The concept of cultural capital has been increasingly used in American sociology to study the impact of cultural reproduction on social reproduction. However, much confusion surrounds this concept. In this essay, we disentangle Bourdieu and Passeron's original work on cultural capital, specifying the theoretical roles cultural capital plays in their model, and the various types of high status signals they are concerned with. We expand on their work by proposing a new definition of (...) cultural capital which focuses on cultural and social exclusion. We note a number of theoretical ambiguities and gaps in the original model, as well as specific methodological problems. In the second section, we shift our attention to the American literature on cultural capital. We discuss its assumptions and compare it with the original work. We also propose a research agenda which focuses on social and cultural selection and decouples cultural capital from the French context in which it was originally conceived to take into consideration the distinctive features of American culture. This agenda consists in 1) assessing the relevance of the concept of legitimate culture in the U.S.; 2) documenting the distinctive American repertoire of high status cultural signals; and 3) analyzing how cultural capital is turned into profits in America. (shrink)

Cultural capital is usually defined as set of social features that provide individuals with social mobility and the possibility of changing their hierarchical position in systems such as wealth, power, prestige, education, and health. Cultural capital thus affects the processes of social promotion or degradation. It also includes social characteristics that allow horizontal mobility, that is, changes in social group membership. An individual’s cultural capital includes his or her social origin, education, taste, lifestyle, style (...) of speech, and dress. (shrink)

This article outlines the relationship that cultural capital, which is identified as a media user’s education level, shares with news media consumption patterns, civic engagement, and cultural participation. The article’s findings are based on data gathered during a 2015 investigation on news media consumption conducted by a group of European researchers as part of a comparative research project, supplemented with data from a survey on a random sample of Polish citizens conducted in May 2019. The project for (...) the empirical 2015 study aimed to examine the principles of building individual media repertoires as a representation of media usage patterns and experiences related to news media consumption. The study focused on universal aspects of news media consumption, while simultaneously allowing for the discovery of aspects of news media use that are specific to the individual countries participating in the study: Germany, Denmark, Israel, Belgium-Fr., Belgium-Flanders, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Croatia, and Poland. (shrink)

In this study of an economic field and its relationships to a cultural field, we apply Pierre Bourdieu’s central concepts of economic capital, cultural capital, symbolic capital and field, and thus follow in a tradition that at the outset was considered to be post-structuralism, but which by Bourdieu later has been brought into the realm of realism. We have mapped relationships between the actors and thus the field structures that these relationships entail. The fields in (...) which a segment of an art world is operating is represented in multi-dimensional figures which illustrate relationships and bonds between the different categories of organizations. Some of the business actors we have studied are engaging in cultural activities with a great deal of autonomy, others are connected to the cultural field in less active ways. In participating in the cultural field they are in different ways and to different extents accumulating symbolic capital including prestige and honor. The method we have applied is multiple correspondence analysis which was frequently used by Bourdieu. (shrink)

Latin is currently being trialled as a subject in 40 state secondary schools in England. This paper focuses on one of the justifications of this trial: that teaching Latin in state secondary schools provides students with cultural capital which in turn counters social injustice. By taking the example of Latin as a starting point, I reach two conclusions about cultural capital. The first is that providing students with cultural capital can be good for some (...) individuals, and so justified on a case-by-case basis depending on context. However, this justification does not hold for curriculum policy making. My second conclusion is that in the long term, pursuing cultural capital as part of curriculum policy exacerbates the social injustices it purports to address. Wherever an activity is introduced for the sake of cultural capital rather than its educational value, educationally valuable activities risk being pushed off the curriculum, potentially degrading the educational value of the curriculum. In the case of teaching Latin, it may provide benefits to particular students, but as part of curriculum policy it risks exacerbating social injustices and undermining the educational value of school curricula. Going beyond the place of Latin on the curriculum, I argue that all appeals to cultural capital provide a poor basis for curriculum policy making. (shrink)

