This is a very interesting and important thread and particularly topical for me where I am right now with DD.
I grew up on a middle class street my dad jokingly used to call 'teachers row'. I had my school education in North Wales. Learned Welsh at school and grew up with my dad on the local council. The other councillors then were ex miners - who understood and talked about latin and greek and learning. The culture around me was rich. My mum and dad had grown up in extreme poverty and my had had 'bettered' himself - my mum had elementary education only as she grew up during the war so she did her G.C.S.Es aged 40 odd. She would buy a Dylan Thomas record of poetry and put it on so we could hear it.
My own marriage in my fourties was messy and the divorce even messier. I was pretty much at ground zero economically when I moved to where we are now - so it was a complete change - it is according to the government index an area of multiple economic deprivation. That affects all kinds of different things - what people expect of themselves, the way they talk, transport links. The rates of people who go to University etc.
Because we had so little money when we came here - no carpet on the floors - couldn't afford it - we used to go to the library every week and DD used to choose six books a week at least. We didn't have computers or any gadgets for years. I just couldn't do it. But I did learn things at home and do further courses and my DD saw me doing that.
I was brought up with the idea that learning was the answer to many things. If you didn't know about something you could get a book and find out. That ability has seen me through many rough patches and certainly through the pandemic when I home schooled for ten months.
Cultural capital is very much on my mind now - as a reality and a concept as DD has now gained places for summer schools at Oxford and Cambridge and one of those is her dream. It feels like a wide bridge for her (and me) to cross right now - not least because I feel I am dealing with the stereotypes of what is perceived to be - 'people who are disadvantaged'. I saw we have been 'economically disadvantaged' but not 'culturally disadvantaged'. We took and take our culture with us. We make culture. We have been refugees and there have been others at DD's school of a diaspora. So I identify with that.
If I had to say anything about cultural capital I would probably say it is about 'owning the room' somehow - feeling as if you are modest about what you know, willing to learn about what you don't know - and knowing that people in different places do things differently.
I am still learning things and filling in gaps.
I have to say - and get political - there are those in government at the moment that despite their Eton background appear to be culturally speaking very impoverished. They appear not to know or want to know how other people live and that creates a problem for them. If you don't know and don't want to know how other people live - then you can't possibly create policies that WORK.
It is absolutely impossible.
Example: Universal Credit and the gap until people are paid.
If you have always had savings to fall back on - and have taken it for granted you have no idea whatsover of what destruction might occur in a person's life if they are without any money coming in for five or six weeks. This matters.
How they feel, weak and tired going to food banks, demoralised, ill, not being able to afford a Covid test. Forced to go to a loan shark and then getting into more debt...
That is why they call Universal Credit - Universal Cruelty.
And then you have been taught that 'poor' people have only themselves to blame. Someone once told me 'the door to poverty is wide but the exit is small'.
Unfortunately - a lot more people are finding that out now .
Cultural capital has many faces. Sometimes it is a means of survival in tough times.
Along the lines of people do not just need bread.
We need and want roses too.