What about merit in meritocracy?
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2023-05-19
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en
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The meritocratic ideology has a solid foundation in popular thinking about justice. The widespread and attractive belief that people deserve to enjoy unequal incomes depending on their talents and how hard they work finds support in public opinion and the political realm. Yet there has been a rising current of critique in the academic domain: John Rawls (1999) and Michael Sandel (2020) reject the notion that a just society distributes income and wealth based on what people deserve. They argue that an individual cannot claim to deserve the benefits (or burdens) that derive from their talents and skills for two reasons: first, being born with a certain talent is a matter of luck rather than desert, and secondly, living in a society that happens to consider ones particular talent valuable is also not something for which an individual can claim credit. Thereafter, both Rawls and Sandel propose modifications for the meritocratic ideal, yet neither of them proves to be successful in overcoming the tyranny of merit. According to feminists and critical race theorists, this is mainly due to the fact that both Rawls and Sandel fail to deconstruct the standard of merit. As a result, they overlook the fact that merit essentially is a socially-constructed notion, rather than a neutral and objective criterion. By failing to take this into account, Rawls and Sandel fail to adequately address the heart of the problem.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen