Jo Littler
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jolittler.bsky.social
Jo Littler
@jolittler.bsky.social
Social / cultural / political / media analysis
Prof @Goldsmiths @MediaComGold.bsky.social
📕📗: Left Feminisms, Care Manifesto, Against Meritocracy, Politics of Heritage
#firstgen
All views socially & culturally constructed.
Pinned
Out now: my new article ‘Model Minority Authoritarianism: Social Mobility and the New Anti-Equality Agenda’ in South Atlantic Quarterly @dukepress.bsky.social (1/9) read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlant...
Model Minority Authoritarianism: Social Mobility and the New Anti-equality Agenda
This article puts forward a cultural‐political formation it terms “model minority authoritarianism.” The idea of the model minority has both been venerated as the virtuous face of immigration and/or n...
read.dukeupress.edu
Reposted by Jo Littler
November 5, 2025 at 2:41 AM
Reposted by Jo Littler
UNTIL IT’S DONE, Ep. 5: Vito Marcantonio

There are many who dismiss our vision for New York as impossible. To them, I say we need look only to our past for proof of how we can shape the future.

Tomorrow is Election Day. And this is the final Until It's Done of our campaign.
November 4, 2025 at 4:14 AM
Reposted by Jo Littler
We are presenting the most cited articles in the International Journal of Cultural Studies in the last three years. This week's article is “An anatomy of carewashing: Corporate branding and the commodification of care during Covid-19”, authored by Andreas Chatzidakis and Jo Littler.
October 29, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Reposted by Jo Littler
“Forget about the polls. Go into the last eight days of this election assuming you are five points behind.”

You heard the man: zohranfornyc.com/gotv
October 27, 2025 at 12:27 AM
Reposted by Jo Littler
📅 Save the Date:

🎥 POWER, REPRESENTATION, RESISTANCE.
Feminist Media Studies at 50: A Workshop with Leading Scholars 
Hannah Curran-Troop, Rosalind Gill, @jolittler.bsky.social & @lennartspion.bsky.social

🗓 Nov 7, 2025 | 🕙 10:00–12:00
📍 JFKI, Room 203 

registration: https://f.mtr.cool/frmeigfsqh
October 24, 2025 at 8:02 AM
Reposted by Jo Littler
We're facing a political emergency: a high likelihood of an shamelessly authoritarian government in 2029. So we urgently need this basic safeguard: a codified constitution.
This week's column explains what we're missing and why it's so important.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
We must act now: without a written constitution, Reform UK will have carte blanche to toxify our nation | Goerge Monbiot
It means breaking with hundreds of years of tradition, but it can’t wait. As hard-right figures spread division and laud autocrats, a fail-safe is vital, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
www.theguardian.com
October 23, 2025 at 6:44 AM
Here’s an interview I did for the S Korean newspaper @hankyoreh.bsky.social on meritocracy, authoritarianism etc in preparation for the event tomorrow on futures of democracy

english.hani.co.kr/arti/english...
[Interview] Politics of care as an antidote to divisions caused by meritocracy
Asia Future Forum: Next Democracy | Jo Littler of The Care Collective discusses how merit has been used to sow fear and assault democracy
english.hani.co.kr
October 22, 2025 at 12:36 AM
Reposted by Jo Littler
Thrilled to see the announcement for our new journal, Feminism and Organization, I will be co-editing with @profalisonpullen.bsky.social, and a legion of superb feminists around the globe everyone would be honoured to work with: bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/new-journal-... @bupjournals.bsky.social
Bristol University Press
bristoluniversitypress.co.uk
July 21, 2025 at 10:23 AM
Reposted by Jo Littler
With my local MP Rachel Maskell now suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party, now is a great time to revisit her extraordinary speech from two weeks ago against the PIP cuts which she describes as Dickensian and cruelly immiserating the community she had sworn to protect.
Labour MP Rachael Maskell close to tears as she 'pleads' with the government to abandon planned welfare cuts

'These Dickensian cuts belong to a different era and a different party', she said

How on earth has it come to this?
July 16, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Reposted by Jo Littler
What a wonderful degree show opening yesterday...!

It's on all weekend and open to all, so come and see the fantastic student work in film, documentary, sreen fiction, audio, animation, journalism, promotional media, scriptwriting, creative writing, photography...

www.goldsmithsmediashow.com
June 20, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Reposted by Jo Littler
Harriet Tubman #quilt by my Mom, Vera P. Hall, who makes quilts celebrating Black people who fought for their own freedom. This seems to be the crowd favorite of the “We Didn’t Wait for Freedom” series. Happy #Juneteenth #quilting
June 19, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Reposted by Jo Littler
My new article in @city-journal.bsky.social argues for a critical understanding of the meritocratic ideal among urban researchers. In particular, it explores the consequences of how this ideal is reproduced in stigmatised neighbourhoods:
doi.org/10.1080/1360.... @lsemethodology.bsky.social
Meritocracy from below: dreams, divisions, and the struggle for merit in a stigmatised neighbourhood
The ideal of a meritocratic society continues to exert significant normative power in political and public discourse, including in discussions about marginalised spaces and neighbourhoods. However,...
doi.org
June 18, 2025 at 7:58 AM
Reposted by Jo Littler
🚨Amiel & Melburn Lecture 2025

