Social Transformation - Class Culture and Cultural Capital

Class Culture and Cultural Capital

In order for an individual to gain membership into a group, he or she must engage in "requisite role enactments" to be recognized and legitimized as a member of the group. This means taking on the commonly associated scripts associated with different classes, understood through studying the different types of class culture and forms of culture capital. This can include cultural capital, a term created by Pierre Bourdieu, and can be in three states:

  • Embodied: Inherited and acquired way of thinking about one's self or habitus.
  • Objectified: Things (objects) which are owned, such as a BMW, a home, a painting, etc.
  • Institutionalized: Recognition on an institutional level, such as earning a college degree or prestigious award.

In a study by Mark Granfield of working-class law students aiming to succeed at an Ivy-League law school, Granfield noted the importance of making alterations in the students' "interpersonal relations" including everyday changes such as patterns in their clothing and speech.

Read more about this topic:  Social Transformation

Famous quotes containing the words class, culture, cultural and/or capital:

    The intellectual is a middle-class product; if he is not born into the class he must soon insert himself into it, in order to exist. He is the fine nervous flower of the bourgeoisie.
    Louise Bogan (1897–1970)

    The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.
    Susan Sontag (b. 1933)

    To recover the fatherhood idea, we must fashion a new cultural story of fatherhood. The moral of today’s story is that fatherhood is superfluous. The moral of the new story must be that fatherhood is essential.
    David Blankenhorn (20th century)

    I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.
    James Madison (1751–1836)