Meritocracy,social mobility and a new form of class domination |
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| Authors: | Jin Jin Stephen J Ball |
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| Institution: | 1. Faculty of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China;2. jjin@dedu.ecnu.edu.cn;4. Department of Education, Practice and Society, UCL Institute of Education, London, UK |
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| Abstract: | ABSTRACTMeritocracy 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. |
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| Keywords: | meritocracy social mobility Bourdieu working-class students at elite universities China |
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