Buy new:

£22.93

£7.98 delivery 15 - 24 February. Details

Select delivery location

Usually dispatched within 7 to 8 days

££22.93 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Dispatches from

vizkBooks

Dispatches from

vizkBooks

Sold by

vizkBooks

Sold by

vizkBooks

Returns

Returnable within 30 days of receipt

Returns

Returnable within 30 days of receipt

Item can be returned in original condition for a full refund within 30 days of receipt unless seller’s return policy specifies more favourable return conditions. For seller’s return policy click on seller's name located in the "Sold by" section.

Read full Amazon return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

Follow the author

James Bloodworth

Follow

The Myth of Meritocracy: Why Working Class Kids Still Get Working Class Jobs (Provocations) by James Bloodworth (2016-05-16) Hardcover – 1 Jan. 1853

by James Bloodworth (Author)

4.3 219 ratings

Part of: Provocations (22 books)

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"£22.93","priceAmount":22.93,"currencySymbol":"£","integerValue":"22","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"93","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"HwfAtX1F2l4qmPbbImEeRQ7rco44spILb%2BsahL%2BWj3uxmn6F14%2FEBe1rO9N63MCZtL6gLUiVljZ2LlvJt0HxHg7k%2BgrZUg3dsT5lFKGTEK3aOjrra9ZDUoFc9K5MIDrreC9yinkP0lYQILkgmRlh0iAL3BlQFF55%2F0KXh2sSBCSyhz3fNxjlqKLE4BxY5Iqt","locale":"en-GB","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

Part of series

Provocations
Publisher

Biteback Publishing
Publication date

1 Jan. 1853
See all details

Mike Savage
223
Mass Market Paperback
43 offers from £1.12
Sam Friedman
173
Paperback
18 offers from £7.00
Owen Jones
1,425
Paperback
29 offers from £3.73
Daniel Markovits
504
Paperback
32 offers from £5.87
Claire Fox
55
Hardcover
25 offers from £5.21
Adrian Wooldridge
285
Paperback
27 offers from £9.99

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01K3JM7LW
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Biteback Publishing (1 Jan. 1853)

Customer reviews:
4.3 219 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

James Bloodworth

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

James Bloodworth is an English writer and the author of two books, The Myth of Meritocracy and Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain. His work has appeared in the Times, the Guardian, the New York Review of Books, the New Statesman and elsewhere. He is on Twitter as @J_Bloodworth and Instagram: James.Bloodworth

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5

219 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Reviews with images

See all photos

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from United Kingdom

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Miles Plastic

'Education, education, education'? Blow it out your arse.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 October 2016

Verified Purchase

A painful, accurate summary of Britain, but nothing I didn't already know; Britain is a vicious, cynical and hostile place. If I was a rich swine I could caper around the Malvern hills and listen to Elgar all day. One of the central arguments of the book is that those who come from better off backgrounds have a head start and are much more likely to be successful in life, which from my experience is all too true. Bloodworth makes frequent reference to Mike Savage's book 'Social Class in the 21st century' which outlines the superior economic, cultural and social advantages of the more well off. The money, social contacts and perceived cultural superiority of these people give them a huge advantage in life. This on its own reveals the meritocratic idea of a level playing field for anyone prepared to put in the effort for the fraud that it is. I do know of relatively affluent people like this and they all without exception have the smugness and arrogance that comes from their awareness of the possession of these advantages. I don't resent their advantages, but all too often they like to parade a phoney social conscience in front of people which borders on the obscene. Do their advantages play on their conscience, or do they harbour a false desire to 'give something back'? Either way this country would be better off without the whole worthless lot of them. I hate them all and would like to put them to death. I'd be doing a public service.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

tallmanbaby

a compelling read, but would benefit from a little more polish

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 June 2016

Verified Purchase

This is a short series of polemical essays around the theme of meritocracy. Although they are all by the same author, I am not entirely sure that there is a consistent message over the piece, so perhaps better to consider each separately.

It opens with a questionable statement, that politicians seldom talk about reducing inequality, when I would have thought that plenty of politicians were forever talking about reducing inequality. However it is bang up to date, peppered with press stories, academic and left wing writings, written with real gusto and enthusiasm.There is no doubting where the author’s sympathies lie, and the book is all the better for it.

My reservations are that often you need to read a sentence a few times to follow its meaning. A few more redrafts could have produced a far stronger final version. A more sociological/anthropological view would also have been useful. Quite rightly most people’s aspirations are to end up with a similar sort of job to their parents', living in a similar sort of place. Most people do not want the upheaval of radical social mobility.

10 people found this helpful

Helpful

CameronJB

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 July 2016

Verified Purchase

As a 19 year old student, I recommend this to anyone interested in current affairs. The book was highly thought-provoking and very timely; it was interesting to consider the questions raised in this book in relation to the current challenges facing the Labour/Tory Party of the U.K. and European political parties more broadly.

The book was very easy to read. Each chapter had a clear theme but collectively, the chapters read as one and the book flowed nicely. In terms of references, I liked the way the author weaved into the book core theories/texts (e.g. the Bell Curve) without inundating the reader with an overwhelming amount of statistics.

