Discover Society

David Civil During the summer of 1957 the British sociologist Michael Young was holidaying on a beach in North Wales. He [...]

Kirsty Morrin It is now often forgotten that Michael Young’s The Rise of the Meritocracy deployed ‘meritocracy’ as a pejorative term. [...]

Anselma Gallinat At the conference ‘Merit or Meritocracy?’, which preceded this special issue, David Civil asked us what we would be [...]

Sam Shields There are differential patterns of access to higher education for men and women. More women than men are mature [...]

Geoff Payne Although ‘social mobility analysis’ is an established field of academic research, while ‘meritocracy studies’ is not, meritocracy and social [...]

Daniel Smith In The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870-2033, Young warned of a new aristocracy where individuals could rest assured that [...]

Tony Chapman When Michael Young wrote The Rise of the Meritocracy, it was acceptable in most political circles to adopt educational [...]

Jo Littler Why is the idea of meritocracy – the idea that society should be organised so that anyone can rise [...]