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How culture affects beliefs and attitudes
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Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) was a French sociologist who mainly focused his works on the dynamics of power in society. He was born into a family that had a working class background and lived in a small town in France. The French sociologists ideologies originaly started to come together when he decided to put attention towards these two themes ‘cultural capital’ and ‘cultural reproduction’. “Cultural reproduction refers to the ways in which schools, in conjunction with other social institutions, help perpetuate social and economic inequalities across the generations” (Giddens and Griffiths, 2006, p.710) – this quote is basically stating that it’s a process that takes place which involves passing down cultural principles and values from one
Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School, by Shamus Khan, depicts the lives of teenagers enrolled in a prestigious high school. Khan focuses his observations of the Paulies (students) on their experiences at the school and with other students, staff, and faculty. More specifically, the embodiment of privilege in a new diverse world, as taught by St. Paul’s as an elementary root of acquiring skills necessary to maintain (or enter into) their position in the status hierarchy. My focus here, is to connect Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capital to Khan’s analysis of St. Paul’s teachings, and their effects on the students (Paulies). One of the fundamental teachings of St. Pauls, is to instill a new sense of habitus that is essential in navigating their lives in an elite social realm they will soon join.
Collins further talks about economic, cultural, and specifically linguistic reproduction. linguistic capital is a more specific form of capital. It refers to the role of language and class in social reproduction. This concept was originally coined by Basil Bernstein, who argued that “the experience of work process reinforces kinds of family role relations, themselves realized as discursive identities that are carried by ‘elaborated’ and ‘restricted’ codes” (39). We saw this in the 1960s; poor African Americans performed inadequately in school because they were culturally or linguistically deprived. Not only is race a determining factor in the social reproduction of inequality, but it is a combination of how facets of our identity intersect with changing values and norms of our society.
Both Louis Althusser and Kenneth Paul Tan suggest that ideology might mislead people to a state of false consciousness. The former explain that this phenomenon is unconscious, whereas the latter suggest that it is imposed on the people. Althusser’s argument is that this state of false consciousness can be termed as the imaginary. We are born and stuck in this imaginary as an ‘always already subject’ (Ferretter, 2006) of what we want and desire. This happens even before we are born so that we can be ‘appointed as a subject in and by the specific familial ideological configuration in which it is expected’ (Brewster, 2001). On the other hand, Tan would disagree with Althusser’s theory that ‘we misrepresent the world in ideology because we want
The theories of Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Pierre Bourdieu, Basil Bernstein and Shirley Brice Heath represent the deterministic end of the social reproduction perspective. These theories mainly involve school, the ideas of cultural capital, habitus, and linguistic cultural capital and can help explain more in depth how the reproduction of classes continue through generations, and how this reproduction is accepted.
In Unequal Childhood - Class, Race, and Family Life, Annette Lareau tributes the French social scientist Pierre Bourdieu when using his theory of the forms of capital as a fundamental argument on her study. In this theory, Bourdieu recognizes three different types of capital; social, symbolical and cultural. Bourdieu describes social capital as “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition.” This means that social capital is based on resources built from personal relationships, club memberships and other social influence and connections. The second form of capital,
Capital culture as said above include cultural deprivation which means the basic values, attitudes and skills that are needed for education success through primary socialization in the family. Some cultural deprivation theorists believe that the working class fail to socialize their children sufficiently as they are ‘culturally deprived’. This is when the children don’t have the right equipment for school so they can achieve the best grade and the reason to why they are under- achieving in item A it that critics believe that ‘material factors’ affect the gap in social class the most.
The novel “Women Without class” by Julie Bettie, is a society in which the cultural you come from and the identity that was chosen for you defines who you are. How does cultural and identity illustrate who we are or will become? Julie Bettie demonstrates how class is based on color, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. The author describes this by researching her work on high school girls at a Central Valley high school. In Bettie’s novel she reveals different cliques that are associated within the group which are Las Chicas, Skaters, Hicks, Preps, and lastly Cholas and Cholos. The author also explains how race and ethnicity correspondence on how academically well these students do. I will be arguing how Julie Bettie connects her theories of inequality and culture capital to Pierre Bourdieu, Kimberle Crenshaw, Karl Marx and Engels but also how her research explains inequality among students based on cultural capital and identity.
