{"title":"Merit and ressentiment: How to tackle the tyranny of merit","authors":"J. Mijs","doi":"10.1177/14778785221106837","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"My contribution to this special issue engages with Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Meritocracy and its significance to the academic conversation about meritocracy and its discontents. Specifically, I highlight Sandel’s diagnosis of the rise of populism and his proposed remedy for the ‘tyranny of merit’. First, building on Menno ter Braak’s writings on the rise of fascism, I explore the sources of ressentiment in contemporary societies as stemming not from disillusionment with meritocracy but from the broken promise of liberalism and democracy more generally. Second, I consider Sandel’s proposals to reform elite university admissions and to ‘recognize work’, explore their wider applicability, and reflect on their limitations to meaningfully change how success and failure is socially experienced and morally understood.","PeriodicalId":46679,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Research in Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Theory and Research in Education","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14778785221106837","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
My contribution to this special issue engages with Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Meritocracy and its significance to the academic conversation about meritocracy and its discontents. Specifically, I highlight Sandel’s diagnosis of the rise of populism and his proposed remedy for the ‘tyranny of merit’. First, building on Menno ter Braak’s writings on the rise of fascism, I explore the sources of ressentiment in contemporary societies as stemming not from disillusionment with meritocracy but from the broken promise of liberalism and democracy more generally. Second, I consider Sandel’s proposals to reform elite university admissions and to ‘recognize work’, explore their wider applicability, and reflect on their limitations to meaningfully change how success and failure is socially experienced and morally understood.
我对本期特刊的贡献涉及迈克尔·桑德尔的《精英政治的暴政》及其对精英政治及其不满的学术对话的意义。具体来说,我强调桑德尔对民粹主义兴起的诊断,以及他提出的对“功绩暴政”的补救措施。首先,在Menno ter Braak关于法西斯主义兴起的著作的基础上,我探索了当代社会中的压迫源,这些压迫源于对精英政治的幻灭,而不是对自由主义和民主的普遍承诺的破灭。其次,我考虑桑德尔的建议,即改革精英大学招生制度,“承认工作”,探索其更广泛的适用性,并反思其局限性,以有意义地改变社会经验和道德理解成功与失败的方式。
期刊介绍:
Theory and Research in Education, formerly known as The School Field, is an international peer reviewed journal that publishes theoretical, empirical and conjectural papers contributing to the development of educational theory, policy and practice.