Cultural Capital
Elliot B. Weininger
SUNY College at Brockport
eweining@brockport.edu
Annette Lareau
University of Maryland, College Park
alareau@socy.umd.edu
Word Count: 2,268 (incl. references)
The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, working with various colleagues, developed the
concept of cultural capital in the early 1960s in order to help address a particular empirical
problem—namely, the fact that “[e]conomic obstacles are not sufficient to explain” disparities in
the educational attainment of children from different social classes (Bourdieu & Passeron 1979
[1964], 8). Bourdieu argued that, above and beyond economic factors, “cultural habits
and…dispositions inherited from” the family are fundamentally important to school success
(Bourdieu & Passeron 1979 [1964],14). In doing so, he broke sharply with traditional
sociological conceptions of culture, which tended to view it primarily as a source of shared
norms and values, or as a vehicle of collective expression. Instead, Bourdieu maintained that
culture shares many of the properties that are characteristic of economic capital. In particular, he
asserted that cultural “habits and dispositions” comprise a resource capable of generating
“profits”; they are potentially subject to monopolization by individuals and groups; and, under
appropriate conditions, they can be transmitted from one generation to the next (Lareau and
Weininger 2003).
As the originator of the concept of cultural capital, Bourdieu was notoriously disinclined
to elaborate the meaning and significance of concepts outside of the concrete context offered by
empirical research. At the most general level, however, he emphasized that any “competence”
becomes a capital insofar as it facilitates of appropriation a society’s “cultural heritage” but is
unequally distributed, thereby creating opportunities for “exclusive advantages”. In societies
characterized by a highly differentiated social structure and a system of formal education,
Bourdieu further asserted, these “advantages” largely stem from the institutionalization of
“criteria of evaluation” in schools—that is, standards of assessment—which are favorable to
children from a particular class or classes (Bourdieu 1977).
Bourdieu further argued that cultural capital exists in three distinct forms (1986). In its
“embodied” form, cultural capital is a “competence” or skill that cannot be separated from its
“bearer” (that is, the person who “holds” it). As such, the acquisition of cultural capital
necessarily presupposes the investment of time devoted to learning and/or training. For example,
a college student who studies art history has gained a competence which, because it is highly
valued in some institutional settings, becomes an embodied form of cultural capital.
Additionally, Bourdieu suggests that the objects themselves may function as a form of cultural
capital, insofar as their use or consumption presupposes a certain amount of embodied cultural
capital. For example, a philosophy text is an “objectified” form of cultural capital since it
requires prior training in philosophy to understand. Finally, in societies with a system of formal
education, cultural capital exists in an “institutionalized” form. This is to say that when the
school certifies individuals’ competencies and skills by issuing credentials, their embodied
cultural capital takes on an objective value. Thus, for example, since persons with the same
credentials have a roughly equivalent worth on the labor market, educational degrees can be seen
to be a distinct form of cultural capital. Because they render individuals interchangeable in this
fashion, Bourdieu suggests that institutionalization performs a function for cultural capital
analogous to that performed by money in the case of economic capital.
Nevertheless, despite the similarities between cultural and economic capital, Bourdieu
also recognized that they differ from one another in important respects. In particular, he noted
that the legitimation of inequality in cultural capital occurs in a manner that is highly distinct
from the legitimation of economic inequality. Despite the fact that cultural capital is acquired in
the home and the school via exposure to a given set of cultural practices—and therefore has a
social origin—it is liable to be perceived as inborn “talent,” and its holder “gifted,” as a result of
the fact that it is embodied in particular individuals. Moreover, because the school system
transforms “inherited” cultural capital into “scholastic” cultural capital, the latter is predisposed
to appear as an individual “achievement.” For example, scholars have demonstrated that middleclass
parents typically talk more to infants and young children than do working-class or poor
parents. As a result, middle-class children often have larger vocabularies when they enter
school, and subsequently score more highly on standardized tests measuring verbal skills (Hart
and Risley 1999; Lareau 2003). Nevertheless, teachers, parents, and students themselves are
likely to interpret the differences in test scores as a matter of natural talent or individual effort.
Bourdieu’s arguments concerning cultural capital were notable because they vociferously
challenged the widespread view of modern schooling as a mobility engine that promotes or
demotes people through the class structure simply on the basis of their talents and efforts.
