Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Cultural and Media Policy Studies News and Events

 

Show all news items

CCPS Research Seminar: Mediating Elitism

All are warmly invited to attend this term's CCPS Research seminar, from Dr. Jo Littler of City Univeristy.

Jo will be presenting and discussing a paper entitled "Kind parents, luxurious winners and normcore plutocrats: the mediated popularisation of ‘meritocratic’ elitism". Abstract and bio below

The session will be on Wednesday May 11th at 5pm to 6.30 in G50 of Millburn House. We'll be providing light refreshments, so please e-mail p.watkins@warwick.ac.uk if you plan to attend.

Kind parents, luxurious winners and normcore plutocrats: the mediated popularisation of ‘meritocratic’ elitism

The exponential rise of the superrich and the widening gap between rich and poor over the past few decades has been extensively documented (Dorling 2014, Freeland 2012, Mizruchi 2013, Piketty 2013, Sayer 2016) and is increasingly well publicised (Oxfam 2016). This extent of such social inequality has been made possible by a range of factors: the financialised commodification of debt, the weakening of regulation designed to protect citizens from the extremities of the ‘free’ market, the passing of laws increasing the wealth of the already-rich, and the expansion of marketization into areas previously not for for sale -- whether we call these processes ‘neoliberalism’, ‘primitive accumulation’ or some altogether more catchy term (Brown 2015; Hall et al 2014; Klein 2007; Foucault 2010).

This paper considers the question of how in this context plutocratic elites use specific ideas of meritocracy to maintain, reproduce and extend their privilege. It does so by identifying particular motifs themes deployed in the mediated presentation of the super-rich and characterising them as social types. These are: first, the ‘normcore plutocrat’, when elites are presented as ‘just like us’; second, the ‘kind parent’, when they look imperiously after the needs of society; and third, the ‘luxurious winner’, when they flaunt material excess. The paper traces these mediated motifs across a range of media, considering examples such as the rehabilitation of the royal family, changes in CEO culture, Rich Kids of Instagram, Annie, Downton Abbey and The King’s Speech. Analysing these mediated social types in relation to changes in both the demographics of the international superrich and to the fluctuating meanings of ‘meritocracy’, the paper concludes by situating the specificity of the normcore plutocrat and friends in a longer historical perspective and in relation to previous moments of capitalist crisis.

Jo Littler is Reader in Cultural Industries in the Department of Sociology, City University London. Her books include Radical Consumption? (2008) and with Roshi Naidoo The Politics of Heritage: The legacies of ‘race’ (2005). She is part of the Editorial Collective for Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture and is currently trying to finish writing a book called Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power and Myths of Mobility.

Tue 26 Apr 2016, 14:23 | Tags: Research Seminars Events Faculty of Arts