Bourdieu Cultural Capital

Throughout Robert Reich article Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer, discusses about the growing gap between the upper and lower class in modern society. Reich’s article is certainly an eye opener regarding unemployment, and how it is currently surfacing from the shortage of technology and education. Through the text Reich uses a firm metaphor to describe how the economy is like a boat that constantly moves up and down the current portraying the upper class and working class. This boat however is extremely important because it is a boat we are all currently in and one is sinking faster than the other and that one is rising; here Reich is distinguishing the different types of social classes. However, the rich are yet getting

Bourdieu defines cultural capital as "the general background, knowledge, disposition, and skill that are passed from one generation to the next" (13), and he affirms that children from different classes inherit different cultural capital. Bourdieu suggests that the cultural capital that upper class children

Invisible Backpack: Reflective essay Growing up we often fail to recognize the ways in which we are privileged and the opportunities we are given due to our privileges. In the essay “White Privilege: Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack,” Peggy McIntosh discusses the privileges of being White and the ways she experienced advantages because of her race. Throughout the essay McIntosh allows readers to explore how she has been given opportunities, due to specific traits she has in her “invisible knapsack”, privileges she once had taken for granted. Her personal experiences take up most of the essay and with it she invites the reader to particepate in discovering which items their knapsacks carry.

The debate on welfare and other social policies has been shaped by the question on “how to define the individual’s role in his/her own poverty” (Shipler, pg.7). The poor have less control over their private decisions; their personal mistakes have larger penalties, and their personal achievement only bring back a small reward. What many people do not realize such as employers is that the poor lack “hard skills” like the use of a computer and “soft skills” like interacting with people and peers.

Many of the poor work; indeed, there are more working poor than unemployed poor people in the United States and most other affluent democracies (Brady, et al. 2010). Thus work has been integrated with poverty rather than noted as a guaranteed source of escape from poverty. Nevertheless, the links between work and poverty have often been studied in relation to how work allows one to escape poverty and how a loss of work leads to poverty. Authors, Bane and Ellwood “Slipping into and out of poverty: The dynamics of spells” 1986, shows how the dynamics of poverty are linked to the dynamics of employment. In the book, “No Shame in My Game: The working poor in the inner city” Newman (1999), examines the low-wage careers of the working poor and the

It is hard when you are a middle class family, and eventually a good life passes to be a low income family. Not just a Paycheck from Unnatural Causes describes how unemployment, and change on class & income can transform people 's health. The film presents how a middle white family started seen discrepancies among being working class and the rich. In fact, they start to understand what mean being unemployment. Basically, the film briefly explains the reasons why companies have to move to different places not matter the wellbeing of their workers. Thus, what really matter in this industrialized world is profit, and that 's what company holders are seeking at cost of anything. Clearly, companies do not care what is going to be the life of an unemployment because chair holders never have to experience it generally. In reality, the closure of companies directly constitute to a negative impact on the rate of jobs and the stress level on the people who lose their jobs which is connected to the health of the US.

According Social Inequality: Patterns and Processes by Martin Marger, life chances includes “education, physical and mental health, residence and justice;” which are opportunities that we must procure through social resources (18). Our position within society determines our life chances; for children their parent’s positions within society determines the child’s social status within society. “Life chances are acquired, then, as a result of factors that are only partially in the control of individuals…people’s initial class position and, therefore, the dimensions of their opportunities and future prospects are essentially an “accident of birth.” Certainly, people may subsequently enhance their life chances through individual effort, but those of lower social origins will need to overcome many socially imposed handicaps to do so” (Marger, 19-20). It is completely possible for someone to shape their life chances through their own efforts however; this occurrence is rare which is the reason sociologists tend to focus on the typical pattern society follow. Looking at life chance opportunities such as health, justice, and education; people’s social resources are not only shaped through individual choices but mainly by group membership.