The present qualitative study analyzes how cultural capital, gender, class, and family involvement impact Chinese female students’ aspirations of studying in the United Kingdom. We investigated how these factors facilitate or limit female students’ choice of study destination, as well as choices of subject and program. Data were gathered through participant observation and semi-structured interviews in a British university. A total of 25 young Chinese female students from different subject areas took part in the semi-structured interviews. Out of (...) those, five students are undergraduates, 11 are taught master’s students, and the other nine students are doctoral candidates. Most of the undergraduates and postgraduates are from middle-class families, while some of the Ph.D. students are from working-class families. The results of the content analysis were examined in light of gender and cultural capital theory. It was found that although there exist differences within the middle-class families regarding the possession of cultural capital, many female students from middle-class families obtained high levels of cultural capital, and these students usually internalized the idea of pursuing a place in the United Kingdom’s tertiary education system as a way of enhancing women’s competency in future job markets. Furthermore, compared with working-class students, many respondents’ choice of subject and program was highly gendered, as their families expect them to live a feminine life by choosing “appropriate” feminine subjects. Therefore, despite having the privilege to study abroad, female middle-class students’ educational choices are still constrained by gender and class. (shrink)

In this commentary we explore Knobe's ideas of moral judgments leading to moral intuitions in the context of the moral thought and moral action debate. We suggest that Knobe's primary moral judgment and the setting of a continuum with a default point is in essence a form of cultural capital, different from moral action, which is more akin to social capital.

So far, most ethical consumerism research has been contained within Western countries, thus limiting our understanding of the concept in emerging markets. Given the call for extending empirical-based knowledge for a better understanding of peculiarities, dynamics and country-level variations (i.e. social, cultural) in the context of ethical consumerism in emerging markets, this research cross-examines the interactive nature of individual- and country-level predictors of ethical consumerism in emerging and developed markets, employing a multilevel approach. At the individual level, we posit (...) that ethical consumerism is motivated by social and cultural capital. In contrast, at the contextual level, we choose country-level affluence as an influential factor that might impact the relationship between socio-cultural capital and ethical consumerism. The study uses the International Social Survey Programme’s (ISSP) 2014 citizenship module data set (including 34 countries) for investigating individual-level predictors (of social and cultural capital). The GDP per capita data from the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Economic Outlook database was used to examine the cross-level interactions between individual-level predictors and country-level affluence. The findings suggest that social and cultural capitals positively influence ethical consumerism in emerging and developed markets. Further, country-level affluence moderates the relationship between socio-cultural capital and ethical consumerism for both markets. However, cultural capital proved to be a stronger predictor of ethical consumerism as country-level affluence increases. The research findings highlight meaningful cross-country-level interactions that help further understand the basis of ethical consumerism from a global perspective. (shrink)

This study draws upon cultural capital theory and exploits 25 individual cases of students in a middle-size city in China in order to understand the patterns of college planning process of students with different socio-economic status. This study will enrich cultural capital theory by applying it to the transitional period of China in which the transformation of classes is complex and distinctive and also contribute to the understandings of the impacts of class-based cultural capital (...) on student college-going behavior in China. (shrink)

Abstract:Bourdieu developed his theory of cultural capital, in part, to help explain why school achievement for students from lower income families is persistently below that of their wealthier peers. His theory has been applied and extended throughout the world, especially in capitalist countries where economic disparities prevail. Although it risks reifying common-sense assumptions that privilege the cultural values and practices of the affluent, the theory of cultural capital applied to music education provides a means to (...) critique efforts in school music intended to elevate or broaden the musical tastes of the poor and working classes. Rather than freeing students from “cycles of poverty,” music education efforts aimed at cultural refinement can have the opposite effect of leveraging distinctions between classes to further the reproduction of inequality. The argument is made in this essay that a robust framing of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus can serve as a corrective by highlighting the arbitrariness of cultural capital and supporting a more relativist view of culture. (shrink)

One of the contexts for the development of social capital and spiritual health is cultural capital. The relationship between religion as an independent variable and social capital as a dependent variable has been analysed. This article aims to analyse the role of cultural capital in the development of social capital and spiritual health from the perspective of religion and negative Islamic teachings. This study attempts to answer the question, 'what is the role of (...) cultural capital on the development of social capital and spiritual health from the perspective of negative Islamic teachings?' In this article, an attempt has been made to compare the negative aspect of education in the form of the Qur'anic concept of 'cultivation', with its positive aspect in terms of principles, approach and method, in order to return to the model arising from Qur'anic and mystical teachings. The research method is descriptive and analytical, and data processing is interpretive and critical. Data collection has been performed utilising documentary and library study methods. The research findings demonstrate that 'ethics, science, values, norms, rituals and art' are the most important elements of embodied cultural capital, which are effective in the development of social capital. CONTRIBUTION: Therefore, there is a substantial relationship between religion, negative Islamic teachings, the development of embodied cultural capital and the development of social capital and spiritual health. (shrink)