I particularly liked the chapter regarding grammar schools; I attended a state grammar school myself and was fed the romanticism about how they foster social mobility and help working-class kids. In reality, most people in my year had been privately tutored to pass the entrance exam and one boy I know was tutored for almost 3 years! Thus, personally, I can relate to the ideas the author discusses.

Overall, a fantastic read and I look forward to quoting this text in my future University essays (maybe even my dissertation, who knows). Hopefully James will write more books in the future.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Arthur Koestler

Monotony Writ Large

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 June 2016

Verified Purchase

James Bloodworth’s new book The Myth of Meritocracy, though claiming to be a polemic resembles much more closely an extended and dower lamentation, lacking any central argument or dynamic, being instead a work of description instead of active ‘provocation’.

The book though stylistically readable and the points it wishes to make done comprehensively and convincingly enough, one can’t help but thinking that we’ve heard all of the contents before, in some statistical variation or another. Can anyone really claim to be ignorant of the central message, that education is vital for social mobility and yet private schools grant overwhelming advantages to their pupils and even good comprehensive and grammar schools are unfairly exploited by wily middle class parents? This point is made relentlessly throughout the piece, in a fashion somewhat ad nauseam. However any solutions to these problems are sadly not forthcoming and we can only hope that we might find them in his next explosive work of provocation.

Neither are there any extensive or thought provoking explanations as to why British state run education is in such a sorry state of affairs. Bloodworth is yet another socialist who refuses to seriously wrestle with the problem of nearly 150 years’ worth of state control of education producing such dismal results, under Conservative and Labour government alike. Why after so much public money has been spent do we still have a stubborn rate of nearing 20% functional illiteracy? Is it just another state run project that needs more funds and more time to succeed or are there other dynamics at work?

Does Bloodworth have any thoughts to offer us on the alchemy that seems to take place behind the doors of those private schools that he seems to despise so much and why it’s similarly lacking in the state sector? Or equally if the award winning state run systems in countries like Finland do so well, why can’t we seem to replicate them in the UK? How would Bloodworth fix our education system, that this author knows first-hand, is characterised not by academic excellence but instead by immense bureaucracy in service of delivering a ‘post-modern’ educational experience? (whatever that’s meant to be).

In addition to all of the above does Bloodworth have any thoughts on the wider social influences that effect the underperformance of working class children and what role the welfare state and government intervention has played in exacerbating them? A key example being his complaint that the nation is divided by homeownership and the inequality that it entrenches. And it’s hard not to find oneself in violent agreement with him on this point, but can’t he see that exorbitant house prices are the product of overbearing government planning and regulations? Correctly identifying the symptom, does his loyalty to the noble socialist endeavour blind him from seeing the state as the problem and the free market as its solution?

If Bloodworth does have any answers to these questions then he is certainly doing a good job of keeping his cards close to his chest. However what is more likely is that he is simply engaged in something not too similar to what Marx once chided as the work of the bourgeois historian, being mesmerized and in Bloodworth’s case horribly indignant about superficialities and little else besides.

What's more is that all of this is couched within a rather ambivalent and anaemically pursued murmur of an ideological dissent from the idea that a meritocracy even on its own terms would be desirable. In a vague and fabulously uninspiring note of conclusion Bloodworth says that, ‘There ought to be no shame in not wanting to compete or in being found to lack the requisite ‘merit’ to do so.’. Once again he doesn’t care to give any explanation or development of what his position really is with regards to this curious statement, however what is clear is that Bloodworth seems uncomfortable with the principle that individuals should be granted the rights to live, trade and operate in a free and open society. The immense collective wealth that is generated through the operation of the free market characteristically receiving no mention, Bloodworth instead rallies to the defence of those who would wish to constrain the rights of the successful to liberty and freedom, in order to placate the bitter sentiments of those who haven’t performed as well.

A man of few words with regards to critical instruction or interpretation, Bloodworth’s style of provocation has not the qualities of a bang but a whimper.

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Music Stream millions of songs	AbeBooks Books, art & collectables	ACX Audiobook Publishing Made Easy	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services

Audible Download Audiobooks	Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations	Amazon Home Services Experienced pros Happiness Guarantee	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities

Kindle Direct Publishing Indie Digital & Print Publishing Made Easy	Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands	Amazon Warehouse Deep Discounts Open-Box Products	Amazon Business Service for business customers

	Whole Foods Market We Believe in Real Food

Buy new:

£22.93

Image Unavailable

Follow the author

The Myth of Meritocracy: Why Working Class Kids Still Get Working Class Jobs (Provocations) by James Bloodworth (2016-05-16) Hardcover – 1 Jan. 1853

Purchase options and add-ons

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Product details

About the author

James Bloodworth

Customer reviews

Reviews with images

Top reviews from United Kingdom

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Buy new: £22.93

Follow the author

The Myth of Meritocracy: Why Working Class Kids Still Get Working Class Jobs (Provocations) by James Bloodworth (2016-05-16) Hardcover – 1 Jan. 1853

Purchase options and add-ons

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Product details

About the author

James Bloodworth

Customer reviews

Reviews with images

Top reviews from United Kingdom

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Buy new:

£22.93