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Jean Bourdieu Cultural Capital Analysis

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riguez Extra Credit One of the most illustrating concepts for me was to know about Bourdieu’s cultural capital. In forms of capital, Jean Bourdieu defines cultural capital as habits, manners, knowledge and style of presentations that define a person’s body and mind. Thus, Bourdieu describes cultural capital as literally the unconscious part of you that guides your actions and behaviors in the world. However, Bourdieu believed that gaining cultural capital, especially, the predominating cultural capital was not easy. In other words, it takes both time and economic capital to acquire cultural capital. For that reason, Bourdieu saw cultural capital as paradoxically a symbol of both natural gift and hard work because of the amount of time and effort …show more content…

For instance, I believe that anyone can achieve success as long as their put they their mind on it. At the same time, I also believe that school was the middle ground, where all children regardless of their economic position can learn the same cultural capital as privileged students. However, after learning about cultural capital and the variations that exist within families, I quickly realize how lacking the right cultural capital can negatively impact a child, not only in their educational setting, but also on their life chances. Thus, this affected me personally because I also come from a low- income class family. Consequently, like many working families, I lacked the right cultural capital that could have help me achieve social and cultural mobility at my school. Therefore, when I arrive to Cal, I experienced many academic and social issues that many of the privileged students did not. Yet, without having a structural discourse explaining me the importance of cultural capital, I did not only felt abandoned but also incompetent about my own skills and integrity as a student. Thus, learning about cultural capital widened my understanding because I realize now how difficult it is for someone, who lacks the privileged cultural capital, to succeed in their life, especially when their institutions also value the dominating privilege cultural capital. Finally, learning about cultural capital has also made me more aware, not only of the differences that exist within working and middle- class families, but also of the social inequalities that roots from everyday

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