A special panel discussion on 'Resisting the rise of the Radical Right' with @zarahsultana.bsky.social, Costas Douzinas, Rob Topinka, @kojokoram.bsky.social, @irrnews.bsky.social, @afoggyplace.bsky.social

🗓️Wed 2 July
🕠17:30PM
📍Birkbeck University

INFO & REGISTER 👇
Annual Lecture 2025: Resisting the rise of the radical right - Barry Amiel & Norman Melburn Trust
Join us on Wednesday 2 July 2025 with Costas Douzinas, Liz Fekete, Rob Topinka, Zarah Sultana MP and Kojo Koram. Chaired by Esther Leslie.
amielandmelburn.org.uk
May 28, 2025 at 4:30 PM
“Blue Labour rhetoric likes to imagine that everyone in the UK who isn’t a blue-haired postgraduate is a churchgoing industrial worker, desperate to turn back the clock on multiculturalism and trans rights.”
May 24, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by Jo Littler
Missed this last month: welcome evidence that somebody in the Democrats has a clue about digital politics (and recognition that in the US as in the UK liberal, progressive and left political groups are still about a decade behind. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/o...
Opinion | I Worked for Harris and Biden. Here’s the Missing Link for Democrats.
www.nytimes.com
May 22, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Jo Littler
Highlight of my day/week: Hearing @jolittler.bsky.social talk about inequality, including highlights from her 2017 book, "Against Meritocracy".
The talk was so provocative, thought-provoking and inspiring that I now have an immense amount of thinking and reading to do now. Wonderful feeling.
May 21, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Reposted by Jo Littler
We are the people who Wipe Your A**es! 🏥

@GaryYounge reflects on his Mother’s experience in the NHS as an Immigrant Worker… @nadinewrites1.bsky.social

🎧 Listen To The Full Episode - linktr.ee/overthetopun... (LINK IN BIO) 🔗

This episode is sponsored by @powertochange.org.uk
May 16, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Reposted by Jo Littler
an excellent discussion with @jolittler.bsky.social about the myth of meritocracy, with hugely quotable pearls such as: "threads of truth within this
quilt blanket of mystification". I recently got Jo Litter's brilliant book Against meritocracy #openaccess here: www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mon...
May 20, 2025 at 11:08 AM
Reposted by Jo Littler
Trying to get my head round how this could make it to print. Many warning signs for all of us
This was just posted by @tbretc.bsky.social on another platform. The Chicago Sun-Times obviously gets ChatGPT to write a ‘summer reads’ feature almost entirely made up of real authors but completely fake books. What are we coming to?
May 20, 2025 at 11:26 AM
Reposted by Jo Littler
As people die from deliberately induced famine in Gaza, this food is likely to be destroyed
(Reuters) - Food rations that could supply 3.5 million people for a month are mouldering in warehouses around the world because of U.S. aid cuts and risk becoming unusable, according to five people familiar with the situation.

www.reuters.com/world/us-aid...
Exclusive: US aid cuts leave food for millions mouldering in storage
The food stocks have been stuck inside four U.S. government warehouses since the Trump administration's decision in January to cut global aid programs.
www.reuters.com
May 17, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Jo Littler
5 yrs after the publication of The Care Manifesto, the Care Collective - incl Catherine Rottenberg + @jolittler.bsky.social, both @goldsmithsuol.bsky.social - reflect on post-pandemic systematic 'care-stripping' across the political stage:
@versobooks.bsky.social

www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/...
Care-stripping: Beyond the Pretence of Care
Five years ago, we published The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence. It was a small volume that provided a large overview of what we described as the ‘structural carelessness’ of our worl...
www.versobooks.com
May 20, 2025 at 8:51 AM
Reposted by Jo Littler
What does #sociology have to say about #gender and #class in 2025?
Is academic life any easier for working-class women than it was three decades ago?

📺 WATCH Bev Skeggs, @jolittler.bsky.social and @michaelacbenson.bsky.social in the first of our new Conversations series.

buff.ly/x6b6rzi
May 20, 2025 at 7:01 AM
Reposted by Jo Littler
Instead of trying to outdo one another with more racist policymaking, we need a government with the courage to address the real problems of skyrocketing poverty and our crumbling national services.
May 12, 2025 at 1:32 PM
Reposted by Jo Littler
I wrote a thing about why 'cultural' class analysis is badly equipped for challenging the cosplaying of working class culture by the far right & why working class formations are best conceptualised as multi-status.

Part of a great SI on Beverley Skeggs' work: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Against culture? Class analysis, strategic essentialism and methodological nationalism after Beverley Skeggs’ Formations of Class and Gender - Simone Varriale, 2025
Beverley Skeggs’ first book (Formations of Class and Gender [FoC&G]) has been central to the study of class and culture, pushing it towards a more sustained con...
journals.sagepub.com
March 4, 2025 at 10:22 AM