Work on stratification beliefs expects disadvantaged individuals to believe less strongly in meritocracy because they are more likely to observe structural barriers to opportunity, and because meritocratic ideology runs counter to their self-interest. If they embrace meritocracy, they are understood as victims of a system-justifying ideology. By conceptualising belief formation as a cultural process, I argue that meritocracy belief among the disadvantaged may simply be pragmatic, rather than irrational. I use a narrative identity lens to analyse interviews with forty-one Singaporean youth, arguing that in the absence of other forms of capital, socioeconomically disadvantaged youth draw on narratives of meritocracy and family responsibility to construct agentic selves, telling stories in which they achieve success by relying on the chief resource available to them—themselves. These stories implicitly carry individualistic analyses of inequality, and serve as durable lenses through which disadvantaged youth interpret the successes and failures of those around them. Overall, a narrative lens pushes us to ask what cultural tools are available and useful to individuals in particular settings, and cautions against exporting assumptions about members of a social category beyond the context in which they were developed.

分层信念的研究预计弱势群体对精英政治的信念不那么强烈，因为他们更有可能观察到机会的结构性障碍，而且精英意识形态与他们的自身利益背道而驰。如果他们拥护精英统治，他们就会被理解为制度正当化意识形态的受害者。通过将信仰形成概念化为一种文化过程，我认为弱势群体中的精英信仰可能只是务实的，而不是非理性的。我使用叙事身份视角来分析对 41 名新加坡青年的采访，认为在缺乏其他形式资本的情况下，社会经济上处于不利地位的青年利用精英管理和家庭责任的叙事来构建代理自我，讲述他们依靠可用的主要资源（他们自己）取得成功的故事。这些故事隐含着对不平等的个人主义分析，并成为弱势青年解读周围人的成功和失败的持久镜头。总体而言，叙事视角促使我们询问在特定环境下哪些文化工具对个人可用且有用，并警告不要将有关社会类别成员的假设输出到其发展背景之外。