Sociology Final

Bourdieu’s Cultural Capital Theory

Cultural capital is tightly bound with social class as a

“trained capacity”

Bourdieu’s Claim on Cultural Capital

It shapes inequality as those with a similar amount of cultural capital tend to like each other and get along with each other. There are high correlations between: Parents’ social class & Parents’ cultural capital & Children’s cultural capital. Cultural capital comes from family.

According to Bourdieu the effect of cultural capital on education success is

constant over time

Initial differences in cultural capital lead to

differences in educational achievement later in life

Cultural Capital

Enables us to view culture as a resource that can yield profits or some kind of outcomes that may be transmitted from one generation to the next.

Critiques of Bourdieu’s Cultural Capital Theory

Bourdieu’s theory is passive, when in reality students are actively seeking opportunities while in school. Also, what even is “cultural capital,” Bourdieu claims it is defined by the elite critics argue there is also cultural capital defined by marginalized peoples

Lareau’s Study

Ethnographic study; Interviews with 88 families with children (ages 8 to 10) from a large Northeastern City and its suburb areas. In-depth participant observations of 12 Black and White middle-class, working-class,and poor families for more intensive study.

Lareau’s Findings

All of the families want their children to be healthy and happy and to grow and thrive. Child-rearing strategies concerned three dimensions of family life: Organization of daily life, Language use, and Social connections. Social class has a greater effect on child-rearing strategies than race.

Takeaways from Lareau

The advantages associated with social class are cumulative, and non-economic forces or cultural knowledge matter when young adults of differing class backgrounds navigate key institutions (like colleges).

Different Childrearing Strategies (Lareau)

Concerted Cultivation and Natural Growth

Concerted Cultivation (sense of entitlement)

Gives children resources to draw on in their interactions with professionals and other adults outside the home. They expect institutions to be responsive to them and accommodate their individual needs. The middle-class children gain advantages from this way of relating to outside professionals.

Natural Growth (sense of constraint)

Interactions between working class and professionals are often cautious and constrained. Working-class parents accept authority figures; don’t question or assert themselves. Working-class children had few advantages, and the sense of constraint they developed led outside institutions to treat them differently.

Social Class in America

There is a resistance to study of social class in America. Most Americans resist the idea that we have “social classes” in the U.S. because there is a strong belief in individualism and greater focus on racial cleavages.

Paul DiMaggio’s Cultural Capital Theory

focuses in active participants

DiMaggio social interaction and mobility

Cultural capital often comes from family and enhances educational success, but, further accumulation of cultural capital and educational success are NOT dependent on early socialization and cultural capital from family(can be learned later in life). There are not necessarily high correlations between: Parents’ social class & Parents’ cultural capital & Children’s cultural capital.

DiMaggio and Bourdieu

DiMaggio agrees with Bourdieu’s basic point but instead sees schools as sites of socialization (skills can be acquired later in life)

Community Cultural Wealth (Tara Yasso)

Conceptualizes community cultural wealth to challenge and expand

traditional interpretations of cultural capital. Understands community institutions, as information networks, play an important role in promoting cultural wealth and social mobility for all participants. Provides a lens to understand how local institutions support the minority culture of mobility.

6 kinds of community cultural capital

aspirational, familial, social, linguistic, resistant, and navigational capital.

Aspirational Capital

ability to maintain hopes/dreams in the face of hardship

Familial Capital

close ties with extended family

Social Capital

similar to Bourdieu but focuses on who one knows in the community rather than a position of power

linguistic capital

knowing other languages/language codes

resistant capital

maintenance of own culture and challenging inequality

navigational capital

knowing what resources, you have and how to use them (how to handle the system)

Lu Confucious or Mozart Key Findings

Western Classical Music as a Strategy to enhance educational mobility. Classical music education is not just about cultivating a hobby, but is an advantage-creating strategy for college applications. To negotiate the negative racial/ethnic stereotypes Children of Chinese immigrants signify well roundness and avoid the negative racial/ethnic stereotypes such as “rote learners” and “bookworm.”

