Cultural capital
In the field of sociology, cultural capital comprises the social assets of a person that promote social mobility in a stratified society. Cultural capital functions as a social relation within an economy of practices, and includes the accumulated cultural knowledge that confers social status and power; thus cultural capital comprises the material and symbolic goods, without distinction, that society considers rare and worth seeking. There are three types of cultural capital: embodied capital, objectified capital, and institutionalised capital.
Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron coined and defined the term cultural capital in the essay "Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction". Bourdieu then developed the concept in the essay "The Forms of Capital" and in the book The State Nobility: Élite Schools in the Field of Power to explain that the education of a person provides social mobility in achieving a higher social status in society.
Origin
In "Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction", Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron presented cultural capital to conceptually explain the differences among the levels of performance and academic achievement of children within the educational system of France in the 1960s.Bourdieu further developed the concept in his essay "The Forms of Capital" and in his book The State Nobility: Élite Schools in the Field of Power. In the essay, Bourdieu lists cultural capital among two other categories of capital: economic capital, which refers to the command of economic resources ; and social capital, which is the actual and potential resources linked to the possession of a durable network of institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition.
Types
There are three types of cultural capital: embodied capital; objectified capital; and institutionalised capital.Embodied cultural capital
Embodied cultural capital comprises the knowledge that is consciously acquired and passively inherited, by socialization to culture and tradition. Unlike property, cultural capital is not transmissible, but is acquired over time, as it is impressed upon the person's habitus, which, in turn, becomes more receptive to similar cultural influences. Linguistic cultural capital is the mastery of language and its relations. The embodied cultural capital, which is a person's means of communication and self-presentation, is acquired from the national culture.Habitus and field
The cultural capital of an individual is linked to their habitus and field, which are configured as a social-relation structure.The habitus of a person is composed of the intellectual dispositions inculcated to him or her by family and the familial environment, and are manifested according to the nature of the person. As such, the social formation of a person's habitus is influenced by family, by objective changes in social class, and by social interactions with other people in daily life; moreover, the habitus of a person also changes when he or she changes social positions within the field.
The field is the place of social position that is constituted by the conflicts that occur when social groups endeavour to establish and define what is cultural capital, within a given social space; therefore, depending upon the social field, one type of cultural capital can simultaneously be legitimate and illegitimate. In that way, the legitimization of a type of cultural capital can be arbitrary and derived from symbolic capital.
Objectified cultural capital
Objectified cultural capital comprises the person's property that can be transmitted for economic profit and for symbolically conveying the possession of cultural capital facilitated by owning such things. Yet, whilst possessing a work of art the person can consume the art only with the proper conceptual and historical foundations of prior cultural-capital. As such, cultural capital is not transmitted in the sale of the work of art, except by coincidental and independent causation, when the seller explains the artwork's significance to the buyer.Institutionalized cultural capital
Institutionalized cultural capital comprises an institution's formal recognition of a person's cultural capital, usually academic credentials or professional qualifications. The greatest social role of institutionalized cultural-capital is in the labor market, wherein it allows the expression of the person's array of cultural capital as qualitative and quantitative measurements. The institutional recognition facilitates the conversion of cultural capital into economic capital, by serving as a heuristic with which the seller can describe their cultural capital to the buyer.Theoretical research
The concept of cultural capital has received widespread attention all around the world, from theorists and researchers alike. It is mostly employed in relation to the education system, but on the odd occasion has been used or developed in other discourses. Use of Bourdieu's cultural capital can be broken up into a number of basic categories. First, are those who explore the theory as a possible means of explanation or employ it as the framework for their research. Second, are those who build on or expand Bourdieu's theory. Finally, there are those who attempt to disprove Bourdieu's findings or to discount them in favour of an alternative theory. The majority of these works deal with Bourdieu's theory in relation to education, only a small number apply his theory to other instances of inequality in society.Expansion
A number of works expand Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital in a beneficial manner, without deviating from Bourdieu's framework of the different forms of capital. In fact, these authors can be seen to explore unarticulated areas of Bourdieu's theory as opposed to constructing a new theory.One creative modification of Bourdieu's work is that of Emirbayer & Williams, who use Bourdieu's notion of fields and capital to examine the power relations in the field of social services, particularly homeless shelters. The authors talk of the two separate fields that operate in the same geographic location and the types of capital that are legitimate and valued in each. Specifically they show how homeless people can possess "staff-sanctioned capital" or "client-sanctioned capital" and show how in the shelter, they are both at the same time, desirable and undesirable, valued and disparaged, depending on which of the two fields they are operating in. Although the authors do not clearly define staff-sanctioned and client-sanctioned capital as cultural capital, and state that usually the resources that form these two capitals are gathered from a person's life as opposed to their family, it can be seen how Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital can be a valuable theory in analysing inequality in any social setting.
On the other hand, some have introduced new variables into Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital. The work of Emmison & Frow centers on an exploration of the ability of Information Technology to be considered a form of cultural capital. The authors state that "a familiarity with, and a positive disposition towards the use of bourgeoisie technologies of the information age can be seen as an additional form of cultural capital bestowing advantage on those families that possess them." Specifically computers are "machines" that form a type of objectified cultural capital, and the ability to use them is an embodied type of cultural capital. This work is useful because it shows the ways in which Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital can be expanded and updated to include cultural goods and practices which are progressively more important in determining achievement both in the school and without.
Dolby cites the work of Hage, who uses Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital to explore multiculturalism and racism in Australia. Hage's discussion around race is distinct from Bourdieu's treatment of migrants and their amount of linguistic capital and habitus. Hage actually conceives of "whiteness" as being a form of cultural capital. 'White' is not a stable, biologically determined trait, but a "shifting set of social practices." He conceptualizes the nation as a circular field, with the hierarchy moving from the powerful center to the less powerful periphery. The 'others' however are not simply dominated, but are forced to compete with each other for a place closer to the centre. This use of Bourdieu's notion of capital and fields is extremely illuminating to understand how people of non-Anglo ethnicities may try and exchange the cultural capital of their ethnic background with that of 'whiteness' to gain a higher position in the hierarchy. It is especially useful to see it in these terms as it exposes the arbitrary nature of what is "Australian", and how it is determined by those in the dominant position. In a path-breaking study, Bauder uses the notions of habitus and cultural capital to explain the situation of migrants in the labor market and society.
Bourdieu's theory has been expanded to reflect modern forms of cultural capital. For instance, studies conducted by Asaf Nissenbaum and Limor Shifman on the topic of internet memes, utilising the website 4chan to analyse how these memes can be seen as forms of cultural capital. Discourse demonstrates the different forums and mediums that memes can be expressed through, such as different 'boards' on 4chan. Additionally, scholars have extended Bourdieu's theory to the field of religion where embodied cultural capital allows middle classes for developing distinctive religious styles and tastes. Through these styles and tastes, they draw symbolic class boundaries in opposition to co-believers from lower-class backgrounds.