Abstract
This chapter reflects on cultural capital. I argue that while the concept has proved especially effective in describing differential patterns of cultural taste and their association with particular social groups, it is ultimately more important to attend to the way in which it operates as an asset for the transmission of privilege. This depends more than is commonly acknowledged upon the institutional framework or environment rather than the strategies of individuals. Sociological analysis should therefore carefully examine institutional change in order to estimate how goods, activities and orientations in the cultural sphere contribute to the perpetuation of intergenerational privilege. The chapter proceeds in four steps. First, I comment on the evolution of the applications of the concept. Second, I review Bourdieu’s account of the forms of capital and types of cultural capital. Third, I address themes of legitimate culture, the omnivorous orientation and new or ‘emerging’ content of cultural capital. And, finally, I explore tentatively the mechanics of the transmission of privilege through cultural competence.
A draft of this chapter was prepared and presented to a workshop, ‘New Forms of Distinction’, at the London School of Economics in September 2013.
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Notes
- 1.
Sallaz and Zavisca (2007) record its penetration finally into American sociology in the later 1990s and the subsequent breadth of its application.
- 2.
If the family remains the basic social unit, classes can be considered as an aggregate or network of families with similar assets and experiences.
- 3.
Note that there seems to be no greater moral value than that which impels parents to seek to ensure the worldly success and comparative advantage of their own children (in the UK, Labour cabinet ministers set an example).
- 4.
- 5.
This may be very important. Ethnic minorities often get qualifications but fail to achieve social positions commensurate with their expertise. In Britain scientists and engineers have lacked some of the cultural qualifications for entry into the Establishment. Aristocracies tried to maintain exclusion in relation to an ascendant bourgeoisie, exploiting the great benefit of free time for those sufficiently privileged not to have to take paid employment.
- 6.
Generally, I agree with Will Atkinson (2011) that the Bourdieusian framework is the best general framework currently to hand—it is at least good enough—and that it is therefore worth working through its deficiencies or limitations to clarify the elements of the concept which make it useful for an understanding of social inequality and social justice.
- 7.
Nor did he explore many of the opportunities or options himself.
- 8.
However, social networks might perhaps be considered as the objectified forms of social capital and perhaps one might say that they are instituted (through association membership, clubs, informal coordination of friendship networks). One supposes that symbolic capital might usefully be registered in such terms, but the distinction seems to have no relevance to economic capital.
- 9.
One question is whether accent is a modality of cultural (or a linguistic, but not an informational, not a social, embodied or objectified) capital. Another might be whether comportment would normally be considered embodied, and clothing objectified.
- 10.
Lamont (1992) is a fine example of how this can be done methodologically.
- 11.
Support for this observation hangs heavily on the changing role of classical music in elite portfolios, not immediately unreasonable given Peterson and Kern’s (1996) initial operationalisation of the omnivore syndrome.
- 12.
Peterson is not especially interested in social justice, and certainly not in the transmissibility of taste. He is examining the current distribution of tastes and acknowledges the association of taste with social prestige. But he is not politically critical of the consequences.
- 13.
Only at Baccalaureate, further, and higher education levels is the formal educational curriculum international.
- 14.
Although it is difficult to imagine why the state would subsidise or sponsor cultural activities which were other than precious, this may still be an instance of the state apparatus operating in the interests of the dominant class.
- 15.
In relation to particular topics or items they felt forced, reluctantly, to admit to lack of knowledge or competence.
- 16.
I would caution against the replacement rather than the refinement of the omnivore thesis on the basis of the current state of knowledge; better to try to explain the institutional conditions for the rise of omnivorousness than to try to deny the fact, which Fishman and Lizardo (2013: 214) describe as ‘the most well-documented empirical generalization in the sociology of cultural taste’.
- 17.
There is no claim that this is not also applied to high culture.
- 18.
However, High Culture was not nation-centric but rather pan-European in origin. Perhaps cosmopolitanism might be a move for greater distinction of an elite within the category of omnivores, a label signifying disputes between fractions of the dominant class, although whether that would be the move of a younger generation belonging to the high cultural capital wing or the high economic capital group within the dominant class I could not be sure.
- 19.
The retreat of arts and humanities does not necessarily entail that a substitute will be forthcoming.
- 20.
It proves difficult to give examples of the specific content of emerging cultural capital, i.e. beyond orientations or attitudes like ‘distanced and ironic attitude’ or ‘so-called cosmopolitan attitudes and preferences’ (Prieur and Savage 2013: 257, 263). Among the rather few specific examples cited are: ‘“hip” or hipster’ culture; perhaps ‘world music, jazz, bhangra and reggae’ (Savage 2016: 102, 113); Normcore clothing, access to attractive women, Western brands, visual items (Friedman et al. 2015); ‘a “good” sense of humour’ (Friedman 2015: 167).
- 21.
Of course this generation might create new forms of consecrated markers, but the institutional mechanisms that might be likely to promote rap and video games as universal circulating medium of cultural value seem far from clear.
- 22.
But I’m not so sure about elocution. One of the most telling means to distinguish continuity and disruption is to examine the strategies of parents and their investments in out-of-school activities. My expectation, unsupported by any evidence, would be that they are not doing much that is different in 2013 than in 1973, although a greater awareness of the uneven performance of different schools and universities in relation to lifetime economic prospects may be consequential, and perhaps the out-of-school activities supported may, as well as being more varied, carry a different emphasis.
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Warde, A. (2017). Reassessing Cultural Capital. In: Consumption. Consumption and Public Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55682-0_7
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