Lu Takeaways

Cultural capital is not only acquired within the family, but also collectively in communities. The children of working-class immigrants can also move up the social ladder through community cultural wealth. It’s not ethnic culture, but the dominant form of cultural capital that explainseducational success and upward social mobility among children of Chinese immigrants.

Organization

An assembly of people working together to achieve common objectives through a division of labor. Shared norms, values, and practices are necessary for the existence of organizations.

What is not a way to improve worker motivation with organizational culture?

Delta grants monetary incentives to those employees who meet or exceed their personal and/or team preformance goals

Shared characteristics of formal organizations

Division of labor, Hierarchy of authority, and Explicit rules

Division of labor

Shared characteristic of formal organizations, each individual has a specialized task to perform

Hierarchy of authority

Shared characteristic of formal organizations, it places one individual or office in charge of another individual or office

Explicit rules

Shared characteristic of formal organizations, rules are outlined, written down, and standardized

Three types of formal organizations

Coercive, utilitarian, and normative

Coercive Organization ex

prison

Normative organization ex

church

Utilitarian organization ex

colleges

Organizations want to

motivate workers to work towards the goals of the organization

How would you get workers to do what you want?

1. Economic Incentives

2. Organizational culture - shared values/goals

Economic Incentives

Motivate through MONEY. Yet, economic incentive often does not work because economic rewards do not create a lasting commitment. They merely, and temporarily, change what we do.

Organizational Culture

Motivate through SHARED VALUES/GOALS. The underlying values and beliefs about what is important, valued, and rewarded within an organization. Organizations operate within and across culture, but they also produce cultures of their own.

Ways companies shape organizational culture

1) Structural elements

2) Socialization

3) Exemplars and stories

Structural elements of organizational culture

include less hierarchy (fewer hierarchical steps), more decision-making ability at lower levels, and emphasizing informality and accessibility with higher levels. Motivates workers on the basis of autonomy (The more control they have over outcomes, the more they will identify with & contribute to goals of the organization).

Socialization in organizational culture

Organizations foster a preferred type of organizational culture by selectivity at the recruitment stage and by active socialization. This happens as companies recruit the type of people they think “fit” the company goals, then implement training to instill organizational culture and continue informal socialization as Managers and co-workers socialize new workers.

Exemplars and Stories in organizational culture

Models of commitment to organizational culture include instilling organizational loyalty and motivate desired behavior through exemplary actors (e.g., employee of the month) and organizational stories (anecdotes that illustrate desired values and practices).

Hiring in organizations

Individual factors (Job candidates/human and social capital)

Organizational factors (organizational policies, ex affirmative action)

Institutional factors (Contexts, broader structures in society)

Hiring is also

interpersonal process (The importance of job

interviews)

Rivera’s Study

examines how cultural similarities between employers and job candidates matter for hiring decisions

Rivera Cultural Fit and Candidate Evaluation

Hiring as cultural matching through organizational, cognitive, and affective processes

Organizational Processes (hiring)

Cultural similarity or cultural fit is a formal evaluative criterion structured into candidate screening and selection. Fit between applicants’ personality traits and work values and an organization’s culture. Fit often indicates applicants’ play styles—how applicants conduct themselves outside the office–rather than their work styles.

How do evaluators and firms evaluate (or measure) cultural fit?

Cultural Similarity to Firm. Evaluators consider distinct organizational cultures (e.g., interdependent vs. independent) and personalities (e.g., “sporty”/“fratty” vs. “egghead”/”intellectual”).

Cognitive Processes (hiring)

Cultural similarities between interviewers and applicants facilitate comprehension and valuation of candidates’ qualifications. While experiential similarity tends to yield more positive perceptions of candidates’ abilities, experiential dissimilarities could result in informational disadvantages.

Affective Processes (hiring)

Cultural similarities could provide evaluators with feelings of excitement that provided advantages in evaluation. While experiential similarity tends to yield more positive perceptions of candidates’ abilities, experiential dissimilarities could result in informational disadvantages.