One of the contexts for the development of social capital and spiritual health is cultural capital. The relationship between religion as an independent variable and social capital as a dependent variable has been analysed. This article aims to analyse the role of cultural capital in the development of social capital and spiritual health from the perspective of religion and negative Islamic teachings. This study attempts to answer the question, 'what is the role of (...) cultural capital on the development of social capital and spiritual health from the perspective of negative Islamic teachings?' In this article, an attempt has been made to compare the negative aspect of education in the form of the Qur'anic concept of 'cultivation', with its positive aspect in terms of principles, approach and method, in order to return to the model arising from Qur'anic and mystical teachings. The research method is descriptive and analytical, and data processing is interpretive and critical. Data collection has been performed utilising documentary and library study methods. The research findings demonstrate that 'ethics, science, values, norms, rituals and art' are the most important elements of embodied cultural capital, which are effective in the development of social capital. CONTRIBUTION: Therefore, there is a substantial relationship between religion, negative Islamic teachings, the development of embodied cultural capital and the development of social capital and spiritual health. (shrink)

This paper explores how English language has gradually become a linguistic form of cultural capital in China’s zigzag journey to modernization. It situates English’s status in flux in historical context, with an analysis at both the international and intra-national level. It showcases the necessity to embed cultural capital within Bourdieu’s full framework, and evidences the arbitrary nature of this form of cultural capital for its intimate tie to power and politics. By revealing how English (...) has been officially consecrated as a global lingua franca and then socially recognized for material and symbolic benefits, this paper implicitly problematizes the officially validated cultural hierarchy, argues that the value of a cultural capital is context-dependent, politically and socially constructed, inseparable from the field where it is produced. The present-day English manifests its symbolic power in classification and social stratification, entrenching the already entrenched inequality within and without the national state. (shrink)

Schools are interesting as complex organizations in and of themselves but even more so for how they refract the societal dynamics by which inequality is reproduced, an enduringly vexing question (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012:3). Educational attainment is core to socioeconomic status and connected to outcomes in housing, health, and employment. Unequal schools in fields characterized by stratification are often the subject of reform attempts (Tyack, 1974). We examine how a wealthier and a poorer school responded to a state-level regulatory mandate (...) for change, in the U.S. context of schools as putative engines of opportunity. Bourdieu’s “master concepts” of field, habitus, and cultural capital (Swartz, 2008) are often applied, and we used them to answer frequent but still relatively unanswered calls in the literature: first, to use the master concepts together rather than singularly, and second, to attend specifically to the organization level and what it refracts (Dobbin, 2008; Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008; Hallett & Gougherty, 2018; Lounsbury & Ventresca, 2003; Mohr, 2013). For this integrative and organizational level approach, we derived the concept of “class signature,” which enabled us to focus on practices in organizations. This lens revealed “resistant compliance” in the wealthier school and “compliant resistance” in the poorer school, both of which reshaped the stratified field, even if stratification was not rectified. These responses appeared to reproduce inequality, not simplistically, we argue, but along a winding path fraught with practical experiments, protection against penalties, redefinition of the reform’s terms, and some small gains to remedy intra-organizational inequalities. (shrink)

BackgroundUsing Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory, this paper discusses the inequality of Chinese urban residents’ participation in physical activities caused by cultural capital and explores the relationship and role of residents’ income and self-rated health in cultural capital and physical activity participation.MethodsUsing Chinese social survey data, the proposed assumptions were tested and analyzed by using a linear regression model.ResultsCultural capital can promote the participation of Chinese urban residents in physical activities, and personal income and (...) health self-assessment play an intermediary role in promoting residents’ participation in physical activities.ConclusionPromoting Chinese residents’ participation in physical activities can be realized not only through traditional publicity and sports venue construction but also by increasing residents’ educational level, art appreciation level and health awareness. (shrink)

