The Meritocracy Myth challenges the widely held American belief in meritocracy—that people get out of the system what they put into it based on individual merit. The book examines talent, attitude, work ethic, and character as elements of merit and evaluates the effect of nonmerit factors such as family background, social connections, luck, market conditions, unequal educational opportunities, and discrimination.
The fourth edition has been revised and streamlined throughout. It features new material on the current economic and political climate; the reasons behind the increasing levels of inequality in the United States and globally; how economic, social, and cultural factors shaped Donald Trump’s rise to political prominence, and more. The fourth edition includes a new chapter on marriage and mobility that examines how patterns in marriage tend to increase the concentration of wealth and pass on nonmerit advantages to children, furthering trends toward social inequality.
A compelling book on an often-overlooked topic, The Meritocracy Myth is ideal for introducing students to this provocative topic while sparking discussion and reflection.
Stephen J. McNamee is professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He wrote previous editions of The Meritocracy Myth with Robert K. Miller, Jr. (1949–2015), who was also a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
Table of Contents
1 The American Dream: Origins and Prospects 2 On Being Made of the Right Stuff: The Case for Merit 3 The Silver Spoon: Inheritance and the Staggered Start 4 It’s Not What You Know But . . .: Social and Cultural Capital 5 Making the Grade: Education and Mobility 6 I Did It My Way: The Decline of Self-Employment and the Ascent of Corporations 7 The Luck Factor: Being in the Right Place at the Right Time: 8 Mobility Through Marriage: The Cinderella Effect 9 An Unlevel Playing Field: Racism, Sexism, and Other Isms 10 Growing Inequality in the Twenty-First Century: What Can Be Done?
Grocery prices and the forsaken foods at the back of your fridge seem to increase
weekly. After reading American Wasteland, you will never look at your shopping list, refrigerator, plate, or wallet the same way again. Jonathan Bloom wades into ...
The extensively revised and updated edition of Steven Landsburg’s hugely popular book, The Armchair Economist—“a
delightful compendium of quotidian examples illustrating important economic and financial theories” (The Journal of Finance).In this revised and updated edition of Steven ...
This book seeks to better understand the intricate elements of Chinese education compared to American
education thus helping educators and policy makers to craft win-win decisions in the education encounter of the dragon and the eagle. Many educators are pulling ...
Stephanie Mc Clure and Cherise A. Harris’s Second Thoughts on Race in the United States:
Hoodies, Model Minorities, and Real Americans is an edited collection of short essays that address the most common misconceptions about race held by students (and ...
Among the many recent books on educational reform, Eugene E. Garcia's Hispanic Education in the
United States stands out as a landmark work. Garcia vibrantly portrays what works in creating better educational opportunities and effective school reform. He also offers ...
In recent years 'the New Institutionalism' has focused more on organizations in their social and
cultural environments than on societal-level institutional systems. Thus, missing from these studies has been a larger sociological analysis of institutions, per se. In his newest ...
Not-for-profit arts organizations struggled to survive the recent economic recession. In this increasingly hardscrabble environment,
it is absolutely imperative that the boards of these organizations function as energetically, creatively, and efficiently as possible. Michael M. Kaiser’s personal history with ...
