Sou Hang Anthropology

Throughout a person’s life, they are working to increase their self-worth, not only to themselves, but to others. Whether it be through schooling to gain knowledge or working to hone skills, it is an important aspect to becoming a functioning member of any given society. However, there are levels of worth that cannot often be seen on the surface, and thus they are usually taken for granted. These aspects of worth are deemed “Human Capital”, “Social Capital”, and “Cultural Capital”, and are crucial to everyday life, as can be seen within the life of Sou Hang and his family.

During the late 1970s, Sou Hang and his family immigrated from Laos and their Hmong roots to the city of Seattle, on the West Coast of the United States. Their experience

While they were surrounded by those from a similar culture, it became clear that the Hangs lacked the required knowledge to live in the States on several different fronts.
Looking at the idea of Human Capital, this is the concept of what you know, in regards to your skill set and training. This could be seen as knowing how to fix cars, or working on a computer, these skills that one learns are considered their human capital. Looking at Sou Hang, he comes from a culture that does primarily farming, and he himself was a farmer. This knowledge may have been valuable in Laos, but now he is in one of the larger cities in the U.S., and regardless, even if he had been dropped in a farming community, it is unlikely that any of his knowledge would transfer to this new environment.
The concept of Social Capital is relatively self-explanatory. It is the idea of one’s worth based on who they know. An example would be that I myself have my job at the UW simply because I was neighbors with the Chief of Staff in an office there. Without that connection, I would have never even heard about the job, let alone been guaranteed it. Looking at Sou Hang, he is living in a brand new country where he doesn’t know anyone except his own family. He may have some similarities with the fellow Hmong in the complex, but they are likely in the same boat he is. Without any sort of skill set or connections, it becomes very difficult for him to get a