Estudos sobre eficácia escolar, bem como o conceito de capital cultural de Pierre Bourdieu, evidenciam que o contexto socioeconômico e cultural – ou o background – exerce papel fundamental nas notas e resultados obtidos pelos estudantes em exames. Ou seja, segundo esta teoria, alunos com menor background tenderiam a apresentar desempenho inferior em comparação com alunos oriundos de um contexto socioeconômico e cultural mais privilegiado. Nesse sentido, considerando que os bolsistas do Programa Universidade para Todos devem (...) possuir desvantagem de background em relação aos seus colegas pagantes, tendencialmente o seu desempenho deveria ser inferior, afinal o programa, criado em 2004, busca viabilizar o acesso à educação superior por meio da concessão de bolsas de estudos integrais ou parciais de 50%, a estudantes com renda familiar per capita de zero a três salários mínimos que cursaram o ensino médio em escolas públicas ou em escolas privadas na condição de bolsistas. Entretanto, percepções subjetivas de docentes indicam que nem sempre é isso que ocorre, ou seja, bolsistas estariam obtendo, em diversas situações, melhores resultados que os colegas pagantes nas disciplinas que cursam em instituições privadas. Nesse contexto, com o objetivo de refletir sobre aspectos fundamentais da qualidade e da equidade do Prouni, o presente artigo problematiza a suposta superioridade de notas dos bolsistas em disciplinas e no Enade e, ao mesmo tempo, analisa hipóteses que explicariam o desempenho além do esperado desses estudantes provenientes de meios populares. Quanto ao desenvolvimento metodológico da pesquisa, são utilizadas duas fontes de dados. A primeira delas é composta por microdados das avaliações de disciplinas de uma universidade comunitária do Rio Grande do Sul entre os anos de 2009 e 2012. A segunda consiste nos dados do Enade referentes ao ano de 2006. Palavras-chave : Capital cultural. Background. Educação superior. Prouni. (shrink)

This article aims at integrating the phenomenon of the Central and Eastern European intelligentsia into the application of the theory of cultural capital of Pierre Bourdieu to the analysis of societies of that region. This is done by critically reevaluating the model of evolution of the post-communist countries of Central Europe proposed by Gil Eyal, Ivan Szelényi, and Eleanor Townsley, in their “Making Capitalism without Capitalists.” The present article argues for supplementing their approach with an analytical distinction between (...) the concepts of intellectuals (as masters of the critical discourse culture) and the intelligentsia, which in countries like Poland have an important component of post-gentry culture. The identity and images of the intelligentsia are analyzed as important though highly contested aspects of cultural capital in Poland. Wide implications of discursive battles on the status of intelligentsia in contemporary Poland are exemplified in the case of the debates over the so-called Rywin Affair in Poland and the role played in that affair by the major Polish intellectual Adam Michnik. The political discourse related to the affair and to the status of Michnik are studied in context of the structure of the Polish political scene and related to the academic debates on the intelligentsia, whether it is a “really existing” and significant social group or merely a marginal one and “outdated discourse.”. (shrink)

This paper tests the hypotheses that the tide of globalization undermines or reinforces the traditional types of social capital. Using the 2006 AsiaBarometer Survey data and applying two-level logit regression analysis, this paper found that social capital related to sense of trust or human nature and interpersonal relations can be augmented by globalization, while social capital regarding familialism and mindfulness can be weakened.

An organizational culture can be defined as "Organizational Humanizing Culture" if it presents the following features: (1) recognition of the person in his or her dignity, rights, uniqueness, sociability and capacity for personal growth, (2) respect for persons and their human rights, (3) care and service for persons around one, and (4) management towards the common good versus particular interests. Current findings and generalized experience suggest that an organizational culture with these features tends to bring about trust and associability, which (...) are basic elements for social capital (a sort of asset embedded in the relationships of individuals, communities, networks or societies). (shrink)

To understand the impact of social, financial, cultural capitals, negative culture, and socioeconomic status of families on educational aspiration in the senior high school student athletes, it will be beneficial to promote their career developments. The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of ethnicity, year of sport experience family income, the educational expectations of significant others, and the three aforementioned types of capital on educational aspiration among the senior high school student athletes. This study was (...) conducted with a sample of 262 U-18 male baseball student athletes. Of the participants, 20.20% had attained the qualifications to play on the national team. The results showed that monthly family income positively affected social capital and positively indirectly affected educational aspirations through social capital, whereas monthly family income negatively affected negative culture and positively affected educational aspirations through negative culture. Moreover, social capital positively affected educational aspirations compared with negative culture negatively affected educational aspirations. The results serve as a reference for the formulation of educational policy as it relates to student athletes. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se muestra cómo la colonialidad cultural surge, se desarrolla y se mantiene como derivación, parte y premisa de la lógica del capital. En tanto lógica cultural nacida con el capitalismo y mantenida hasta hoy, la colonialidad estuvo asociada, primero, a la acumulación originaria del capital y, después, a su reproducción ampliada. El trabajo también indaga en las relaciones entre colonialidad, por una parte, y poder, colonialismo y eurocentrismo, por otra.