Indeed, from Bourdieu’s highly critical vantage point, modern systems of schooling are far more
adept at validating and augmenting cultural capital inherited from the family than they are at
instilling it in children who enter the institution with few or none of the requisite dispositions and
skills. Consequently, he maintained, the educational systems of modern societies tend to channel
individuals towards class destinations that largely (but not wholly) mirror their class origins.
Moreover, they tend to elicit acceptance of this outcome (i.e. legitimation), both from those who
are most privileged by it and those who are disfavored by it (Bourdieu & Passeron 1977 [1970]).
The concept of cultural capital also had tremendous impact in sociology because it placed
culture at the core of stratification research. Bourdieu’s subsequent work used the notion of
cultural capital to further reinforce the premise that culture is directly implicated in social
inequality. This is especially apparent in the thoroughgoing re-conceptualization of social class
that he presented in Distinction (1984 [1979]; Weininger 2005). For Bourdieu, classes are
differentiated from one another in terms of the overall volume of capital (economic plus cultural)
controlled by individuals or families. Within classes, “class fractions” are differentiated from
one another by the composition of the capital controlled—or in other words, by the ratio of
economic capital to cultural capital. Using this re-conceptualization, Distinction analyzed the
aesthetic practices and preferences of classes and class fractions located across the French social
structure, focusing, in particular, on the taste or distaste for “highbrow” art forms (painting,
music, literature, drama, etc.). Bourdieu’s data indicated that each class (and class fraction)
exhibited a relatively unique pattern of tastes, one consistent with its particular mix of cultural
and economic capital. Thus, for example, professors and artistic producers—one fraction of the
dominant class—utilized their superior endowment of cultural capital to appreciate the most
avant-garde forms as art. By contrast, employers, the fraction of the dominant class richest in
economic capital, tended to prefer less intellectually demanding forms of art, and especially
those which conformed to traditional conceptions of beauty, and which connoted a sense of
luxury. These differences of taste, Bourdieu argued, should be viewed as claims for the prestige
constitutive of status, in Weber’s sense of “social honor,” which Bourdieu termed “symbolic
capital.” As such, these differences were said to play an integral role in the legitimation of class
stratification.
Within English-language sociology, the concept of cultural capital began to make its way
into the literature starting in the late 1970s with the translation of Reproduction. Given its
genesis in Bourdieu’s study of the French educational system, it has unsurprisingly been in the
field of educational research that the notion of cultural capital has triggered the greatest amount
of empirical research and theoretical reflection, and the greatest contention. [See cultural capital
in schools.] However, the concept has proven fruitful in a number of other research areas. For
example, proceeding from Bourdieu’s interest in the way that different forms of capital are
implicated in complex patterns of stratification, Eyal, Szelényi, and Townsley’s (1998)
examination of the class structure of post-communist societies in Central Europe focuses on
cultural capital. Contrary to many predictions, they argue, members of the bureaucratic
nomenklatura did not successfully exploit their authority under communism to appropriate large
amounts state property during the privatization process that marked the transition to capitalism.
Nor have the small-scale entrepreneurs who were tolerated in the final decades of state socialism
managed to leverage their “head start” and become a full-blown capitalist class in the post-1989
period. Rather, in countries such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, a stratification
system has emerged which can be characterized as a type of “capitalism without capitalists.” In
this system, cultural capital stands as the most important basis of power and privilege. Thus, the
dominant class in these societies can be described as a “cultural bourgeoisie” rather than an
economic bourgeoisie. This cultural bourgeoisie, which is a diverse group that includes former
technocrats and dissident intellectuals, has largely monopolized the skills, know-how, and
credentials (i.e., cultural capital) that have become critical to occupational success. The authors
demonstrate that possession of cultural capital makes possible access to leading positions in the
economy and the state and, conversely, that lack of cultural capital is a substantial barrier
The concept of cultural capital has also proven highly productive in the study of aesthetic
tastes and preferences. In this context, sociologists have evaluated the association between
social position and taste, concentrating on the upper class predilection for exclusively
“highbrow” aesthetic forms at the heart of Distinction. The evidence for this proposition
strongly indicates that in the contemporary United States, for example, the relation is different
from that charted by Bourdieu. Thus, Peterson and colleagues (Peterson and Kern 1996;
Peterson and Simkus 1992) report that in matters of cultural taste, “elites” in the U.S. are more
accurately characterized as “omnivores” than “snobs”: status claims now tend to hinge on
familiarity with a wide variety of genres within each cultural form (music, literature, film, etc.)—
genres that range from the highbrow (e.g. classical music and opera) to the middlebrow (e.g.
