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Lareau, A and Weininger, E.
(2003)
'Cultural capital in educational research: a critical
assessment', in Theory and Society, Vol 32, Nos
5/6: 567
- 606. Bourdieu developed
the concept of cultural
capital in his work in the sociology of education, but it has come to
take on a
particular meaning in subsequent research: (a) knowledge of highbrow
aesthetic
culture; (b) something separate from and additional to skills, ability
and
achievement -- as a result, the relative influence of technical ability
and cultural
knowledge has been compared builds to explain social inequality. The
authors
think that cultural capital means more than this, however, and is about
coping
with 'institutionalised standards of evaluation' (569). The dominant
traditions using the concept are
therefore limited. [A number of specific works on mentioned, pages 569
- 77.
Most of them seem to be American, and devoted to explaining how it is
that the
education system reproduces status distinctions]. A return to
Bourdieu's own
work, including Distinction, does
indicate interest in social status groups and their tastes, but in that
work
education is not specifically examined as a transmission mechanism. An
essay
specifically on educational reproduction (in Karabel's and Halsey's
1977
collection) stars refer to possible indicators of cultural capital such
as 'museum visits, theatre attendances,
classical music appreciation' (578), but also refers to the ability to
impose
certain criteria of evaluation relating to style and appearance, for
example [surely best developed in Homo Academicus, which curiously is not
cited in this article]. The links with museum visits and so on may
simply
reflect a combination specific to In this sense,
cultural capital is not a
distinct factor compared to technical ability and skill -- ability and
talent
itself is defined according to the deployment of cultural capital [the
argument
here is similar to the one in Distinction
suggesting that philosophical categories are not universal but the
product of
the cultural capital of bourgeois groups].
[Apart from a general sociologism], specific groups come
to take on the
ability to define competence. Bourdieu analyses the role of credentials
in his The State Nobility: credentials are not
simply indicators of real levels of knowledge and skills, nor are they
just a
restrictive practice, but are about both technical and social
competence. They
indicate 'a sense of dignity on the part
of the holder (and a corresponding
capacity to set herself apart from others)' (581). The technical and
the social
are therefore linked in credentialism, although different emphases are
possible
according to the strategies actually used by specific social groups in
the
labour market. Some less well-known
works in the sociology of
education preserve this better sense of the term [listed pages 583 -
71]. For
example, McDonough shows how 'parental cultural capital' helps
particular
parents manipulate college admissions policies. Reay shows how some
parents
were able to deal with teachers by displaying various kinds of
knowledge and
expertise in discussions with them. Blackledge showed how schools were
able to
reinterpret Bengali parenting skills as inadequate compared to their
own
standards. Lareau and Howat shows how the parental cultures of American
black
people were similarly reinterpreted as indicating their
inappropriateness as
parents [very old theme in the sociology of education here, at least in
the
radical versions in Cultural capital is
therefore best redefined
as '"institutionalised, ie widely
shared, high-status cultural signals
(attitudes, preferences, formal knowledge, behaviours,
goods and
credentials) used for social and cultural exclusion"' (quoting some of
their earlier work, 587). The resources to impose these standards as
criteria
of evaluation are unevenly distributed. The concept of
cultural capital might be used
in research in two directions: (a) Finding out
which standards and
expectations are found in concrete situations and appraisals. This
would
involve investigating professionals' beliefs: they have changed
recently, for
example, in order to shift the responsibility for children firmly on to
parents. This has led to a requirement for active and involved parents,
but in
their own terms. Middle-class parents are able to interact much more in
accordance with the views of academic professionals, so they simply
seem a much
more effective. They possess relevant
'micro-interactional skills' especially
(590). For example, in one case study, a middle-class
Afro-American family
was able to negotiate access for their child to a gifted child
programme by
acquiring a more favourable private evaluation from a private tester [a
similar
technique is used to launch appeals against 11 plus failures]. In
another case,
parents passed on the skills they possessed to their children, by
demonstrating
them in action. For example they defended their children's low
performances
when they attended gymnastics, made a case for individualised
treatment,
trained their children to have a story ready. More generally they
instilled a
sense of entitlement in their children. (b) A working-class
family studied tended to
leave it to the mother to liaise with the school. All the adults in the
extended family helped the children with homework, showed interest,
bought
teaching materials, and knew they had to fight for their child -- but
they were
not so good at it. For example, they were less assertive, and did not
ask
'detailed substantive questions, or probe, test or challenge the
teacher'
(595). They were assertive enough in other contexts, but not with
teachers.
They were put off by teachers long words and technical vocabulary (such
as 'word attack skills'), realised that
they had
to help their child with mathematics but did not ask how to. [The poor
buggers
have got no chance here, because they are routinely told that their
ways of
teaching mathematics are inadequate and wrong and will only confuse and
hold
back the child]. They believed that teachers were the experts, and
treated them
with deference. They possessed insufficient education resources to
question or
analyse [no private opinion for them]. An outstanding
research question that remains
is 'how markets for cultural capital are constructed' (598), how values
get
institutionalised in schools in the first place. [Very little is
added here, it seems to me,
there was not already foreshadowed in radical sociology of education in
the
1970s. Michael Young himself had asked how particular kinds of
education and
selections of knowledge came to be called schooling. Keddie had studied
successful pupils and noted that they were the ones who tried to take
over the
vocabulary of their school teachers. Sharp and Green critically
analysed the
notion of 'reading readiness' and noted
that this gave middle-class kids a flying start, not only because it
corresponded to their existing values, but also because middle-class
parents
were rapidly able to negotiate a 'ready'
status for their particular child] |