Living with a poverty level income is a difficulty facing many people around the world; poverty is a cultural universal, or trait found in every known culture – not an expression of individual differences. The most basic explanation for this is the trend towards social stratification, the system by which society organizes itself into a hierarchy. In some cultures this is manifest in the form of a caste system in which people who are in poverty have little to no chance of escaping it. In the United States the system is more in the form of a class system in which there is at least some degree of social mobility, and less status consistency allows people in poverty to have the possibility of changing their social status, but rarely the

Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital has been extremely influential, and has garnered a great deal of literature, both theoretical and empirical. Like Marx, Bourdieu posited that capital was the foundation of social life and dictated people’s position within the social hierarchy (Bourdieu 1986). According to Bourdieu, the more capital one possesses, the more prestigious a position one occupies in social life (Bourdieu 1986). In addition to that, Bourdieu extended Marx’s idea of capital beyond the economic and into cultural symbolism (Bourdieu 1986). Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital that refers to the collection of symbolic elements (e.g. skills, tastes, clothing) one acquires through being part of a particular social niche and his concept of habitus that refers to the physical manifestation of cultural capital owned by individuals due to life experiences are his major influential concepts that are very useful in deconstructing power in development and social change processes. However it must be recognized that these concepts also propagate social inequalities at the same time. This essay will closely examine his concepts of capital that comes in three forms - embodied, objectified, and institutionalised, and habitus in the fields of education and stratification have made of it. Bourdieu’s work will be analysed in the context both of the debate on class inequalities in educational attainment and of class reproduction in advanced capitalist societies.

Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital relates to the symbolic characteristics namely skills, tastes and preferences, mannerisms, material goods, credentials etc. that a person gains by virtue of his or her membership of a particular social class. Bourdieu emphasizes on the importance of cultural capital as a major source of social inequality. Rooted in the Bourdieu concept of cultural capital is the aspect of social environment which he called the ’habitus’. According to him, one’s habitus will allow or not allow him or her to progress in life (Bourdieu, 1986). As regards this concept of habitus, it can be said that one’s social identity/nationality may or may not offer him or her opportunities in life. The concept of habitus can be likened to the concept of social capital (Portes, 1998:6) which refers to the ability of

Bourdieu has multiple concepts another one being habitus which is the physical embodiment of cultural capital, to the deeply ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions that we possess due to our experiences throughout life. In the video people like us it referenced peoples

The 21-st century is characterized by the continuous economic downfall. The relationship between race, class and gender should be evaluated to identify the life chances of people to improve their relative position in our socially stratified world. The increased rates of unemployment, homelessness and poverty show that our society requires implementing a transformative approach to reduce social stratification. The term social stratification is applied to identify and asses different forms of inequality that exist in the US society. Patricia H Collins suggests, “while a piece of the oppressor may be planted deep within each of us, we each have the choice of accepting that piece or challenging it as part of the 'true focus of revolutionary change'” (p. 680). Inequality has become a universal feature of our society; therefore, it exists everywhere and concerns race, class, and gender as the key categories of society.

The idea of social inequality dates back since the time of our founding fathers. The mistreatment and unlawful equality and opportunity that these foreigners received became embedded into our history—this endless list includes, just to name a few, the Irish, Chinese, Jews, and most notably the African Americans (Blacks), who became slaves to the American people. Here in the United States, the current social class system is known as the class system, where families are distributed and placed into three different existing class—the upper class (wealthy), middle class (working), and lower class (poor). Since then, improvisations have been worked on into the class system, establishing now roughly six social classes: upper class, new money, middle class, working class, working poor, and poverty level. Social stratification is a widely common topic of debate because there have since been many arguments and debates on this controversial situation of social inequality and how it relates to social class and social mobility. According to Economist Robert Reich, he states that "The probability that a poor child in America will become a poor adult is higher now than it was 30 years ago..." (Reich, par. 5), meaning the given amount of equality, opportunity, and support that these struggle families obtain have gone mainly unnoticed by the government that it has gotten worst. The constant uproar of social inequality and injustice that these middle and lower working class families stem

The two types of capital are cultural capital and economic capital. This is then used by showing the resulting inequalities and allocating various social slots for men and women based on said differences. This in turn legitimizes the inheritance of social privileges in societies where democracy is thought to be the right and virtuous way. (Wacquant, 1996)

Society holds many structures that mould human performance and produce opportunities for some, but inequalities for others (Morrall, 2009). These structures in society are organized by the hierarchies of class, ethnicity and gender (Crossman, 2016). Due to having a society based on hierarchies, social inequalities are inevitable. Social inequality refers to the ways in which a group or individual of a certain social position may receive unequal opportunities or distribution of ‘goods’ such as education, income, living conditions and healthcare (Walker, 2009). These unequal opportunities may be given to someone because of their ethnicity, gender, income, religion or social class (Walker, 2009). For example, people in a high social class will be able to pay for their children to go to a good private school for a good education, whereas lower-class or working class people will struggle to afford the same education.