Cultural capital and the cultural field in contemporary Britain (original) (raw)
Using Mixed-methods for the analysis of culture: The Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion Project
This article discusses the use of material generated in a mixed method investigation into cultural tastes and practices, conducted in Britain from 2003 to 2006, which employed a survey, focus groups and household interviews. The study analysed the patterning of cultural life across a number of fields, enhancing the empirical and methodological template provided by Bourdieu's Distinction. Here we discuss criticisms of Bourdieu emerging from subsequent studies of class, culture and taste, outline the arguments related to the use of mixed methods and present illustrative results from the analysis of these different types of data.We discuss how the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods informed our analysis of cultural life in contemporary Britain. No single method was able to shed light on all aspects of our inquiry, lending support to the view that mixing methods is the most productive strategy for the investigation of complex social phenomena.
Class and Cultural Division in the UK
Sociology, 2008
Using data drawn from the Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion study, we examine the relationship between social class membership and cultural participation and taste in the areas of music, reading, television and film, visual arts, leisure, and eating out. Using Geometric Data Analysis, we examine the nature of the two most important axes which distinguish 'the space of lifestyles'. By superimposing socio-demographic variables on this cultural map, we show that the first, most important, axis is indeed strongly associated with class. We inductively assess which kind of class boundaries can most effectively differentiate individuals within this 'space of lifestyles'. The most effective model distinguishes a relatively small professional class (24%) from an intermediate class of lower managerial workers, supervisors, the self-employed, senior technicians and white collar workers (32%) and a relatively large working class which includes lower supervisors and technicians (44%).
Introduction: Cultural capital—Histories, limits, prospects
Poetics, 2011
Where does the concept of cultural capital stand regarding the histories of its creation, uses, debates and the revisions these have provoked? What are its limits? Which are the key aspects holding the best prospects for future research, or most in need of reformation? These are our concerns outlined in this paper setting out the context for our discussion of the seven papers assembled in this special issue. We first set out the concept of cultural capital in Bourdieu's work noting that it was originally shaped pragmatically in critical interventions into education and cultural policies. We then highlight aspects of the career of the concept of cultural capital in relation to empirical studies of cultural consumption noting some key qualifications and limitations. Limits and prospects are discussed vis-à-vis the papers assembled, under three headings: (1) cultural capital and the logics of capitalism; (2) cultural capital, education and cultural policy, and 'social exclusion'; and (3) aesthetics and the relationality of the social. In concluding, we note the continuing operation of cultural capital as a mechanism for the reproduction of class advantages pointing to the need to consider further the manners in which it engages elites, uses of new media and hierarchies based on gender and ethnicity. #
The Curriculum Journal, 2022
The notion of cultural capital, defined in its Arnoldian sense, of "the best that has been thought and said", has been at the centre of the Conservative government's education policy for the last few years in England. While it is clear that this version of cultural capital-different from the sense in which it was used by Pierre Bourdieu, who popularised the term-has been deployed to valorise certain types of social, educational and cultural knowledge, it is not clear at all what use teachers make of the term or indeed, how they view it. This article presents data from an evaluation of a programme for disadvantaged students in English primary and secondary schools that sought to make a focus on cultural capital, and tries to assess how teachers perceive and use the term. The article posits that teachers see exhortations to accumulate cultural capital as part of their role, but in much broader terms than the government does, and that they seek to fill the "vacuum" created by the current policy perspective on cultural capital.
Cultural taste and participation in Britain 1
This paper presents results from a study, Cultural Consumption and Social Exclusion, which involved a survey, focus groups and household interviews in Britain in 2003 about cultural tastes and practices. It focuses on the patterning of cultural life 2 across the fields of music, reading, visual arts, television and film, sports, eating out, and leisure. We present a broad overview of the results of the survey, supplemented by two interviews examined in some detail. We explore three major questions. The first of these is to examine how far cultural practices are distinguished from each other so that we can identify systematic cultural cleavages and divisions consistent with the delineation of cultural capital. The second is to consider how far there are systematic 'homologies' between different cultural fields, whether they are organized in similar ways. The third is to investigate how far practices of individuals correspond to the clustering of modalities and emerging cultural divisions in Britain.
Changing relations: Class, education and cultural capital
Poetics
Based on analyses of survey data of the cultural practices of Norwegian students in 1998 and 2008, this article addresses the changing relations between class, education and cultural tastes of students in Norway -particularly focusing on what Bourdieu termed ''cultural capital''. Proceeding from international and Norwegian debates regarding the nature and social importance of cultural capital, the article first discusses the changing relation between social class and educational careers. On this basis, changes with regard to the use of music and literature, both in forms of genres and individual artists/authors, are analysed. While general relations between preferences for musical and literary genres and social background appear to be quite stable, with traditional highbrow genres in both years being closely related to students with high levels of cultural capital, students' interest in traditional highbrow genres have weakened considerably in the period under study. This suggests that traditional forms of highbrow culture are becoming increasingly more irrelevant for most students cultural lives, but also more socially distinctive, and they still appear to command a large degree of recognition. However, the article concludes, the general decline in interest towards such forms of culture suggests an increasingly precarious position for traditional highbrow culture. 1
Policy Futures in Education, 2009
This article addresses the turbulent relationship that British cultural studies scholars have with the concepts of 'class' and 'tradition' and the problematic status of these key terms within the cultural studies literature. The authors maintain, in part, that these concepts have been deployed within a center-periphery thesis and a field-bound ethnographic framework by cultural studies scholars pursuing a sub-cultural studies approach. Within this framework, 'Britishness' has been the silent organizing principle defining metropolitan working-class traditions and forms of cultural resistance. British cultural studies proponents have therefore pursued the study of class and culture as a localized, nation-bound set of interests. This has placed cultural studies in tension with postcolonial subjectivities. The authors write against the grain of the textual production of the working class within cultural studies scholarship, insisting that recent films and literary works offer a more complex story of class identities in the age of globalization and transnationalism.
Policy Futures in Education, 2009
This article addresses the turbulent relationship that British cultural studies scholars have with the concepts of ‘class' and ‘tradition’ and the problematic status of these key terms within the cultural studies literature. The authors maintain, in part, that these concepts have been deployed within a center–periphery thesis and a field-bound ethnographic framework by cultural studies scholars pursuing a sub-cultural studies approach. Within this framework, ‘Britishness' has been the silent organizing principle defining metropolitan working-class traditions and forms of cultural resistance. British cultural studies proponents have therefore pursued the study of class and culture as a localized, nation-bound set of interests. This has placed cultural studies in tension with post-colonial subjectivities. The authors write against the grain of the textual production of the working class within cultural studies scholarship, insisting that recent films and literary works offer a...