Organizational culture paves the way for employees, shows how one should function in a given organization – it aims to keep it together by adhering to similar values. Thanks to conditions prevailing there, specific rules employees know how they can perform their duties, properly cooperate with others and also how looks like the possibility of professional development, which is very important in the development of human capital. Human capital is people, their skills, creativity and qualifications. Development of (...) class='Hi'>capital through competence development has a positive impact on further functioning of the organization, but also on the satisfaction of employees themselves. In the case of retired officers of the Polish Army, who acquired specialized knowledge and valuable skills during their service, it is important to use their capital after the end of service. They can be supplemented with additional courses, training that will enrich their existing potential, and also enable them to find work in the civilian market. A survey was conducted among retired Army officers and employers/supervisors hiring retired officers from 2019 to 2021. The snowball method was used. A qualitative method was used – a survey questionnaire. (shrink)

Robert Putnam's work was a double-edged sword for social capital scholars. It brought unprecedented attention to the research agenda but also created conceptual confusion. Many scholars have tried to disentangle Coleman's concept of social capital from what some described as Putnam's “fuzzy psychological notion” of civic culture values. Despite the rigour of these efforts, Putnam's influence remains, because scholars and policy makers are drawn to the benefits his work promised. This article takes a different tack, and seeks to (...) extricate Putnam's early ideas from the social capital debates by offering an alternate theorization of his original findings. It returns to Making Democracy Work and argues that Putnam mis-stepped when he took the rational choice route and invoked Coleman's concept of social capital. It takes an ideational approach to explaining civic culture. The resulting “ideational social capital” suggests a different research agenda, which just might deliver on Putnam's early promise. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to analyse the influence of sociocultural factors on corruption levels. Taking as starting point Husted (J Int Bus Studies 30:339–359, 1999) and Graeff (In: Lambsdorff J, Taube M, Schramm M (eds) The new institutional economics of corruption. Routledge, London, 2005) proposals, we consider both the interrelation between cultural dimensions and the diverse expressions of social capital with corruption. According to our results, the universalistic trust (linking and bridging social capital) constitutes a (...) positive social capital that is negatively linked to corruption. In contrast, the particularistic levels of trust (bonding) can constitute a negative social capital directly related to corruption levels. Furthermore, cultures which are favourable to the legitimation of dependency relations and the formation of closed particularistic groups (power-distance and community factors) create a breeding ground for the development of these amoral rent-seeking structures. (shrink)

The article discusses the relationship between organizational culture and psychological capital through a systematic literature review. The exploratory research methodology is adopted to identify and study the existing gap in the available literature on the relationship between organizational culture and psychological capital from year 2000 to 2021. The articles from the ‘Scopus’ and ‘Web of Science’ databases were selected for the review. The literature review mentions a positive interplaying role between organizational culture and PsyCap that influences several factors (...) including work happiness, job performance, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour, burnout, innovation, etc. The article explores several antecedents and consequences of the two-way relationship between organizational culture and PsyCap. (shrink)

Highlighting the fluid nature of habitus/capital, this paper critiques a ‘rucksack approach’ (Erel, 2010) in the Bourdieusian studies of Chinese migrants’ cultural reproduction and social inclusion...

Cultural capital and hegemonic masculinity are two concepts that have received intense attention. While both have received serious consideration, critique and analysis, the context or field-specificity of each is sometimes ignored. They have been used in a diversity of ways. Using ethnographic and interview data from a US male bodybuilding community, this study highlights one useful employment. Hegemonic masculinity takes different shapes in different fields of interaction, acting as a form of cultural capital: gender capital. (...) Inherent in this discussion are the cultural contradictions apparent among individuals striving for either physical or ideological embodiments of gender capital. Individuals can attempt to embody hegemonic idealizations, but bodies are not only inscribed with gender, inscriptions are read, and read differently by different social actors and in different settings. The capacity of gender capital to remain elusive is precisely what enables gender practices and projects like bodybuilding to retain passionate participation. (shrink)

The present paper has as its theme the sociological aspect of the use of slang in a socio educational environment. Its main purpose is to describe and analyze the social distance in a learning environment, according to Bourdieu's concepts of cultural capital and habitus. In order to develop the classwork, some workshops about a slang dictionary have been held. The qualitative data provided by the pedagogical practice are presented, based on the reports of the meetings so that we (...) have been able to analyze the concepts presented by the young people. From this, it has been verified the symbolic character of words and expressions as a vector of social distancing by the incorporated cultural capital. (shrink)

