SOC281 - Class + Culture Flashcards
How and why is class related to culture? Compare and contrast Bourdieu, Peterson, and Erickson. Consider both their core theoretical arguments and the evidence used to support them.
- Bourdieu: higher level classes develop lifestyles only they can enact, because these lifestyles require superior resources – money, intense cultural training early in life at home
- Children of higher-class parents grow up with a sophisticated culture that enables them to do well in school + in getting a high level job
- culture of higher classes = higher prestige, better basis for claims to social honour + better life chances
- Members of higher classes present own culture as higher in prestige because inherently superior, but are prestigious because more powerful ppl have means to impose their own definitions of cultural value
How and why is class related to culture? Compare and contrast Bourdieu, Peterson, and Erickson. Consider both their core theoretical arguments and the evidence used to support them.
•Class inequality shapes how diff kinds of culture are valued + command more highly valued culture is a resource for gaining a good class position.
oinstitutionalized as “fine arts” + “cultivation” in opposition to popular/vulgar culture.
ohis map of France, with high prestige fine arts towards the top + popular culture at the bottom
•would expect upper occupational ladder: taste for + participation in high status music + other high status leisure rises
otaste for + participation in lower status genres falls
oactive distaste for lower status culture rise
How and why is class related to culture? Compare and contrast Bourdieu, Peterson, and Erickson. Consider both their core theoretical arguments and the evidence used to support them.
•Peterson: US data – ppl in higher status occupations are distinguished by the variety of their tastes, in contrast to lower status ppl who are fans of few cultural genres.
•Cultural Omnivores
•research:
taste for + participation in almost everything (except hours of TV watched) goes up
oHigher status ppl like more kinds of music. MOST likely to like higher status music, but also to like many less prestigious musical genres
otake part in more kinds of cultural activities. MOST likely to participate in popular activities (attending sports activities) + more “cultivated” ones (visiting historic sites)
How and why is class related to culture? Compare and contrast Bourdieu, Peterson, and Erickson. Consider both their core theoretical arguments and the evidence used to support them.
•Erickson: research on Toronto’s security industry
•Domination – knowledge of book, fine art (irrelevant), knowledge of business (legitimate cultural capital in private sector industry), attempt to impress employees with management skills
oDomination not always working, nothing happens unless employees do job, managers need to connect + motivate employees to do job + do it well
•Each system of inequality has its own patterns inequal access to certain forms of culture
oWomen who know sports do better at male dominated field
How and why is class related to culture? Compare and contrast Bourdieu, Peterson, and Erickson. Consider both their core theoretical arguments and the evidence used to support them.
- Erickson: degree of command of capital most useful in field, distinguished + legitimated, canonized has high culture
- even same field, need to be selective about which cultural resources you bring into play
- knowing a lot of diff types of culture, distinguishing relevant culture to use – business culture, popular culture, highbrow culture
- knowledge of relevancy + repetoire of cultural competencies
How and why is class related to culture? Compare and contrast Bourdieu, Peterson, and Erickson. Consider both their core theoretical arguments and the evidence used to support them.
- what is appropriate to talk about in one field differs in another field
- cumulative life chances
- at bottom: limited chances to do interesting work, increase cultural repetoire + social networks
- ppl who start at higher level, have more chances to expand cultural + social capital, they take off upward
- ppl at the bottom, get stuck, takes more effort for mobility
- in security business: mix of cultural knowledge more useful is popular + business culture
- Children learn culture in families – parents’ culture related to social location.
How and why is class related to culture? Compare and contrast Bourdieu, Peterson, and Erickson. Consider both their core theoretical arguments and the evidence used to support them.
- more influence over content + how schooling is done ⇒ education oriented towards middle class culture.
- easier for students to succeed in school if white middle class, with parents who have good command of dominant culture
- Culture learned at home affects the kinds of work learn to aspire + chances of getting it
- educational + work experiences contribute to their cultures in turn
What is “cultural capital?” Compare and contrast Bourdieu and Erickson (1996).
•Bourdieu: CULTURAL CAPITAL – culture useful in struggle for advantage in class inequality + other inequalities •DiMaggio on Bourdieu’s: Capital is “defined implicitly as attributes, possessions/qualities of a person/position exchangeable for goods, services/esteem” odiff fields have diff forms of capital exchangeable for diff rewards that matter in the field
What is “cultural capital?” Compare and contrast Bourdieu and Erickson (1996).
•Dominant groups have power to define their own culture as superior + their necessary condition for entry into higher levels of the class structure •France in Bourdieu’s day had one strongly centralized, strongly hierarchical class structure. oelite ppl strongly interconnected in their own social world + distanced from others oelite culture distinct from lower status culture + elites had no use for lower status culture
What is “cultural capital?” Compare and contrast Bourdieu and Erickson (1996).
•North America + other modern nations have more complex class structures with hierarchies much more loosely connected than in Bourdieu’s France
omultiple elites (industries, governments, educational organizations)
ohigher status ppl have to link with ppl of higher status in other sectors, as well as up + down the ladder in their own world
•Cannot transfer cultural resources freely from one field to another
oWhich cultural capital can be converted into economic varies across fields
oPpl in each part of field have reason for culture that works for them
What is “cultural capital?” Compare and contrast Bourdieu and Erickson (1996).
•every field there is unequal ranking of cultural + economic capital
•Erickson: research on Toronto’s security industry
•What are their weapons to stomp of ppl below – knowledge of book, fine art (irrelevant), knowledge of business (legitimate cultural capital in private sector industry), attempt to impress employees with management skills
oDomination not always working, nothing happens unless employees do job, managers need to connect + motivate employees to do job + do it well
•Need topic of discussion that managers + employeees can share – field, mostly guys (sports easy topic), don’t need to be an expert
What is “cultural capital?” Compare and contrast Bourdieu and Erickson (1996).
•Have to pick a topic shared, not correlated with class positions, something ppl feel comfortable talking about
•Each system of inequality has its own patterns inequal access to certain forms of culture
oWomen who know sports do better at male dominated field
•Erickson: degree of command of capital most useful in field, distinguished + legitimated, canonized has high culture
•need to be selective about which cultural resources you use
oat work: knowledge of business, restaurants to meet with client
oto employees: common culture
What is “cultural capital?” Compare and contrast Bourdieu and Erickson (1996).
- knowing a lot of diff types of culture, distinguishing relevant culture to use – business culture, popular culture, highbrow culture
- knowing about variety of culture, you can engage in conversation with a lot of diff ppl, figure out what they would be comfortable + happy to talk about
- make observation and ppl personalize work environment + figure out what they would be interested in talking about
- knowledge of relevancy + repetoire of cultural competencies
What is “cultural capital?” Compare and contrast Bourdieu and Erickson (1996).
- what is appropriate to talk about in one field differs in another field
- cumulative life chances
- at bottom: limited chances to do interesting work, increase cultural repetoire + social networks
- start at higher level, have more chances to expand cultural + social capital, they take off upward
- ppl at the bottom, get stuck, takes more effort for mobility
- in security business: mix of cultural knowledge more useful is popular + business culture
- mix of culture is useful, but wrong mix can be bad
Cultural capital
- Culture includes everything that is learned (knowledge, tastes, habits, scripts for action, frameworks of perception, cognition, etc.), the school-based learning symbolized by one’s educational credentials, practices (what you do + how you do it – working styles, leisure activities, political activity etc.), + one’s possessions. It includes everything involved in lifestyle.
- useful + profitable forms of culture
- Dominant groups have power to define their own culture as superior + their necessary condition for entry into higher levels of the class structure
