Question

Define and distinguish between economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital. Provide examples from real life of who would possess these four forms and how.

Answer 1

social capital conceptualized by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu includes economic resources that one gains from being part of a network of social relationships, including group membership.Cultural capital, also from Bourdieu, includes non-economic resources that enable social mobility. Examples of cultural capital would include knowledge, skills, and education. Both concepts remind us that social networks and culture have value. Bourdieu discussed other forms of capital, including economic and symbolic. Economic capital refers to monetary resources or those with exchange value, money. Going to school, whether it is kindergarten through high school or college, generates a potential to build both social capital and cultural capital. How do we build social capital We belong to groups and networks, some of which we may not even be aware. What groups or networks might you be part of Each class you enroll and participate in has both the teaching professional and other students. Each student club that you may join consists of a faculty sponsor and other students. Your major and minor academic emphasis may have its own network or group. The college as a whole offers multiple points of access to social capital. If you use campus resources such as learning or tutoring centers, programs for students with disabilities, or those that serve under-represented students, such as the writing center, or financial aid office.There are three types of cultural capital Embodied capital, Objectified capital and Institutionalised capital.Embodied cultural capital comprises the knowledge that is consciously acquired and passively inherited, by socialization to culture and tradition. Unlike property, cultural capital is not transmissible, but is acquired over time, as it is impressed upon the person's habitus which, in turn, becomes more receptive to similar cultural influences. Linguistic cultural capital is the mastery of language and its relations the embodied cultural capital, which is a person's means of communication and self-presentation, acquired from the national culture.Objectified cultural capital comprises the person's property that can be transmitted for economic profit and for symbolically conveying the possession of cultural capital facilitated by owning such things. Yet, whilst possessing a work of art the person can consume the art only with the proper conceptual and historical foundations of prior cultural-capital. As such, cultural capital is not transmitted in the sale of the work of art, except by coincidental and independent causation, when the seller explains the artwork's significance to the buyer. Institutionalized cultural capital comprises an institution's formal recognition of a person's cultural capital, usually academic credentials or professional qualifications. The greatest social role of institutionalized cultural-capital is in the labor market, wherein it allows the expression of the person's array of cultural capital as qualitative and quantitative measurements. The institutional recognition facilitates the conversion of cultural capital into economic capital, by serving as a heuristic with which the seller can describe his or her cultural capital to the buyer.