‘We can Get Everything We Want if We Try Hard’: Young People, Celebrity, Hard Work

Heather Mendick; Kim Allen; Laura Harvey

doi:10.1080/00071005.2014.1002382

‘We can Get Everything We Want if We Try Hard’: Young People, Celebrity, Hard Work

Heather Mendick, Kim Allen, Laura Harvey

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Drawing on 24 group interviews on celebrity with 148 students aged 14–17 across six schools, we show that ‘hard work’ is valued by young people in England. We argue that we should not simply celebrate this investment in hard work. While it opens up successful subjectivities to previously excluded groups, it reproduces neoliberal meritocratic discourses and class and gender distinctions.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	161-178
Number of pages	18
Journal	British Journal of Educational Studies
Volume	63
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2014.1002382
Publication status	Published - 17 Feb 2015

Bibliographical note

© 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2014.1002382
http://www.tandfonline.com

Keywords

celebrity
effortless achievement
gender
hard work
neoliberalism
social class

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10.1080/00071005.2014.1002382Licence: CC BY

We can Get Everything We Want if We Try Hard Young People Celebrity Hard WorkFinal published version, 431 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "{\textquoteleft}We can Get Everything We Want if We Try Hard{\textquoteright}: Young People, Celebrity, Hard Work",

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‘We can Get Everything We Want if We Try Hard’: Young People, Celebrity, Hard Work

Abstract

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Keywords

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