Cultural Capital

From Geography

If we want to understand the concept of cultural capital we must know the origin of it. The founder of the concept cultural capital is Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist who was born in Paris in 1930 and died in 2002.

Pierre Bourdieu thought that the acts from individuals aren’t just determined by something as abstract as society (structure), but he also disagrees with the idea that human activity by individuals can completely emerge by itself (agency). He thinks it’s a combination of it and therefore tries to find a compromise by saying that human activity is partly determined by structures and partly by choice.

Power

Pierre Bourdieu develops his line of thought by raising the issue of power. There are a lot of different fields in society in which a continues power struggle is going on. For instance: politics, arts and science. In each field specific rules apply to which everyone has to comply. Pierre Bourdieu is inspired by the German sociologist Max Weber who invented the stratification theory.

Cultural capital

If you want to have influence (power) in a particular field you need capital. According to Pierre Bourdieu capital corresponds to structural principes that appear if there is interaction in many social spaces between different actors. This also describes which abilities the actors obtain from the structural conditions in their situations.

According to Pierre Bourdieu there are multiple forms of capital. The most important forms are economic capital, social capital and cultural capital. The forms of capital ... are only partly interchangeable among one another (Lippuner & Werlen, 2009, p. 47).

Cultural capital contains knowledge and skills, that are linked to each other by education . Furthermore it contains all sorts of competences of dealing with semantic and signs. These skills together provide us with the ability to participate in different language games and to fulfill the corresponding expectations. Actors in each field develop a habitus, a sort of thinking and acting through which they can maintain their position in the field. This habitus is shaped by the interplay of individuals and then structured in order to gain more influence through the action of the actor.

References:

Werlen, B. (2009) Everyday Regionalizations. In: International Encyclopedia for Human Geography. Elsevier.

Campbell, T. (1981) Seven Theories of Human Society. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Chapter 8: Max Weber: An Action Theory. pp. 169-189.

• Published by Ingram Smit (s4091841) & Henkjan van Maanen (s4069048)

• Page enhanced by Lieke Vogels - 19 october 2012