Cultural Capital

Embodied Capital

In its most fundamental form, cultural capital is “linked to the body,” partly unconscious and acquired early on in life. Individuals must often exert effort to incorporate it. In his description of embodied cultural capital, Bourdieu borrowed a related concept, “habitus.” Habitus can be understood as culturally learned performances that take the form of taken-for-granted bodily practices, ways of thinking, dispositions, or taste preferences. Embodied capital includes such things as manners, habits, physical skills, and styles that are so habitually enacted as to be virtually invisible. Embodied capital enacts values and tendencies socialized from one's cultural history that literally become part of the individual. Knowledge itself, Bourdieu suggested, is actively constructed as habitus, influenced by individual cultural history, and available to be mobilized by experiences in everyday life.

Objectified Capital

Things or possessions owned or acquired by people are objectified capital, but the objectified form of cultural capital cannot be understood without acknowledging its relationship to embodied capital and habitus. This form of capital is not of the body but rather lies outside of the body. The concept is similar to the Marxist or economist concept of capital: things that can be used, exchanged, or invested and may provide an advantage in societal interactions. Individual persons are not the only possessors of objectified capital. Social institutions and social systems acquire objectified capital that affects their value and social status, for example, the built environment of schools and the social networks and connections of students, faculty, and alumni. Objectified capital operates to maximize benefits in a wide variety of social situations.

Institutionalized Capital

Institutionalized cultural capital manifests as academic qualifications that recognize and legitimate the embodied and objectified forms of cultural capital possessed by a person. Institutionally sanctioned capital implies what Bourdieu called “cultural competence.” Therefore, persons possessing academic qualifications can be compared and exchanged, and monetary value can be placed on their qualifications. Bourdieu asserted that the value of institutionalized cultural capital is determined only in relation to the labor market, where the exchange value of cultural capital is made explicit.

Cultural Capital and Societal Consequences

In all its forms cultural capital is an accumulation of resources that cannot be acquired as instantaneously as economic capital. Resources acquired over time can, theoretically, be mobilized and invested to gain an advantage in various fields. Fields, or social contexts, in Bourdieu's use of the term, are complex and fluid institutions, customs, and social rules. Depending on the field in which one is operating, the value of the person's cultural capital changes. The social issues where the concept of cultural capital is helpful include social class, education, inequality, power, and exclusion.

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