There is a wealth of resources— ideas, insights, discoveries, inventions, traditions, cultures, languages, arts, religions, sciences, narratives, stories, poems, customs and norms, music and songs, games and personal experiences, and advertisements—that we produce, curate, consume, transmit, and inherit as humans. This wealth, which I define as semantic capital, gives meaning to, and makes sense of, our own existence and the world surrounding us. It defines who we are and enables humans to develop an individual and social life. This paper (...) discusses the shift from analog to digital semantic capital, and the extent to which this might affect the semanticisation of our identities, our lives and our realities. -/- . (shrink)

Culture is the bloodline of the nation and the spiritual home of the people. Intangible cultural heritage belongs to the field of culture, and the transmission of ICH is a kind of human-based cultural transmission, which is the shaping of people’s morality, character, sentiment, will, ideals and beliefs, value orientation, humanistic cultivation, artistic taste, way of thinking, wisdom, and ability in the practice of production and life of various ethnic groups. Based on the status acquisition model, this study (...) analyzed the human capital, social capital, and psychological capital of ICH bearers from three perspectives. In addition to the conventional socio-demographic factors such as gender, age, place of residence, and education level as control variables, status attainment was introduced as a dependent variable, and occupational identity, job satisfaction, and entrepreneurial ability were introduced as mediating variables to construct a conceptual model in the hope of exploring the multiple influencing factors of status attainment among ICH bearers. Interviews were used to gain, the feelings and knowledge of experts, scholars, and ICH bearers, to lay a solid qualitative research foundation for this study. A questionnaire survey was also conducted to obtain basic information and professional experiences of ICH bearers to provide real support for the research analysis and discussion. As per the results of this research, all the hypotheses were supported except, HC did not have any significant impact on JS. Furthermore, SC was not in a significant association with career identity. Moreover, career identity and status attainment did not have a significant relationship. (shrink)

This article builds on the hypothesis that theoretical approaches to philosophy of technology are currently stuck in a false alternative: either embrace the “empirical turn” or jump back into the determinism, pessimism, and general ignorance towards specific technologies that characterized the “humanities philosophy of technology.” A third path is however possible, which consists of articulating an empirical point of view with an interest in the symbolic dimension in which technologies and technological mediations are always already embedded. Bourdieu’s sociology of the (...) symbolic forms represents an important and mostly unexplored resource in this respect. In this article, we introduce the notion of technological capital and its tree states—objectified, institutionalized, and embodied. In the first section, we briefly account of the empirical turn in philosophy of technology. Specific attention is then devoted to postphenomenology. We depict three perspectives in postphenomenology: standard postphenomenology, in which one single human-technology-world relation at a time is considered; the attempt of some technological mediation theorists to articulate postphenomenology and actor-network theory ; the original effort in Ihde, which is currently practiced by a minority of postphenomenologists, to combine an interest for the empirical dimension of technological mediations with an attention to the social and cultural conditions of possibility in which these mediations are embedded. In the second section, we consider some recent critiques of the limits of the empirical turn in philosophy of technology, especially related to postphenomenology. Furthermore, we argue that Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology may benefit the philosophy of technology. One might say that according to a Bourdieusian perspective, technologies are, in their invention, implementation, and use, embedded in symbolically organized interactions among social actors or groups. The notion of technological capital is introduced. A specific attention is given to its embodied state, which is related to the habitus. Such concept suggests that, to rephrase the famous sentence by Heidegger, “the essence of technology is not totally technological.” In the conclusion, we consider three risks related to a Bourdieusian approach to technology: transparency, determinism, and absolutism. (shrink)

This paper empirically re(dis)covers a moment of conjuncture within Leicester when an opportunity opened up through multicultural/anti-racist education for schools and colleges to develop their ‘multicultural capital’. It does this through the thematic analysis of the key proximate document Report of the Working Party on Multicultural Education as well as drawing on interview data provided by two important agents who helped to implement Leicester’s/Leicestershire’s moment of multicultural education. This moment generated a symbolic, ideational, and conceptual shift within Leicester’s education (...) provision toward a more culturally inclusive position that began to recognise the cultural capital of non-white students. However, this moment was to be lost in the ‘neoliberal epoch’. It is argued in this paper that neoliberal education policy/practice has become an enabling mechanism for renascent colonial ideology. By re(dis)covering this vision for the official recognition of non-white cultural capital, this paper demonstrates the possibilities for alternative directions within Leicester’s schools and colleges that can challenge neoliberal and colonial conceptions of education. It suggests that there are still spaces and structures that can be re(dis)covered in order for this vision to be enabled. (shrink)