Rivera Conclusions

Employers at elite professional service firms see cultural similarity as a meaningful quality that fostered cohesion, signaled merit, and simply felt good. Hiring is more than a process of skills sorting, it is also a process of cultural matching between candidates, evaluators, and firms.

Subculture

A cultural group within a larger culture whose values and lifestyles are significantly different from larger society

Subculture Characteristics

arise as direct challenge to dominant culture, are often smaller groups, and tend not to have formal leadership

American Tradition of Subcultural Studies

The ‘Chicago School’ (from the early 20th century until the 1950s) and Structural functionalism and deviance (1960s and 1970s)

The Chicago School

up to 1950s, Subcultures in the US arose in part as a result of urbanization, saw subcultures as a useful tool in explaining social pathologies like the deviant processes of youth, especially the marginalized urban poor

Structural functionalism and Strain Theory

1960s and 70s, is when individuals are faced with a gap between their goals and their current status (or means), strain occurs. Focused on the correlation between subcultures and crime, rather than cultural processes.

British Tradition of Subcultural Studies

The development of subculture studies by the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) (late 1960s and 1970s)

Hebdige and subculture

Neo-Marxian approach to class and power to explain a variety of British youth subcultures (e.g., punks, hippies, etc.). Considered subcultural participation as a form of resistance that reflected larger class struggles. Interested in how subcultures provided symbolic solutions to working-class youth.

Hebdige considered subcultural participation as

a form of resistance that reflected larger class struggles.

Subculture Core Concepts

Style, resistance, space/media, social reaction, and identity/authenticity

Style (subculture)

An active organization of objects with activities and outlooks. Dimensions of style include objects like dress, music, dance forms, body modification, and language.

Resistance (subculture)

As a sign of opposition or alternative to existing power relations or as a form of resistance to the adult world. A struggle with inequalities and injustices & sincere desire for social change. Ex: Riot Grrrl movement

Space and Media (subculture)

The significance of bounded geographical spaces for embodied, situated social action. Some specific social spaces for subcultural activities include Urban Street corners, festivals, conventions, and zines.

Social Reaction Subculture

Most popular information about any particular subculture is generated by ‘outsiders’ (including the mainstream media). Outsiders are responsible for categorizing, labeling, and either marginalizing or spectacularizing subcultural styles, events, and actions. Mainstream media often play a role in promoting negative biases and stereotypes toward subcultures. Yet the media may also facilitate the growth of subcultures.

Identity and Authenticity

Many subcultural studies have framed identity in terms of insider/outsider dichotomies or internal hierarchies. Two distinct layers of identity: a social identity as members of groups and a personal identity as unique subculturalists (separate even from fellow subculturalists)(e.g., ‘real’ and fake punks).

Tattoo Culture

While tattooing goes back to ancient civilizations, in recent history, it was rare – it was exclusively associated with working class culture and signs of rebellion, subcultural groups and deviance. However, now tattoos are popular.

Subculture Key Takeaways

Subcultures oppose the common culture, as this is the major part of the subculture’s identity. The most common motivation for subcultures is an urge for something that the common culture can’t provide. Some subcultures (e.g., tattoo culture) have moved from deviant subculture to the mainstream culture.

Howard Becker (1974). “Art As Collective Action.”

Symbolic interactionist –well known for “labeling theory.” Becker takes us away from the idea that artistic creation is about individual genius.

Art Worlds

A production network comprised of people “whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produces the kind of artworks.” Often, the artist is at the center of a large network of cooperating people.

Art is a collective activity

It requires “core” and “support” personnel who: conceive of an idea, execute the idea, provide equipment and materials, manufacture/distribute, and raise money.

Types of Artists

Integrated Professionals and Mavericks

Mavericks (Becker Art Worlds)

Those artists whose creations “challenge” the existing conventions. They have been part of the conventional art world of their time, place, and medium, but found it unacceptably constraining.

