What We Mean by the American Dream
Stories We Tell about Meritocracy
by Doron Taussig
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Pub Date Apr 15 2021 | Archive Date May 14 2021
Cornell University Press | ILR Press
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Description
Doron Taussig invites us to question the American Dream. Did you earn what you have? Did everyone else?
The American Dream is built on the idea that Americans end up roughly where we deserve to be in our working lives based on our efforts and abilities; in other words, the United States is supposed to be a meritocracy. When Americans think and talk about our lives, we grapple with this idea, asking how a person got to where he or she is and whether he or she earned it. In What We Mean by the American Dream, Taussig tries to find out how we answer those questions.
Weaving together interviews with Americans from many walks of life—as well as stories told in the US media about prominent figures from politics, sports, and business—What We Mean by the American Dream investigates how we think about whether an individual deserves an opportunity, job, termination, paycheck, or fortune. Taussig looks into the fabric of American life to explore how various people, including dairy farmers, police officers, dancers, teachers, computer technicians, students, store clerks, the unemployed, homemakers, and even drug dealers got to where they are today and whether they earned it or not.
Taussig's frank assessment of the state of the US workforce and its dreams allows him to truly and meaningfully ask the question that underpins so many of our political debates and personal frustrations: Did you earn it? By doing so, he sheds new light on what we mean by—and how we can deliver on—the American Dream of today.
Advance Praise
"Doron Taussig's new What We Mean by The American Dream comes right on time. As millions in the U.S. fall into financial and social precarity for reasons not of their own doing, we can be blinded to its consequences because of our national ethos of "meritocracy". With rigor but in conversant prose, Taussig looks to unravel the tangle of contradictions bound up with the presumptions of meritocracy in the United States. Taussig is less concern with debunking the idea than thoroughly interrogating and complicating the premise. Illuminated by dozens of interviews, witty and incisive writing, Taussig opens an empathic window into American life, despite the implicit harshness implied with the meritocratic assumption that we get what we deserve in this country."
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of Race for Profit
"Taussig's lively and fascinating book uses original interviews to excavate the meanings of the American Dream. What stories are told about meritocracy —and do they challenge or reproduce inequality? This book's key contribution is to push back on the fundamental premise of meritocracy: that we deserve what we get."
Jo Littler, author of Against Meritocracy
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781501754685 |
| PRICE | $26.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 192 |
