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:

    People ask how can a Jewish kid from the Bronx do preppy clothes? Does it have to do with class and money? It has to do with dreams.
    Ralph Lauren (b. 1939)

    ... we’ve allowed a youth-centered culture to leave us so estranged from our future selves that, when asked about the years beyond fifty, sixty, or seventy—all part of the average human life span providing we can escape hunger, violence, and other epidemics—many people can see only a blank screen, or one on which they project fear of disease and democracy.
    Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)

    The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not “Am I really that oppressed?” but “Am I really that boring?”
    Margaret Atwood (b. 1939)

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