I don’t subscribe, but I’d love to talk more about “meritocracy" anyway :)
Last month while I was in NYC, I got into a fairly heated discussion with a Columbia professor. I was quite flustered. Although, I have pointed out diversity and inclusion issues in Meritocracies, I’d always been a believer in the ideal. A friend of mine said "Etymology isn't destiny”, which sums up my side of the argument. But this particular word, for which I cannot find a synonym, has started a bit of a flame war here in the space between social justice and technology. The term “meritocracy”, as much as we strive for the theoretical ideal, is quite problematic. Michael Young coined it in 1958 (is this true?), but it was meant as a dystopian warning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy When I spoke with Brook Manville a while back, he said that the Ancient Greeks used this system. What I didn’t consider at the time, however, is that in ancient Greece there were slaves and, of course, women. Neither of these groups could benefit from Greek meritocracy, so it wasn’t *really* a meritocracy. And this article briefly covers some of the key issues, particularly in tech. http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug/ I guess some of the questions are – can the Open Movement reclaim the word “meritocracy”? Should we even try? Is it tainted? How can we explain the difference between “our” meritocracies and the pervasive myths that people call "meritocracies”? —laura Laura Hilliger la...@zythepsary.com <mailto:la...@zythepsary.com> www.zythepsary.com <http://www.zythepsary.com/> @epilepticrabbit <http://twitter.com/#!/epilepticrabbit> > On Jul 12, 2016, at 7:09 PM, Bryan Behrenshausen <bbehr...@redhat.com> wrote: > > Hi all, > > Anyone else here subscribe to _The Hedgehog Review_? This month's issue > is on "Meritocracy and its Discontents," and seems like it would be of > great interest to many on the list. I've just begun reading it but would > love to talk more about the articles with anyone else who's gotten hold > of them. > > http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/index.php > > Bryan > > _______________________________________________ > Openorg-list mailing list > Openorg-list@redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/openorg-list
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