Ecuadorian higher education policy combines the constitutional recognition of education as a right with admission rules that allocate scarce quotas through academic background, evaluations, and affirmative action measures. The objective of this article is to determine under what conditions meritocratic admission fulfills a legitimate allocative function and under which it becomes a judgment about the intellectual value of the applicants. A conceptual analysis is employed: Jacques Rancière's concepts of explanatory order, dumbness, intellectual emancipation, and equality of intelligences are placed in dialogue with meritocracy research, with the current regulatory framework, and with the available evidence on unequal access in Ecuador. The analysis distinguishes three propositions that are often confused: that applicants differ in their demonstrated preparation, that institutions should assign limited quotas, and that the resulting ordering reveals unequal intelligences. Only the first two are necessary to admit; the third is an inference that the framework allows to be questioned. Four conditions are specified: semantic totalization, interpretative monopoly, temporal fixation, and public circulation of the verdict under which an assignative procedure becomes part of an explanatory order, and it is shown that they are separable from assignment and therefore institutionally modifiable. Five rights-oriented design principles are proposed, with their stated foundation. It is concluded that a defensible alternative is not selection without standards, but selection that limits the meaning attributed to its instruments and identifies testable directions for future empirical research.
Legal challenges to affirmative action in college admissions practices are on the rise, in the US and elsewhere. Defenders of the practice tend to point to affirmative action’s efficacy as a means of creating more equal societies, or to the political motivations of those who would stop it. This article takes a different approach. It argues that college admissions procedures are a cultural practice of adjudication, and as such share key attributes with other cultural practices of adjudication, such as sporting and musical competitions. The articles advocates for analogous thinking between these different adjudication sites as a way to understand affirmative action as fundamentally fair. It draws comparisons between affirmative action in college admissions and mechanisms for fair competition in two ‘serious leisure’ sites: crown green bowling competitions, and brass band contests. In so doing, the article argues that affirmative action is not a radical proposition, but one deeply embedded in everyday ideas about fairness.
چالش‌های حقوقی علیه اقدام مثبت در رویه‌های پذیرش دانشگاه‌ها در ایالات متحده و سایر کشورها رو به افزایش است. مدافعان این رویه معمولاً به اثربخشی اقدام مثبت به عنوان ابزاری برای ایجاد جوامع برابرتر یا انگیزه‌های سیاسی مخالفان آن اشاره می‌کنند. این مقاله رویکردی متفاوت اتخاذ می‌کند. استدلال می‌کند که رویه‌های پذیرش دانشگاهی یک کنش فرهنگی داوری هستند و از این رو ویژگی‌های کلیدی مشترکی با سایر کنش‌های فرهنگی داوری، مانند رقابت‌های ورزشی و موسیقیایی دارند. مقاله بر لزوم تفکر قیاسی میان این حوزه‌های مختلف داوری تأکید می‌کند تا اقدام مثبت را به عنوان امری اساساً عادلانه درک کند. این مقاله با مقایسه اقدام مثبت در پذیرش دانشگاهی و سازوکارهای رقابت منصفانه در دو حوزه «تفریح جدی» شامل مسابقات بولینگ کرون گرین و رقابت‌های گروه‌های موسیقی برنجی، استدلال می‌کند که اقدام مثبت نه یک پیشنهاد رادیکال، بلکه عمیقاً ریشه‌دار در ایده‌های روزمره درباره عدالت است.
