classes are now more likely to sink into the working poor than to rise into the professional elite. At the same time, meritocracy now ensnares even those who manage to claw their way to the top, requiring rich adults to work with crushing intensity, exploiting their expensive educations in order to extract a return. All this is not the result of deviations or retreats from meritocracy but rather stems directly from meritocracy’s successes. This is the radical argument that Daniel Markovits prosecutes with rare force. Markovits is well placed to expose the sham of meritocracy. Having spent his life at elite universities, he knows from the inside the corrosive system we are trapped within. Markovits also knows that, if we understand that meritocratic inequality produces near-universal harm, we can cure it. When The Meritocracy Trap reveals the inner workings of the meritocratic machine, it also illuminates the first steps outward, towards a new world that might once again afford dignity and prosperity to the American people.

The Tyranny of Merit

The Tyranny of Merit PDF Author: Michael J. Sandel
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374720991
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A Times Literary Supplement’s Book of the Year 2020 A New Statesman's Best Book of 2020 A Bloomberg's Best Book of 2020 A Guardian Best Book About Ideas of 2020 The world-renowned philosopher and author of the bestselling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good? These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that "you can make it if you try". The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens--leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time. World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success--more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.

The Second Mountain

The Second Mountain PDF Author: David Brooks
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241400694
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
NO.1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE SOCIAL ANIMAL Are you on your first or second mountain? Is life about you - or others? About success - or something deeper? The world tells us that we should pursue our self-interest: career wins, high status, nice things. These are the goals of our first mountain. But at some point in our lives we might find that we're not interested in what other people tell us to want. We want the things that are truly worth wanting. This is the second mountain. What does it mean to look beyond yourself and find a moral cause? To forget about independence and discover dependence - to be utterly enmeshed in a web of warm relationships? What does it mean to value intimacy, devotion, responsibility and commitment above individual freedom? In The Second Mountain David Brooks explores the meaning and possibilities that scaling a second mountain offer us and the four commitments that most commonly move us there: family, vocation, philosophy and community. Inspiring, personal and full of joy, this book will help you discover why you were really put on this earth.

The Caste of Merit

The Caste of Merit PDF Author: Ajantha Subramanian
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067424348X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
How the language of “merit” makes caste privilege invisible in contemporary India. Just as Americans least disadvantaged by racism are most likely to endorse their country as post‐racial, Indians who have benefited from their upper-caste affiliation rush to declare their country post‐caste. In The Caste of Merit, Ajantha Subramanian challenges this comfortable assumption by illuminating the controversial relationships among technical education, caste formation, and economic stratification in modern India. Through in-depth study of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)—widely seen as symbols of national promise—she reveals the continued workings of upper-caste privilege within the most modern institutions. Caste has not disappeared in India but instead acquired a disturbing invisibility—at least when it comes to the privileged. Only the lower castes invoke their affiliation in the political arena, to claim resources from the state. The upper castes discard such claims as backward, embarrassing, and unfair to those who have earned their position through hard work and talent. Focusing on a long history of debates surrounding access to engineering education, Subramanian argues that such defenses of merit are themselves expressions of caste privilege. The case of the IITs shows how this ideal of meritocracy serves the reproduction of inequality, ensuring that social stratification remains endemic to contemporary democracies.

The Making of a Left-Behind Class

The Making of a Left-Behind Class PDF Author: Fred Powell
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1447367944
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Despite the high aspirations of young people from disadvantaged communities, they face barriers that are frustrating the realisation of their educational ambitions. This book analyses the ‘left-behind’ phenomenon and explains how denied educational equality undermines social cohesion and what we can do about it.

The Meritocracy Myth

The Meritocracy Myth PDF Author: Stephen J. McNamee
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0742599779
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
The Meritocracy Myth challenges the widely held American belief in meritocracyOCothat people get out of the system what they put into it based on individual merit. Fully revised and updated throughout, the second edition includes compelling new case studies, such as the impact of social and cultural capital in the cases of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and new material on current topics such as the impact of the financial and credit crisis, intergenerational mobility, and the impact of racism and sexism. The Meritocracy Myth examines talent, attitude, work ethic, and character as elements of merit and evaluates the effect of non-merit factors such as social status, race, heritage, and wealth on meritocracy. A compelling book on an often-overlooked topic, first edition was highly regarded and proved a useful examination of this classic American ideal.

Two Cheers for Higher Education

Two Cheers for Higher Education PDF Author: Steven Brint
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691182663
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
Focusing on the years 1980-2015, Brint details the trajectory of American universities, which was influenced by evolving standards of disciplinary professionalism, market-driven partnerships, and the goal of social inclusion.

Against Meritocracy

Against Meritocracy PDF Author: Jo Littler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317496035
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
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.

Twilight of the Elites

Twilight of the Elites PDF Author: Christopher Hayes
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307720454
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Analyzes scandals in high-profile institutions, from Wall Street and the Catholic Church to corporate America and Major League Baseball, while evaluating how an elite American meritocracy rose throughout the past half-century before succumbing to unprecedented levels of corruption and failure. 75,000 first printing.