|
|
This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.
According to Bourdieu (1986), capital can take three principal forms: economic capital, ‘which is immediately and directly convertible into money and may be institutionalized in the form of property rights’; cultural capital, ‘which is convertible, on certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the form of educational qualifications’; and social capital, ‘made up of social obligations (“connections”), which is convertible, in certain conditions, into economic capital’ (p. 243). This book is concerned primarily with the second of these—cultural capital. As Brown (1995) observed, cultural capital has ‘long been recognised as vital to the reproduction of the middle classes’ (p. 33).
Cultural capital can be either institutionalised, embodied, or objectified (Bourdieu, 1986). Institutionalised cultural capital is the most relevant to this study and is represented by formal academic qualifications or credentials. There is a clear link between the possession of institutional cultural capital and labour market outcomes, as Bourdieu (1986) described:
Whilst, as this suggests, academic qualifications may convert relatively directly into economic capital through the labour market, this does not occur in the straightforward manner that human capital theory would imply.8 Not all qualifications are equal when it comes to finding employment and gaining promotion. Holders must possess the correct institutionalised cultural capital for successful conversion and this, I argue, can vary spatially and over time.