Achieved Status - Cultural Capital

Cultural Capital

Cultural capital is a concept, developed by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, that can refer to both achieved and ascribed characteristics. They are desirable qualities (either material or symbolic) that contribute to one's social status; any advantages a person has which give him/her a higher status in society. It may include high expectations, forms of knowledge, skill, and education, among other things.

Parents provide children with cultural capital, the attitudes and knowledge that make the educational system a comfortable familiar place in which they can succeed easily. There are other types of capital as well; Social capital refers to ones membership in groups, relationships, and networks. It too can have a significant impact on achievement level.

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Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or capital:

    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)

    It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)