Broadway show tunes) and the lowbrow (e.g. country music and rock). Those claiming status
are expected to be able to distinguish laudable examples of each genre according to standards of
judgement that are unique to it. Despite the fact that it differs substantially from the form of
aesthetic competence delineated in Bourdieu’s account of French lifestyles, this “cosmopolitan”
orientation is clearly conditional upon indicators of social class such as education, and therefore
prone to function as a form of cultural capital. Indeed, Bryson (1992) goes so far as to dub it
“multi-cultural capital.”
At the same time that it has been incorporated into various areas of English-language
sociology, the concept of cultural capital has also been the object of considerable criticism.
Giroux (1983) has argued, for example, that when culture is viewed primarily as a form of
capital, it becomes impossible to acknowledge the role it plays in enabling those in subordinate
positions to resist domination. Similarly, Lamont (1992) asserts that conceptualizing culture in
this manner prevents sociologists from recognizing that it contains repertoires which actors use
to evaluate the moral quality of their own experiences and those of others—repertoires that do
not necessarily have the character of a resource implicated in stratification processes. These
debates are sure to intensify as scholars continue to debate the relation between culture and
inequality. Regardless of the shape that they take, Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, with its
distinctive focus on the social value of cultural habits, dispositions, and skills, is likely to be an
important part of the discussions in theories of inequality, the sociology of culture, and the
sociology of education in the future.
References
Bourdieu, P. (1977) Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction. In: Karabel, J., & Halsey,
A. H. (eds.) Power and Ideology in Education. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 487-
511.
Bourdieu, P. (1984 [1979]) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Richard
Nice (tr.). Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Bourdieu, P. (1986) The Forms of Capital. In: Richardson, J. G. (ed.) Handbook of Theory and
Research for the Sociology of Education. Greenwood Press, New York, pp. 241-258.
Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.-C. (1977 [1970]) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture.
Richard Nice (tr.). Sage Publications, London.
Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.-C. (1979) The Inheritors: French Students and their Relations to
Culture. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Bryson, B. (1996) “Anything But Heavy Metal”: Symbolic Exclusion and Cultural Dislikes.
American Sociological Review 61, 884-899.
DiMaggio, P. (1982) Cultural Capital and School Success: The Impact of Status Culture
Participation on the Grades of U.S. High School Students. American Sociological Review 47,
189-201.
Eyal, G., Szelényi, I, & Townsley, E. (1998) Making Capitalism without Capitalists: The New
Ruling Elites in Eastern Europe. Verso, London and New York.
Giroux, H. (1983) Theory and Resistance in Education: A Pedagogy for the Opposition. Bergin
& Garvey, South Hadley, MA.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995) Meaningful differences in the everyday experiences of young
American children. Brookes Publishing, Baltimore.
Lamont, M. (1992) Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and the American
Upper-Middle Class. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Lareau, A. (2003) Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. University of California
Press, Berkeley, CA.
Lareau, A., & Weininger, E. B. (2003) Cultural Capital in Educational Research: A Critical
Assessment. Theory and Society, 567-606.
Peterson, R. A., & Kern, R. M. (1996) Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore.
American Sociological Review, 61, 900-907.
Peterson, R., & Simkus, A. (1992) How Musical Taste Groups Mark Occupational Status
Groups. In: Lamont, M., and Fournier, M. (eds.), Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries
and the Making of Inequality. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Weininger, E. B. (2005) Foundations of Pierre Bourdieu’s Class Analysis. In: Wright, E. O.
(ed.), Approaches to Class Analysis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Cross-References
Bourdieu, Pierre
Class, Perceptions of
Cultural Capital in Schools
Capital: Economic, Cultural, and Social
Distinction
Life Chance and Resources
Stratification and Distinction
Stratification and Inequality, Theories of
Symbolic Classification (w/ special emphasis on Durkheim and Mauss)