lecture slides (draft)

1. Meritocracy, austerity and ‘poverty
porn’
#mac201
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2. Overview
 Meritocracy and a critique
 Austerity and poverty porn
 The new common sense
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3. Meritocracy
 Power should be vested in individuals according to merit
 Intellect
 Rewarded on the basis of effort, not association
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4. 4
‘essentially a meritocracy for the middle classes, not yet a meritocracy
for all’ - YouGov June 2013

5. Critique
 Meritocracy gives the impression that social mobility is
possible
 Fosters a sense of entitlement within the educated elites
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6. Sutton Trust (2012)
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The type of school top people attended
Number %
Independent 3404 44
Grammar 2032 27
Secondary Modern 111 1
Comprehensive 746 10
Other State School 743 10
Direct Grant (pre-
601 8
1976)
Total 7637 100

7. Sutton Trust (2012)
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Rank School No. of leading people
1 Eton College 330
2 Winchester College 92
3 Charterhouse School 74
4 Rugby School 71
5 Westminster School 69
6 Marlborough School 65
7 Dulwich College 58
8= Harrow School 57
8= St Paul’s Boys’ School 57
10 Wellington College 56

8. ‘Truly shocking’
 The “affluent middle class”
dominated “every single sphere of
British influence” and that “hard
graft” was not enough in today's
society for state school educated
pupils to reach the “upper echelons
of power
 Sir John Major, The Independent, 2013
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9. Fetishisation of meritocratic belief
 Equality of opportunity, when combined with gross
inequality of outcome, is the worst possible recipe for a
harmonious society. It engenders in the successful a
sense that they have earned what they get, which
transposes remorselessly into a desire to expand still
further their share of the national cake…
 David Lipsey, 2014: 37
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10. Fetishisation of meritocratic belief
 Meanwhile, the unsuccessful believe that it is their fault
that they are poor (as opposed to being the fault of ill
birth or bad luck) and so feel the weight of moral as well
as of material failure. Such a society will be prone to all
the diseases of human discontent: crime, jealousy,
fracture, civil discord and even civil strife. It is therefore
surprising that equality of opportunity is today the central
creed of all three of Britain’s main national political
parties
 David Lipsey, 2014: 37
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11. Austerity
 The Scheme (BBC 1, May 2010-11)
 People Like Us (BBC 3, Feb 2013)
 Skint (Channel 4, May 2013)
 Nick and Margaret: We All Pay For
Your Benefits (BBC 1, Jul 2013)
 Benefits Britain 1949 (Channel 4,
Aug 2013)
 How To Get A Council House
(Channel 4, Aug 2013)*
 On Benefits and Proud (Channel 5,
Oct 2013)
 Britain on the Fiddle (BBC, Nov
2013)
 Christmas on Benefits (BBC3, Dec
2013)
 Benefits Street (Channel 4, Jan
2014)
 The Big Benefits Row: Live (Channel
5, Feb 2014)
 Panorama: Don't Cap My Benefits
(BBC1, Apr 2014)
 Gypsies on Benefits and Proud
(Channel 5, Apr 2014)
 Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole
(Channel 5, Jun 2014
 The Housing Enforcers (BBC 2, Sep
2014)
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12. ‘Maternal TV’ (Tyler 2011)
 Supernanny (Channel 4,
2004)
 One Born Every Minute
(Channel 4,2010)
 Baby Borrowers (BBC 3, 2007)
 Help! I’m a Teen Mum (ITV,
2007)
 Kizzy:Mum at 14 (BBC 3,
2007),
 The Trouble with Girls: Three
Girls and Three Babies (BBC
3, 2009)
 Teen High Mum (BBC 3,
2009)
 Kimberley: Young Mum 10
Years On (Channel 4, 2009)
 18 Pregnant Schoolgirls (BBC
3, 2009)
 Pregnancy: My Big Decision
(BBC 3, 2009)
 Young Mum’s Mansion (BBC
3, 2009)
 Pramface Babies (ITV, 2009)
 Underage and Pregnant
(BBC 3, 2010)
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13. Poverty porn
 2013 was the year when public debate about the
welfare state apparently exploded - in the form of a new
genre of television which has been tagged 'poverty
porn'. In July, and as part of its The Cost of Living season,
the BBC broadcast We Pay Your Benefits (BBC 1, 2013), a
programme which invited four 'taxpayers' to analyse the
spending habits of four 'welfare claimants' in order to
assess whether the current rates of unemployment
support are too high.
 Jenner, 2014: 1
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14. Benefits Britain 1949
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15. On Benefits and Proud
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16. Gypsies on Benefits and Proud
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17. Britain on the Fiddle
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18. People Like Us
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19. Poverty porn
