Cultural Capital

Status Marker

Cultural capital is displayed through an individual's language (verbal and body), including syntax and vocabulary, and the myriad distinctions individuals make in their lives, including claims to what is humorous, beautiful, appropriate, and tasteful and what are enjoyable experiences. Bourdieu suggested that the “distinctions” individuals make in life reflect social class and work to reproduce the social order. Social capital, or the networks individuals have that will enable access to sought-after privilege and power, and economic capital will strongly mediate how individuals understand themselves in the world.

For instance, an individual who comes from an established wealthy family will have a set of experiences and mannerisms shared by others of that social class. Weekends for this individual may involve the “high arts,” and vacations may be taken abroad. The people with whom he or she interacts have a shared understanding of the structure of the interaction, and myriad shared distinctions that are made in the course of a variety of interactions will feel like “common sense.” The social networks and experiences of individuals from lower economic classes are likely to be vastly different, according to this perspective. An individual from a lower economic class may travel abroad or attend an opera, yet this individual will have differing social capital and will make sense of the experiences from a different habitus.

Bourdieu spoke of the habitus as the internalized structuring dispositions that helps individuals experience aspects of their life as “common sense” or as unfamiliar. When people from different social classes interact with one another, each may feel strained by the unfa-miliarity of the other. When a person attempts to move in a social class beyond the reaches of what the [Page 360]habitus deems “common sense” and comfortable, this individual will begin to feel discomfort and will have to consciously negotiate the interaction through a set of recently discovered (rather than internalized) rules. In this case, Bourdieu suggests the individual will likely be discovered as a “passer”; the habitus will belie the person's conscious attempts to fit into another social class.

The “reading” of cultural capital is subtle and often unconscious in the context of social interaction, and yet, it is through the process of these interactions that social classes are recreated, scholars say. For example, if an individual claims to be college educated (a sign of status) and then uses “good” when grammar would dictate “well,” those with more language skill will suspect that person of “passing.” In other words, the claimant does not have the cultural capital to back his or her claims of social status. Someone of an upper class would learn appropriate usage as a child. While that person may not be able to explain the rule that guides appropriate usage, his or her ear will be able to hear when the rule has been violated. The sensibilities, internalized (habitus), guide individuals' sense of belonging, status, and affinity toward others.

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