This sociological study will define the definition of “multiculturalism” in terms of the Americanized version of “culture” put forth by Ben Agger. Agger’s perception of multiculturalism is part of the French system of post modernism, which developed in the dynamic philosophies of Lyotard, Foucault, Derrida, and Baudrillard. In this manner, Agger, defines the underlying postmodernism of French philosophy to be a definition of an Americanized ideology that sought to expand the study of class, race, and gender. More so, Derrida (1970) defines the diversity of social meaning in society, which goes beyond the generalization of Marxism and positivistic thought: “The total body of myth belonging to a given community is comparable to its speech” (p.6 of file--no page numbers shown). This definition provides an acute and multivariate understanding of the dynamics of Agger’s version of multiculturalism in terms of the postmodern French movements of the mid-20th century:
For example, the hierarchy system in schools reflects the structure of the labor market, with the head teacher as the managing director, pupils fall lower down in the hierarchy. Wearing uniforms and discipline are promoted among students from working class, as it would be in the workplace for lower levels employees. Education provides knowledge of how to interact in the workplace and gives direct preparation for entry into the labor market. Work casts a ‘long shadow’ in education – education is used by the bourgeoisie to control the workforce. Schools reproduce existing inequalities and they reject the notion that there are equal opportunities for all” (Bowles 1976).
Swartz, D (1997) Culture and power, the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. London: The University of Chicago Press.
When Bourdieu discusses cultural capital he is referring to knowing; for instance, what to talk about in a certain context. Capital means resources, so someone with large cultural capital has a lot of experiences in the world and are perceived as knowledgeable and able to converse about an array of diverse topics. Cultural capital can be learned, which is why education for Bourdieu is the first determent, over and above class origins. People who are not from a higher class, but have been immersed in education, can conduct one’s self in a manner where someone cannot distinguish their economic and social origins. Culture is not individualized; it is all
Cultural capital is the ideas and knowledge of people who draws upon and joins in social life. Everything from rules of custom, to being able to speak and write successfully can be considered as a cultural capital. Cultural capital is really just what it sounds like and it mostly make sense to me, most people don’t realize that they have it but is part off everybody and sometimes even earn a person social flexibility to be confident in everything that are doing. There are some physiognomies of cultures study to be superior and those who have said characteristics have a greater shot at success within the culture. I would like to observe not only the forms of cultural capital that I possess, but also those of which I do not. I believe that with this countless examples of cultural capital will have a big influence in my life.
The main focus of this paper is to explain how cultural capital is passed through generations and how it affects educational success of an individual. Cultural capital is a concept derived from Bourdieu 's cultural and social reproduction, it represents the symbolic and materialistic way of life passed down from parents to their children, these skills and values passed down influence the life experiences and life chances of the children, either putting them at an advantage or disadvantage to others.
The extended concept of capital, which was largely developed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu dates back to an entanglement of the perspectives of Marx and Weber. In particular, he draws on the concept of capital by Marx, whilst picking up the theory of Weber where capital is a product of the accumulation of collective labour. But Bourdieu further generalizes the theory in order to develop a concept of capital in all its forms. Thereby, he dissociates his perspective sharply from a merely economist perspective and criticizes such concepts as only related to the exchange of goods, in a market driven and profit oriented processes. With this view, according to Bourdieu, all other process of exchange and calculation (social, cultural, symbolic, religious) implicitly (or explicit) are perceived as relations without interest and thus are left out of accounts as study objects.
Living in a modern time, our lives can hardly be separated from creativity and culture. Creative industries have increasingly influenced our daily lives, not just the products we use, but also the money we make. According to DCMS (2014), creative industries in Britain are worth more than £70 billion to its economy every year, not to mention creative industries in other countries. In the following, the seven economic properties as stated in Caves (2000) will be applied to the creative industry, ‘New Media’. ‘New Media’ is one of the nine creative industries proposed in the UNCTAD’s