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:

    Barbarisation may be defined as a cultural process whereby an attained condition of high value is gradually overrun and superseded by elements of lower quality.
    Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)

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