Abstract:
Meritocracy has been asserted as a principle of justice or criticized as an ideology from different approaches that focus on certain aspects of modernity and capitalism. This study aims to reconstruct the concept of merit by relying on its context of emergence and the development of forms of labor organization within capitalism, especially described following historical and sociological labor research. For this, this study discusses the most common critiques of meritocracy and the meanings of the idea of merit in three distinct dimensions: combating privileges, individual performance, and merit based on results. This study reflects on the importance of grounding the critique of meritocracy not only in its categorical denial as a neoliberal ideology but also based on social research surrounding the labor structure to attempt to reconstruct its conditioning factors in a society of peripheral capitalism such as Brazil.
Keywords:
Meritocracy; Merit; Critique of Ideology; Labor Structure