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:

    But you must know the class of sweet women—who are always so happy to declare “they have all the rights they want”; “they are perfectly willing to let their husbands vote for them”Mare and always have been numerous, though it is an occasion for thankfulness that they are becoming less so.
    Eliza “Mother” Stewart (1816–1908)

    There is something terribly wrong with a culture inebriated by noise and gregariousness.
    George Steiner (b. 1929)

    A society that has made “nostalgia” a marketable commodity on the cultural exchange quickly repudiates the suggestion that life in the past was in any important way better than life today.
    Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)

    If Los Angeles has been called “the capital of crackpots” and “the metropolis of isms,” the native Angeleno can not fairly attribute all of the city’s idiosyncrasies to the newcomer—at least not so long as he consults the crystal ball for guidance in his business dealings and his wife goes shopping downtown in beach pajamas.
    —For the State of California, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)