Integrated Professionals (Becker Art Worlds)

Those artists whose creations “fit” easily into all the standard activities that the art world carries on. They know, understand, and habitually use the conventions on which their world runs.

Art worlds structural aspects

The division of labor

Art worlds content aspects

Conventions, people rely on earlier agreements that have become part of the conventional way of doing things in their art world. They make art possible, but place constraints on artists. Art works typically contain both “conventional” and “innovative” elements.

Art Worlds Conclusion

The discussion of art as collective action suggests a general approach to the analysis of social organization. We can focus on any event and look for the network of people whose collective activity made it possible for the event to occur. The world of art mirrors society at large.

The Six Degrees of Separation ( 1967)

Milgram asked people to send a letter from Nebraska to Boston with the chain of “a friend of a friend.” 30% of letters reached the target person and the average chain of referrals was six.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

Students at Albright College developed this game that theorized Kevin Bacon is the center of the entertainment universe, so any actor or actress can be linked back to him, within 6 degrees. The number of degrees is referred to as the “Bacon Number.”

Mark Granovetter Strong Ties vs. Weak Ties (1973)

Strong ties are relationships between individuals marked by relatively high levels of intensity and emotional closeness. Weak ties are relationships between people that know each other, but not particularly well.

Granovetter Strong Ties Example

close family members and friends whom you interact with on a daily basis

Granovetter Weak Ties Example

acquaintances; the people that you interact with once a month or once a year, whom you probably do not see very often; Instagram followers; Linkedin connections, etc.

The Small World Network (Uzzi and Spiro, 2005)

Uzzi and Spiro apply the ideas of social network analysis to the creative world of Broadway musical production teams. Broadway networks are closer to the parlor game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”.

Uzzi and Spiro findings

Small world networks in Broadway musicals, at both artistic and financial levels, have a parabolic effect (or an inverted U-shaped relationship).

Collaboration and Creativity Conclusion

The positive effects of the small-worldliness in Broadway musicals increased up to a threshold, after which point the positive effects decreased. Too much small-worldliness face liabilities in the realms of innovation and collaboration that impede the creation of new, successful musical hits. In order to make creativity thrive, the networks should NOT be too connected.

Granovetter Strong ties and Weak ties + Job Search

A can access new info from weak ties that B might not get just from strong ties

Braden Composers’ Reputations

studied SANs (Symbolic Association Networks), which is the audience’s perception of reputational networks

Networks and Reputations Key Findings

Having a large symbolic network is a strong predictor of increased reputation. Composers who act as “bridges” between unconnected musical styles or eras have higher reputation growth. Reputation is not easily shared, even when people work together (Halo effect). (negative).

Halo effect

A’s increased reputation might dimmish B if they perform in the same program because the audience focuses more on the big name the spotlight is not shared.

Homophily

The tendency of individuals to associate with similar others—“love of the same”

Status Homophily

Similarity based on ascribed status (e.g., age, sex, race/ethnicity, etc.) & achieved status (e.g., education, occupation, etc.)

Value Homophily

Similarity based on values, attitudes, beliefs, and aspirations, regardless of differences in the status characteristics

Dimensions of Homophily

Race/ethnicity, gender, age, religion, social class/education/occupation, and behavior

Race and Ethnicity Homophily

Strong and consistent evidence of racial and ethnic homophily in adolescents’ friendship networks and adults’ romantic relationships.

Gender Homophily

Especially in children’s and adolescents’ friendship networks; workplaces and voluntary associations

Age Homophily

Ubiquitous and prevalent in close friendships in many cultures; the fact that schools group same-aged children together into the classroom induces strong age homophily.

Religion Homophily

Marriage, friendship, and confiding relations tend to show religious homophily, but the pattern is not as strong as it is for race/ethnicity or gender.

Social Class, Education, and Occupation Homophily

Considerable homophily with respect to social class, education, and occupation (e.g. a divide among those who have a college education and those who do not).

Behavior Homophily

Individuals, especially teenagers, tend to associate with others who share their behavior patterns (e.g. school achievements; drinking, smoking).