{"id":8,"date":"2018-10-16T11:32:21","date_gmt":"2018-10-16T10:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/?p=8"},"modified":"2018-10-16T14:08:59","modified_gmt":"2018-10-16T13:08:59","slug":"merit-or-meritocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/2018\/10\/16\/merit-or-meritocracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Merit or meritocracy?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in April colleagues in Imagining Pasts and Futures organised a one-day conference reflecting on the idea of meritocracy 60 years after Michael Young published <a href=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/0\/0c\/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy_%281967_cover%29.jpg\">the book<\/a> that put the term into wide circulation. With guest speakers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.city.ac.uk\/people\/academics\/jo-littler\">Jo Littler<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lancaster.ac.uk\/educational-research\/about-us\/people\/nicola-ingram\">Nicola Ingram<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglia.ac.uk\/arts-law-and-social-sciences\/department-of-humanities-and-social-sciences\/staff\/daniel-smith\">Daniel Smith<\/a> we explored meritocracy as ideology and discourse; merit as a social quality and value; the concept of meritocracy in relation to education, policy and work;\u00a0the history of the idea in sociology and politics; and the kinds of futures that the idea of meritocracy does and does not make imaginable.<\/p>\n<p>Discussions at the event were stimulating, interesting &#8211; and sometimes challenging.<\/p>\n<p>We are delighted to announce that one outcome of that event is a special issue of the online journal <a href=\"https:\/\/discoversociety.org\/2018\/10\/02\/focus-merit-and-meritocracy\/\">Discover Society<\/a>. It was a pleasure working with colleagues from Newcastle (Geoff Payne, Ruth Graham, Anselma Gallinat and Angus McVittie &#8211; well done Angus on a first publication! &#8211; and Lisa Garforth in Sociology; Samantha Shields in ECLS; and an honorary shout to Kirsty Morrin, UG at Newcastle not that many years ago\u00a0and now lecturing at Liverpool) and beyond to produce this wide-ranging, critical, reflective and above all readable set of short articles. <a href=\"https:\/\/discoversociety.org\/2018\/10\/02\/focus-merit-and-meritocracy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">We encourage you to read and enjoy!<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Thanks to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britsoc.co.uk\/groups\/study-groups\/education-study-group\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BSA Sociology of Education Study Group<\/a> for helping us with the April event.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in April colleagues in Imagining Pasts and Futures organised a one-day conference reflecting on the idea of meritocracy 60 years after Michael Young published the book that put the term into wide circulation. With guest speakers Jo Littler, Nicola &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/2018\/10\/16\/merit-or-meritocracy\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7558,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7558"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/11"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/pastsandfutures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}