2
Introduction
Cultural capital was given its classic formulation by Pierre Bourdieu (1977; 1984; 1990; 1996), who
considered it to be a function of an individual’s habitus: a worldview formed by the circumstances of one’s
upbringing and education. Individuals raised in relatively privileged surroundings—largely free from
material need and surrounded by high-status, relatively esoteric cultural forms—are conversant with both
the substance and form of elite culture. This knowledge is rewarded by gate-keepers at school and work,
thus helping to ensure the perpetuation of privilege.
While Bourdieu’s theory has been criticized for being far more germane to France in the mid-
twentieth century than to other places and times (Lamont and Lareau 1988; Lamont 1992; Halle 1993;
Bryson 1996; Erickson 1996; Petersen and Kern 1996; De Graaf et al 2000; Kingston 2001; Robbins 2004),
cultural capital has remained a vital subject of inquiry in the sociology of culture and the sociology of
education (see Lareau and Weininger 2003 for a review). The majority of studies support the argument that
cultural capital does exist and is rewarded even in the latter-day United States—even if it is different in
content or form than cultural capital in Bourdieu’s formulation (Bernstein 1979; DiMaggio 1982;
DiMaggio and Mohr 1985; De Graaf 1986; Cazden 1988; Heath 1983; Lareau 1989, 2002, 2003; Farkas et
al 1990; Kastillis and Rubinson 1990; Ball 1995; Aschaffenburg and Maas 1997; Lareau and Horvat 1999;
Blackledge 2001; Carter 2003; Kaufman and Gabler 2004; see Farkas 2003 for a review of non-cognitive
traits and behaviors in educational stratification). Over thirty years after Bourdieu first advanced the
concept, however, cultural capital remains frustratingly elusive from an empirical standpoint. In part, this
derives from the very nature of cultural capital: Bourdieu emphasizes that cultural capital is effective
largely because of its subtlety. (If “refinement” were easily measured using a survey instrument, it would
also be easy to fake.) In part, however, this elusiveness derives from a somewhat misplaced emphasis upon
the attributes and experiences of the individual rather than upon the individual’s family background, the
essential crucible of cultural capital. Further, discrete indicators of cultural capital—some more precise
than others—are too often consolidated into variables used as overall indices of cultural capital. While
defensible from a methodological point of view, from a theoretical perspective this practice may obscure
important distinctions among various attributes and activities related to cultural capital (see De Graaf et al.
2000 for an exception in quantitative work on cultural capital).
Convention