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Concept
Cultural capital
Summary
In the field of sociology, cultural capital comprises the social assets of a person (education, intellect, style of speech, style 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), 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: (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 (knowledge and intellectual skills) of a person provides social mobility in achieving a higher social status in society.
In "Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction" (1977), 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" (1985) and in his book The State Nobility: Élite Schools in the Field of Power (1996). In the essay, Bourdieu lists cultural capital among two other categories of capital: economic capital, which refers to the command of economic resources (money, assets, property); 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.
There are three types of cultural capital: embodied capital; objectified capital; and institutionalised capital.
Official source
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