Cultural Capitalism Discussion Post

Please answer this question in 6-8 sentences.
Define cultural capital in your own words, and provide some examples of it from readings or from your own life (your experiences or examples from TV or social media). Why does cultural capital matter, according to sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu and Annette Lareau? How important do you think it is compared to other ways we define social class, such as income, wealth, and occupation?

Please write a persnal response to these 2 discussion posts in 4-6 sentences each

1.
Cultural Capital is the total amount of social resources a person has access to that may be used to further themselves up the “food chain”. This may be family connections, the location and environment the person grew up in, and experience. This capital is applied to every social class and is present in every class. An example of cultural capital in effect from my life is when I was working as an apprentice electrician at a decently sized family-run contractor. There was an air of fear regarding the discussion of wages between the workers due to an event that occurred in the past, where the Owner’s grandson found out he was being paid less than another, more skilled, worker. The grandson’s father made a massive deal out of this to the Owner, so they laid off the other worker. This clearly shows that cultural capital is incredibly important due to the fact that even though the other worker was more skilled and bringing more economic capital than the grandson who was only bringing in a fraction of that, the other non-family worker was laid off. Cultural capital is also realized during the job interview process, in Lareau’s paper it is described that those in lower-class families are trained to reward unfavorable characteristics in the middle class to the upper-class world such as standing out or eye contact. While those who grow up in those environments are natural at those skills.

2. Cultural capital is the resources people have excluding money, which can allow them to move up or down the class structure. Some resources are more valuable than others depending on the institution in which the person uses them. According to Bourdieu cultural capital is even more important than economic capital. Both Lareau and Bourdieu believe that a match or difference between cultural capital and powerful social institutions can play an important role in how inequality gets challenged or reproduced. This essentially means that both sociologists hold the belief that cultural capital can be a major factor in why a person winds up in a certain class. Personally, I agree with this belief, but I also think that income, wealth, and occupation influence class quite a bit as well.

Lareau’s paper Unequal Childhoods, Class, Race, and Family Life helps paint the picture of how cultural capital can affect a child’s life. This is especially true when it comes to the concerted cultivation of the middle class versus the accomplishment of natural growth of the working class. The middle class promotes concerted cultivation in which parents foster and address their children’s talents, opinions, and skills. This often results in a child who might have a greater vocabulary which can help them in school. Despite this, middle-class children also often have a sense of entitlement which makes them believe that they have the right to manage their interactions in institutional settings. This can be bad because children need to respect authority and understand that they are not the ones in charge. This sense of entitlement may give them an advantage in some institutions, but could also be a con in others, where those in charge need to be respected. Since a middle class parent is usually more involved in their childs education, this can give them another advantage to move up the ladder because they are already having their education and social skills fostered at home. This would allow them to make more educational conversations in the classroom. The working class promotes natural growth where parents sustain their child’s natural growth despite life changes. These children have more freedom than those of the middle class as their parents have less control. These children will often gain a sense of constraint where they are less likely to customize interactions to suit their preferences and they accept the actions of those in authority. This can be beneficial in an institution such as a school because the child will listen to the teacher more and will not argue with those in charge. Although this is advantageous in some institutions, it can be a disadvantage in an institution in which the child needs to advocate for themselves. Since the parent is usually less involved, the education of the child is mainly in the childs hands. With less encouragement from their parents the child has less incentive to do well in class. With less support and less education at home the child will have a tougher time in class as their education is already most-likely behind those of middle class children.

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