Bourdieu: Cultural Capital

Clare Koehler
Midterm 2
4/6/17

In most societies, the state is ruled by those with higher volumes of cultural capital, which often tends to be the bourgeoisie as they have greater access to economic and social capital in capitalist states. Because of this, the bourgeoisie often has the ability to force their own hegemonic beliefs upon society, which are determined by what benefits their own economic, political, and social interests, which makes it difficult to attain revolutionary social change. While Bourdieu establishes a strong link between the bourgeoisie and their influence over taste to dominate the working class, he fails to suggest how the dominant bourgeoisie hegemony can be overhauled, whereas Gramsci suggests revolutionary social

Bourdieu links this to the fact that the bourgeoisie have more cultural capital — the advantages one has in society due to their level of education, money, social connections, etc — than the lower class (1987: 12). Cultural capital is reinforced by Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, the deeply engrained beliefs and values we have that influence our choices, actions, and behaviors throughout life (1990: 52). Habitus heavily influences societal classes: starting from a young age the habitus that we are raised with dictates which actions and behaviors are acceptable, while simultaneously discouraging behavior that does not seem acceptable for someone in your particular class. For example, if you are raised in a family with a high volume of cultural and economic capital, it might be considered acceptable — if not virtually required — behavior to attend a reputable university, while deciding to drop out of high school would be considered unacceptable by others in your particular class (1990: 56). The constant reproduction of habitus helps to enforce social norms and social inequality because while it makes members of the bourgeoisie class all act according to the same guidelines, it also excludes lower classes who do not have access to the same level of cultural capital by determining that their class’s habitus

Like Gramsci, Bourdieu believes that the bourgeoisie have the power to determine the dominant hegemony in society based on what they deem acceptable and what benefits their economic, social, and/or political interests. However, Gramsci argues that, in societies with successful political and civil spheres, the bourgeoisie give the working class some level of freedom and autonomy, allowing them to determine some alternate-hegemonies in order to gain consent to rule from the working class (1971: 220). Bourdieu, on the other hand, believes that the bourgeoisie force their hegemony on the working class by establishing their habitus as the acceptable way to behave in society and the working class, who lacks the cultural capital to resist, must accept this, along with their subordinate position in society, as a natural fact. Since habitus is taught starting from a young age, tastes — and the class connotations associated with “good” and “bad” taste — is constantly reproduced throughout time and society (1987: 170). The ruling class gets to dictate the rest of society’s tastes because they have the cultural capital to enforce it, while a the same time other classes go alone with this belief at the