EDUCATION (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron coined and defined the term cultural capital in the essay “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction” (1977).

Detailed explanation-2: -Where did the term cultural capital come from? In the 1970s Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, developed the idea of cultural capital as a way to explain how power in society was transferred and social classes maintained.

Detailed explanation-3: -Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital refers to the collection of symbolic elements such as skills, tastes, posture, clothing, mannerisms, material belongings, credentials, etc. that one acquires through being part of a particular social class.

Detailed explanation-4: -In his best-known work, La Distinction (1979; Distinction), Bourdieu argued that those with high social and cultural capital (or status) are the arbiters of taste and thatone’s own particular taste comes from the milieu and social class in which one lives-that is, one’s field.

Detailed explanation-5: -Social capital theory (SCT) was first defined by Bourdieu (1985) 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 or recognition”.