Pierre Bourdieu is renowned for pioneering cultural reproduction theory (Harker 1984; Brubaker 1985; A. King 2000; Gartman 2002), through his study of Kabylia in Algeria and elite school systems in France, Britain and America. Three important concepts permeate his theoretical version ― ‗capital,‘ ‗habitus‘ and
‗misrecognition.‘
Capital refers to:
accumulated labour (in its materialized form or its ‗incorporated‘, embodied form) that when appropriated on a private, that is, exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labour (Bourdieu 2001: 96).
As capital provides access to scarce rewards and may be transmitted across generations, it creates unequal intergenerational mobility outcomes. Critiquing the emphasis on economic capital or financial resources, Bourdieu highlighted the importance of ‗cultural capital‘ and ‗social capital.‘
Cultural capital equates to ―legitimate culture‖ that was most valued in society (Lamont and Lareau 1988: 157). It exists in three modes, embodied as disposition; objectified as cultural goods; and institutionalized as educational certification. As it is employed in cultural capital, ‗culture‘ denotes values and temperament that are arbitrarily ranked as ‗superior.‘ Unlike economic capital, cultural capital can only be expended after one decodes its meaning (Brubaker
1985: 757). Hence, holders of cultural capital have ―cultivated dispositions‖ that appreciate and understand such codes (Ibid). Not only can they process information more efficiently (Lee and Bowen 2006: 197), they exhibit greater familiarity within their respective cultural fields (Sullivan 2007). Here, Bourdieu‘s cultural capital model strongly parallels Bernstein‘s (1981) theory of linguistic codes. According to Bernstein (Ibid: 331), codes refer to principles that govern the different possibilities of selection and combination of words, that varied across class. Middle-class students usually perform better than working- class students because their far more elaborate ‗codes‘ are highly rewarded in school10 (Harker and May 1993: 172). In short, the differential ownership of cultural capital and/or codes shapes the unequal educational attainment of children from different class background.
Social capital consists of the ―aggregate of the actual or potential resources‖ that can be mobilized through social networks (Bourdieu 2001: 103).
Two factors influence the degree of social capital possessed by an individual: (i) the volume of network connections that one can successfully marshal (ii) the scale of capital owned by one‘s contacts (Ibid). The more social capital one possesses, the greater are the benefits and/or disadvantages accumulated by families or individuals through their ties with others (Portes 2000: 2).
10 Bernstein distinguishes restricted from elaborated codes. Whilst restricted codes are based on specific experiences, elaborated codes are detailed and can be easily understood without prior knowledge. Bernstein posits that middle-class students employ a mix of elaborated and restricted codes whereas working-class students tend to use mainly restricted codes.
Two other key points should be noted. First, social capital and cultural capital are disguised derivations of economic capital (Bourdieu 2001: 106).
Refining Bourdieu‘s theory, Portes (1998: 4) argued that although the ownership of social and cultural capital produced outcomes that are reducible to economic capital, the processes underlying these alternative capital modes are dissimilar.
When compared to economic transactions, exchanges involving cultural and social capital are less transparent and more ambivalent (de Graaf and Kalmijn 2001). Whilst the former provides immediate access to goods and services, the latter requires greater personal time and effort dedicated to their acquirement, with higher risks of failure. Many quantitative studies from the status attainment paradigm11 have affirmed this (DiMaggio 1982; de Graaf 1986; Katsillis and Rubinson 1990; Western 1994; P. Mason 2007).
Habitus denotes:
a system of durable, transposable dispositions… principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them (Bourdieu 1977: 72).
Simply put, habitus refers to an individual‘s ‗subconscious‘ worldview, bodily hexis (embodied cultural capital) and experiences which are accumulated and internalized across time. Partly composed of cultural capital, the habitus can be interpreted as a subjective, though not as a psychological, system of perception schemes shared by members of the same class (Jenks 1993: 14). Notwithstanding its resilience across various contexts, the habitus is ―oriented to the practical‖
11 The status paradigm model measures intergenerational mobility or ―status differences between parents and children in a family‖ (Chiew 1991a: 184). Refer to Appendix for an elaboration.
(Webb et al. 2002: 41). Although the knowledge and disposition permitted social actors to respond creatively to everyday situations, those responses are largely influenced by their social location and cultural history, or ―where and who [they]
have been‖ (Ibid: 44).
Together, capital and habitus explain how poverty is intergenerationally reproduced. The ―subjective hope of profit tends to be adjusted with the objective probability of profit‖ (Bourdieu 2000: 216). Thus, actors altered their expectations in accordance to their structural locations in society. Through their habitus, poor families will suggest their anticipation of failure, in their actions and beliefs. As they lack various types of capital, poor families struggle to attain upward mobility. Consequently, those with minimal capital are often less ambitious or more ‗satisfied‘ with their lot (DiMaggio 1979: 1465; Webb et al. 2002: 23). Such depressed aspirations, though pragmatic, ironically contribute to the reproduction of inequalities.
Bourdieu (2001: 45) also highlighted the importance of ‗misrecognition‘
in buttressing inequality. On one level, the poor ―are accomplices in their own destiny‖ when they, via their habitus, misrecognize the poverty they were structurally subjected to as ‗natural‘ (Ibid). On another level, misrecognition unmasks the seemingly ‗disinterested‘ action of actors as the struggle for power within a ‗field‘:
[The field is]... a gaming space in which those agents and institutions possessing enough specific capital to be able to occupy the dominant positions... confront each other using strategies aimed at preserving or transforming these relations of power (Bourdieu 1996 [1989]: 264–265).
In effect, social actors, particularly those in dominant positions, are ―ensuring that the field and its practices‖ reflected their own values or habitus (Webb et al. 2002:
26). The concept of misrecognition is pertinent for it suggests that the patterning of structural inequalities is intertwined with how social actors culturally understand and inhabit their lived realities, often without their realization.