 Disproportionate depiction of working class life
 ‘sink estates’
 feckless
 workshy
 lazy
 hand-outs
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20. Borrows from documentary…
 the use of hand-held cameras
 'fly-on the wall' camera angles
 the employment of non-actors and,
 an improvised, unscripted, low-budget
'authenticity’
 Tyler, 2011
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21.  'these kinds of reality TV programmes
have none of the aspirations of longer
standing socially critical and politicized
traditions of British documentary film and
television’
 Tyler, 2013: 145
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22.  ‘an unfair depiction of what it is really like to grow up
poor in twenty first century Britain, with meritocratic ideas
providing an ideological smokescreen for the real
inequalities that characterise contemporary society’
 McCarthy, 2014
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23.  ‘the very idea of meritocracy itself does embitter the
perception that people with higher natural ability are
worth more both financially and socially than those who
do not have the same talents’
 McCarthy, 2014
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24. The new common sense
 Pierre Bourdieu
 ‘doxa’
 ‘that which goes without saying
because it comes without saying’
(1972: 167)
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25. The new common sense
 The role of ‘the mugger’ became
a racially coded figure: something
against which social anxieties
regarding youth, urban spaces and
social control could be projected
 Hall et al, 1978
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26. The new common sense
 Figures like 'the mugger' are essential at times of crisis,
when new formations of 'commonsense' are condensing.
The figure of the mugger and repetitions of mugger
discourse, across news media, courtrooms, public
commentary, everyday conversation, gossip and other
formal and official sites of disquiet, came to solidify a new
'commonsense' consensus around authoritative policing.
 Jenner, 2014
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27. Emma Cooper, 2013
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28. Missing something?
 Hearing the TV executives responsible for shows such as
Skint and Nick and Margaret: We all pay your benefits
discuss the people featured in their programmes only
served to reinforce how people in poverty are objectified
on TV for the gratification of others. The absence on the
panel (and in the audience) of any of the people they
were talking about was conspicuous
 Abigail Scott Paul, 2014
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29. Skint
 4 million viewers
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30. Summary
 2 dominant discourses today: the UK as meritocracy and
the position of the benefits scrounger.
 Both of these discourses are deeply flawed as they fail to
address widespread prejudices and systemic failings of
the neoliberal promises made by proponents of free
market capitalism.
 Instead, in the pursuit of a soft target, we’re at risk of
creating a society in which victim-blaming is the norm.
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31. Sources
 Kim Allen, Imogen Tyler and Sara De Benedictis (2014) 'Thinking with 'White Dee': The Gender Politics of "Austerity
Porn"', Sociological Research Online, Vol 19 (3), 2, http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/3/2.html
 Bourdieu, Pierre(1972) Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 Hall, S, Critcher, C, Jefferson, T, Clarke, J And Roberts, B (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and
Order, London: MacMillan.
 Jensen, Tracey (2014) ‘Welfare Commonsense, Poverty Porn and Doxosophy’, Sociological Research Online, 19 (3),
3 http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/3/3.html
 Lipsy, David (2014) ‘The Meretriciousness of Meritocracy’, The Political Quarterly, Vol. 85, No. 1, January–March 2014
 McCarthy, Charlotte (2014) ‘From ‘People Like Us’ to ‘Kids Like Me’: How does poverty porn affect working class
youth?’, Social Action & Research Foundation, http://www.the-sarf.org.uk/from-people-like-us-to-kids-like-me-how-does-
poverty-porn-affect-working-class-youth/
 Tyler, Imogen (2011), 'Pramface girls: the class politics of 'maternal TV', in Helen Wood and Beverley Skeggs (eds.),
 Reality Television and Class, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p.210-24. [draft version here .pdf]
 Tyler, Imogen (2013), Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection & Resistance in Neoliberal Britain. London: Zed Books.
 Bev Skeggs & Helen Wood (2012) Reacting to Reality Television, Oxon/New York: Routledge.
 The Sutton Trust (2012) ‘The Educational Backgrounds of the Nation’s Leading People’,
http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/TOP-People-report-final.pdf
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