Cultural capital

In a field of sociology, cultural capital comprises the social assets of a grown-up education, intellect, sort of speech, category of dress, etc. that promote social mobility in a stratified society. Cultural capital functions as a social relation within an economy of practices i.e. system of exchange, & includes the accumulated cultural knowledge that confers social status in addition to power; thus cultural capital comprises the the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object and symbolic goods, without distinction, that society considers rare and worth seeking. There are three types of cultural capital: i embodied capital, ii objectified capital, and iii institutionalised capital.

Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron coined and defined the term cultural capital in the essay "Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction" 1977. Bourdieu then developed the concept in the essay "The Forms of Capital" 1985 and in the book The State Nobility: Élite Schools in the Field of Power 1996 to explain that the education cognition and intellectual skills of a adult provides social mobility in achieving a higher social status in society.

Criticism

Criticisms of Bourdieu's concept create been delivered on numerous grounds, including a lack of conceptual clarity. Perhaps due to this lack of clarity, researchers earn operationalised the concept in diverse ways, and have varied in their conclusions. While some researchers may be criticised for using measures of cultural capital which focus only onaspects of 'highbrow' culture, this is a criticism which could also be leveled at Bourdieu's own work. Several studies have attempted to vary the measurement of cultural capital in structure to analyse which aspects of middle-class culture actually have benefit in the education system.

It has been claimed that Bourdieu's theory, and in particular his theory of habitus, is entirely deterministic, leaving no place for individual agency or even individual consciousness. However, Bourdieu never claimed to have done so entirely, but defined a new approach; that is, Bourdieu's work attempts to reconcile the paradoxical dichotomy of configuration and agency.

Some scholars such(a) as John Goldthorpe dismiss Bourdieu's approach:

Bourdieu's conception of the transmission of cultural capital as a key process in social reproduction is simply wrong. And the more detailed findings of the research, as intended above, could then have been taken as helping to explain just why it is for wrong. That is, because differing classes conditions do non dispense rise to such(a) distinctive and abiding forms of habitus as Bourdieu would suppose; because even within more disadvantaged classes, with little access to high culture, values favouring education may still prevail and perhaps some applicable cultural resources exist; and because, therefore, schools and other educational institutions can function as important agencies of re-socialisation – that is, can non only underwrite but also in various respects complement, compensate for or indeed counter family influences in the instituting and transmission of "cultural capital", and not just in the case of Wunderkinder but in fact on a mass scale.

Bourdieu has also been criticised for his lack of consideration of gender. Kanter in Robinson & Garnier 1986 points out the lack of interest in gender inequalities in the labour market in Bourdieu's work. However, Bourdieu addressed the topic of gender head-on in his 2001 book Masculine Domination, in which he states on the number one page of the prelude that he considers masculine domination to be a prime example of symbolic violence.